Sanctions Regime Boomerangs on the West

This was not an inevitable or necessary outcome.

by Michael Wilkerson for American Greatness

After one year, 10 increasingly stringent rounds, and over 14,500 specific sanctions imposed on Russian individuals, companies, and institutions, the U.S. led sanctions regime appears to be hurting Western economic and geostrategic interests as much or more than the Russian target.

Last month I explored in American Greatness the question of whether and how the sanctions regime—one year on—is impacting Russia’s economy and trading relationships. The conclusion was yes, but not as the West desires, and that “economic sanctions are . . . giving Western leaders a lot of virtue signaling and public relations opportunities, but with little tangible result.”  

But what of the costs and consequences Russian sanctions have imposed—not on their intended target but rather—on the UnitedStates and its Western allies, particularly those in the European Union?

Western and especially European economic interests have been negatively impacted by the sanctions regime. The value of EU imports from Russia fell by 51 percent in 2022, while EU exports to Russia dropped by 48 percent. In 2021, the United States exported $17.3 billion of goods and services to Russia; in 2022 this figure dropped by 90 percent to $1.7 billion. Canada’s exports to Russia fell 84 percent from $928 million to $153 million. So add $18 billion in direct costs to North American industry, not to mention the $100 billion of indirect costs through support of the Ukrainian war, a profitable benefit to defense contractors and a liability to taxpayers.

China has won massively. China’s trade with Russia topped $190 billion in 2022, a 35 percent increase from 2021. Russia’s relationship with China is lopsided, to be sure. While Russia represents only three percent of China’s trade, Russia is now wholly dependent on China as its largest trading partner. This itself is fundamentally detrimental and dangerous to U.S. and Western interests.

Energy

In the first round of sanctions in March 2022, the United States banned Russian oil, liquified natural gas (LNG), and coal. The European Union—negotiating amongst 27 members—followed suit in stop-start stages over multiple rounds, with sanctions covering crude, diesel, and other refined oil products, coal, and LNG, but not natural gas. These sanctions have had a direct and consequential impact on European and American energy markets, while Russia has simply found other homes for its products. To be sure, energy is driving global inflation, especially in Europe. Energy touches all sectors, from food to transportation to downstream electricity generation. A few examples follow.

The price of Europe Brent spot crude topped out at nearly $123 per barrel in June 2022, and averaged $101 per barrel for the full-year 2022, before settling back down to $83 per barrel in February 2023. Nonetheless, this latest price represents an over 50 percent increase from the $55 per barrel of January 2021. Similarly, natural gas prices rose tenfold in European markets, from $7.3 to $70 per million metric BTU. There has been much rejoicing as natural gas prices fell back to $16.7 in February 2023. But let us not fool ourselves. This still represents a 129 percent price increase in the two years from January 2021.

Following the announcement in April 2022 of sanctions on Russian coal, the price of thermal coal (used for power generation) surged to over $450 per ton in the third quarter of 2022, a nearly sevenfold increase from January 2021. The EU was forced in September 2022 to ease sanctions on Russian coal in order to keep the lights on. While down from 2022 highs, coal prices remain 150 percent above January 2021 levels.

As a general rule, as goes oil, gas, and coal prices, so goes electricity. In many European countries, the cost of wholesale electricity has increased by 400 percent to 500 percent or more in the two-year period ending December 2022. For example, wholesale electricity prices were up 459 percent in France, 489 percent in Germany, and 687 percent in Sweden. 

The United States was not spared: there has been a doubling or tripling of wholesale prices (depending on region) over the same period. The retail cost of electricity rose by 14.3 percent in the United States in 2022. In populous urban areas it is worse, as the U.S. city average cost of electricity is up by 16.2 percent over the same period. Either measure is well more than double the aggregate CPI figure as a whole. If, like tens of millions of Americans, one happens to live in a large city in the Northeast, the average price increase was 22.8 percent in 2022. 

While the United States and Europe paid substantially higher prices, Russia found new buyers for its products. According to Russian energy minister Nikolai Shulginov on March 28, 2023, Russia “completely redirect[ed] the entire volume of exports that fell due to the embargo—there was no decrease in sales” but rather an increase in exports in 2022.

China and India now account for over 50 percent of Russia’s crude oil export. Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become India’s second largest supplier of oil in 2022. Russia is now the number two supplier of crude to China, having delivered 79.8 million tons through November 2022. Russia supplanted the United States by picking up marginal LNG sales to China. 

U.S. oil companies could and should have been the ones delivering more oil and gas to a Chinese economy now reopening to the world after two years of brutal lockdowns. But instead, U.S. exports of crude to China have fallen by 12 percent since 2020. Just as the stickers of Joe Biden posted on gas pumps read, “I did that!” in response to $5 per gallon gas prices, the same can be said of the Biden Administration’s strengthening of Russia’s ties with China.

The EU has been unable to fulfill its intention to cordon off imports from Russia. While the value of EU imports from Russia fell by half in 2022, including 40 percent less Russian natural gas, by the end of the year imports were growing again. While Europe has lost through rising costs, the United States and its energy sector has been the biggest beneficiary of both sanctions and of the sabotage of Nord Stream. The United States has now replaced Russia as the leading supplier of both gas and oil to Europe.

Nonetheless, in 2022 Russia increased its direct sales of LNG to Europe and China by 37.5 percent and 29 percent, respectively, and then sold the LNG back to Europe at a large markup. European nations will now pay China in yuan rather than U.S. dollars, another example of the “death by a thousand cuts” to U.S. monetary hegemony. 

