On February 3rd, Reuters bannered «The Great Debate: Is it time for the United States to dump Saudi Arabia?» and Josh Cohen argued that, «The moral case for the United States to question its close relationship with Saudi Arabia is clear. Saudi Arabia is governed by the House of Saud, an authoritarian monarchy that does not tolerate dissent, and the country consistently ranks among the 'worst of the worst' countries in democracy watchdog Freedom House’s annual survey of political and civil rights».

More interesting than the article, perhaps, were the over 80 reader-comments responding to it at Reddit, best summarized by one that said, «Being friendly with a regional power outweighs the strategic concerns of Syria and Islamic terrorism for the most part».

The predominant framework of those reddits was that of idealism-versus-pragmatism: it’s expressed by the adage «They might be bastards, but they’re our bastards».

However, the Arab leader whom the US Government declares to be our enemy is Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and the Obama Administration had long been bombing his military forces which are fighting against ISIS and other jihadist groups, many of which are actually being backed by America’s ‘allies’: Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Why does the US invade Syria to remove Assad, while arming the Saudi regime that funds jihadists?

The Reddit readers didn’t consider such realistic and vital questions as this, concerning US foreign policymaking, but only the bumper-sticker ‘issues’ such as idealism versus pragmatism. Those philosophical categories exist in order to fool people, not to assist them in understanding problems as they actually are.

The actual issue here is the American government’s effort to overthrow or kill national leaders who are allied with Russia, such as were Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. This «regime change» thrust has nothing to do with «idealism». That’s merely a George-W.-Bush-&-Barack-Obama regime lie. Nor does it concern «pragmatism». It concerns instead a global war between aristocracies: The American aristocracy is trying to control or conquer Russia’s aristocracy; and, whereas America’s allied aristocracies in Europe and in the Arabic oil kingdoms and Turkey support regime-change in Syria, Russia’s allied aristocracies in Iran and China don’t.

By falsely framing issues, America’s propaganda-media (which those media instead call ‘news’ media) deceive the public (such as the commenters at Reddit) to think that America’s government is on the ‘right’ side, or maybe even ‘idealistic’, and that Russia’s government is on the ‘wrong side’, or perhaps ‘pragmatic’, even where Russia is insisting upon a democratic determination by the citizens of Syria to elect their own President, whereas America insists upon simply overthrowing the existing President and replacing him by someone who is acceptable to the American government.

US Secretary of State John Kerry subsequently yielded to international pressure for the US to support democracy instead of a military overthrow. But King Saud refused to go along with that and continues to insist upon overthrow. And, then, on January 25th, Kerry backed King Saud’s insistence upon overthrow as a prerequisite to any Syrian election. Kerry and Saud now were united on favoring an ‘interim’ government to be imposed by ‘peace talks’ before any election in Syria.

However, King Saud insisted that the anti-Assad side be led by two Sunni jihadists selected by Saud himself (actually by his son, Prince Salman al-Saud, who really runs the country). The Assad government and Russia rejected that demand. The idea of «peace talks» is in limbo until February 25th, when the two sides are supposed to come to some kind of agreement on this – which is extremely unlikely.

Basically, the «peace talks» idea is dead, and Syria continues to be invaded by the US-Saud-Turkey-Qatar-UAE alliance, which wants to impose an extremist Sunni jihadist government in the country, to replace the existing non-sectarian but Shiite-led secular Assad government, and Syria continues to be defended by the Syrian army and Russia and Iran.

Regarding the question that had been posed by «The Great Debate: Is it time for the United States to dump Saudi Arabia?» the reality is that the US is allied with fundamentalist Sunni jihadist Arab royal families, which are being led by King Saud.

What that question really comes down to then, basically doesn’t concern Assad, but only King Saud and his tyranny and the tyrannies of his royal allies whom the US government likewise supports and endorses.

‘We’ are propping up jihadists: fundamentalist Sunni terrorists who want to take over Syria before they get on to taking over the rest of the world (including us). The American government is against the American public, but for King Saud.

The Obama regime has identified Russia as being America’s top enemy. This is what remains now of American ‘idealism’.

None of the US Presidential contenders is talking about this scandal of a traitorous government, because the ‘news’ media might attack such a candidate by calling him ‘pro-Russian’.

The ghost of the fascist demagogue Joseph R. McCarthy is still politically powerful in the US, even 25 years after the USSR and Russian communism ended in 1991. That fascist ghost haunts not only America’s politics but America’s press. Some of America’s Presidential candidates (such as John Kasich and Hillary Clinton) embrace Joe McCarthy’s ghost, but others (such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders) are ambiguous about it. (None of the candidates condemns it as being rabidly inappropriate to guide today’s US foreign policies – which it is. That would be risky in today’s America, fascist America.)

Anyone who would discuss such matters in such terms as ‘idealism’ versus ‘pragmatism’, is spouting obscurantist propaganda, not facts nor even any real analysis of facts. The issue here is instead democracy versus fascism.

Americans accept Saudi royals as friends of America, because they don’t know that they’re reading and watching propaganda not news, and because that propaganda is produced by an alliance of American and jihadist aristocrats: US aristocrats and fundamentalist Sunni Arab royals.

That’s the reality. And, yes, it is «time for the United States to dump Saudi Arabia». But the US aristocracy own the US ‘news’ media, and they hug Joe McCarthy’s ghost – and hug the jihadist royal families, the ones who are funding Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc., which the Arab side of the US-Saudi alliance hope to turn overtly against «the West» after they and «the West» have first conquered Russia.

First comes the mind-control; then comes the land-control. And the mind-control is by now pretty much complete, which is why the real issue here isn’t even being debated in American political campaigns, in America’s 'democracy'.