I'm seeing Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy building up a lot of credibility in some antiwar circles, which is ridiculous because he's clearly just another disgusting warmonger. He is not meaningfully different from all the other warmongers in the DC swamp.

I say this not because I'm some kind of purity police zealot who lets the perfect become the enemy of the good, nor because I don't understand Ramaswamy's appeal among those who oppose war and militarism. I totally get why it would look sparkly and interesting to see someone on the debate stage decrying neocons and wishing professional warmonger Nikki Haley the best of luck on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon, and on the surface his support for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine looks admirable.

In reality, however, Ramaswamy is just one side of the dynamic we were discussing recently in which the populace is artificially manipulated into a power-serving debate over whether we should support warmongering against Russia or warmongering against China, thereby duping the public into arguing over how warmongering should occur rather than if it should. Ramaswamy is a virulent China hawk whose extreme militarism would greatly increase the risk of war with China if he became president, and the only reason he wants to end the war in Ukraine is to hamstring the PRC while rapidly increasing aggressions against Beijing.