Well SOMEone's Got To Say It!
I know I'm not the only one in America, or even in the Republican Party, who still remembers when being a "Conservative Christian Patriot" meant you were actually OPPOSED to KGB thugs who massacred priests, recruited pedophiles and threatened to nuke the US in virtually every sentence. Fortunately, Mike Turner and Michael McCaul, both of whom recall the years when the Republican Party (under the leadership of Ronald Reagan) confronted and crushed the Soviet Union, have started to speak out against it.
And now, a certain Conservative blogger who has been habitually critical of China for years before turning his spotlight toward Russia, has published a book that aims to wake up American Republicans as well.
Straight To the Point
The book's structure is simple. Each chapter deals with a particular lie told by Pro-Russia media sources. Each chapter title is "Lie # X - [Insert Lie Here]," and each chapter is a rather blunt, straight-to-the-point collection of facts proving why each lie is impossible. In the case of "Lie #1 - America is Going Broke Funding Ukraine," it includes a systematic, step-by-step breakdown of just how little America has spent on Ukraine (spoiler alert: the amount of your taxes that go to Ukraine wouldn't by you one candy bar per week if you got them back). In the case of :Lie #2 - NATO Expansion Forced Russia's Hand," it includes a list of all NATO expansion in the past thirty years (spoiler alert: when Russian invaded Ukraine there'd been no NATO expansion toward Russia since before most of the troops in the invasion were born), and so forth. It's packed with footnotes and citations (sometimes to the point where a page consists of more footnotes than body text) so every word in it is verifiable.
No Regard For Your feelings
The author is an American Conservative (who happened to be living in Kharkiv, Ukraine when the Russian invasion began), writing to American Conservatives. As such, there's no soft-spoken political correctness to be found. It's written in the "f**k your feelings, get the facts" tone that we on the Right recognize and value, and it's not shy about the fact that many of its target readers will find its contents offensive. In fact, it defies the reader up front with the assurance that it most assuredly will offend them. "Are you a Republican? So am I! And I doubt you have the guts to read this book," is written in bold print right on the back, and the introduction doesn't sugar-coat the fact that the book sets out to be a deliberately painful reality check, from one Conservative Republican to another, about some of the absolute nonsense we hear coming from our own Party, especially one particular member (and I won't mention names but she shares her initials with a card game) these days.
Short, No Fillers
This book doesn't waste a lot of time with fluff. It's not the kind of book that casually prompts you to philosophically ask "what if?" It's an in-your-face fact-filled wake-up call that moves pretty swiftly from "here's what you've been told by the fringe of the Party" to "here's why it's a load of crap" to "here's further proof that it's a load of crap." As such, even with charts, graphs and footnotes it weighs in at a paltry 131 pages; short enough that the average reader can finish it in a week (if they have the courage to do so).
So Who Should Read It?
Well, the ones who need it most (those on the fringe-right who still think aiding Ukraine is a bad idea) are never going to read it, because no one ever reads a book that is going to disprove their cherished delusions. However, to the remaining Reagan-Republicans who recognize the necessity of giving Russia the back of America's hand, and who are as disgusted as Mike Turner is with the amount of Russian propaganda we're hearing from the outer edges of our own party, this book will arm you with the necessary facts and figures to set the record straight in a debate with the same. The dedication page basically says it all.
To every American, Left or Right, who still remembers when the “actor-turned-president who thinks he can take on Moscow” was Ronald Reagan, and who still remembers when America stood against the Kremlin's imperialism instead of cheering it on."
My perception is that most Republican and most conservatives are NOT pro Russia (I'm sure there are a few...there always are). However, there are some in those categories who oppose sending trillions of taxpayer money to Ukraine to fight a proxy war. I mean you can't really be a fiscal conservative and support such a thing.
I'd like to thank you for providing an example. You just hit on two of the disinformation points the book sets out to debunk: "massive spending" and "proxy war," which are addressed in "Lie #1" and "Lie #2."
At the risk of spoilers, the amount we've spent on Ukraine in two years is less than what we spent in January - April of 2010 alone in Iraq. Also, the notion that it's a "proxy war" implies that the Ukrainians have no agency in the defense of their own borders.
The majority of Republicans (though not the loudest, I'm afraid) have been in favor of sending aid to Ukraine from the beginning, though most of them have said (probably wisely) they want to actually send the weapons themselves rather than sending cash, since it's harder for unscrupulous and shady figures (and Ukraine does have them; they haven't completely managed to clean up the corruption left behind by the last period of Russian rule) to embezzle rockets than cash.