Food and Agriculture

While Russian food and agricultural products were generally excluded from sanctions, food prices have suffered around the world from knock-on effects related to the cost of energy, transportation, insurance, and other inputs, as well as the inability to access sanctioned banks and payment networks to pay for technically unsanctioned products. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, global food prices were up 51 percent in 2022 compared to the start of 2020 (before lockdowns). While having come down somewhat in 2023, the FAO Food Price Index remains up over 36 percent. 

As a consequence of sanctions, which can include tariffs and quotas in addition to blocking payments and restrictions on transport, fertilizer prices have doubled since January 2021. Fertilizer is a key input to grains, cereals, and many other food commodities. Russia is the world’s leading exporter of fertilizers, representing over 15 percent of global exports in 2021. According to analysis from the IMF, every one percent increase in fertilizer prices translates into an 0.45 percent increase in food commodity prices, implying a 45 percent increase across the food commodity complex. The IMF notes that elevated prices typically persist for four or more quarters after a “fertilizer price shock” such as the one the world experienced in the second quarter of 2022, implying prices may remain elevated through 2023. 

Watching global fertilizer prices spike by 30 percent in just two months, the U.S. government sought in July 2022 to make explicit exemptions for Russian fertilizer from its sanctions program. The EU persisted with sanctions, but the impact was so severe that by December 2022 the EU changed course and exempted maritime transportation of fertilizers (and related financial flows to fertilizer companies or the oligarchs who own them). Nonetheless, the EU now has the privilege of paying substantially more for these products. 

Not wanting to be left out, the Canadian government imposed a 35 percent tariff on imported Russian fertilizer in early 2022. This translated into $34 million of additional costs borne by Canadian farmers that year. These farmers are now petitioning Ottawa to get this money refunded to them from government coffers.

Russia is finding willing buyers for confiscated Ukrainian grain, especially including Syria and other U.S. sanctioned nations, weakening the economic impact of sanctions while strengthening an alliance of the damned. Middle East expert Haid Haid writes, “Instead of reducing illicit activities, sanctions against Syria and Russia have apparently increased their cooperation.” Syria’s government acknowledges that it is paying (and thus Russia is receiving) a 35 percent premium to the non-sanctioned world’s market price, which is a small inconvenience compared to food riots in the streets of Damascus.

Shifting Global Alliances

Speaking of Syria, Saudi Arabia has agreed to reopen its embassy in Damascus after a 10-year hiatus. This follows closely on the heels of China’s brokering of a peace accord between two historically religious and regional adversaries, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, potentially creating a regional powerhouse that leaves the United States out in the cold and endangers Israel in the process. Saudi’s pivot away from the United States towards China is noticeable not only here but in agreeing to accept yuan (goodnight, petrodollar era) as the settlement currency for oil purchases. Saudi Arabia is the leading exporter of crude to China, representing some 87.5 million tons in 2022, and as such understands where the bread is buttered.  

Iran and Saudi Arabia are keen to participate in an expanded BRICS organization, which is increasingly becoming an anti-American alliance of sanctioned, bullied, or neglected nations seeking a new geopolitical order. Countries including Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and others are considering, and in some cases formally applying for, BRICS+ membership. 

Sanctions have accelerated a process that is explicitly designed to undermine U.S. dollar dominance and the power of U.S. financial, monetary, and trade sanctions.

Banking and Payments Networks

The U.S. Treasury boasts of having implemented over 2,500 sanctions, including on “Russian banks representing over 80 percent of total Russian banking sector assets.” Treasury asserts that “sanctions and export controls have caused Russia’s financial sector losses of hundreds of billions of dollars.” What Treasury fails to note is that 1) these losses primarily derive from foreign currency reserves held by Russian banks in a period that saw the ruble appreciate nearly 10 percent against the dollar (and thus caused these reserves to depreciate in accounting terms), 2) profits recovered in the second half of the year and the sector earned a profit in full year 2022, 3) banks were earning an average 29 percent return on capital by January 2023, and 4) Russian banking sector assets grew by 16 percent in 2022. 

The U.S. dollar’s share of global transactions and foreign exchange reserves has been falling for years, but the weaponization of the U.S. dollar has accelerated the process. According to Reuters, trading of the yuan-ruble pair increased 80 fold since the start of Russia’s special military operation, equating to $1.25 billion per day by October. Nearly all this volume has come at the cost of U.S. dollar and euro exchange transactions. 

The increasing ties between Russian and Chinese banking and monetary systems are a product of sanctions. The relationship was formed a full decade ago in the aftermath of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States following Russia’s annexure of the Crimea. Over the course of the decade, the technical aspects and financial systems plumbing required to make the network a practical reality have been nearly fully implemented. Excluding Russia from SWIFT in 2022 only served to hasten the transition.

In conclusion, Russian sanctions are boomeranging on the West. They are fueling inflation, grossly distorting global energy markets, increasing food insecurity worldwide, and harming both Europe’s economy and energy security. Sanctions are accelerating the process of undermining the U.S. dollar dominated global financial system, and encouraging development of new, anti-American alliances with former allied or neutral nations. Sanctions are inadvertently pushing Russia, a nation that has potential to be a U.S. ally or at least a neutral and buffer nation-state, into the hands of our most formidable potential adversary. While an objective analysis would indicate that the Dragon will eventually devour the Bear, for the moment the Bear has no choice but to run into the Dragon’s welcoming arms. This was not an inevitable or necessary outcome.

X22, And we Know, and more- April 3rd

 

Feels like spring has arrived in my area this week. :)

Here's tonight's news:

Banana Time for the Rule of Law

When agents of the deep state hector you about 
“the rule of law,” laugh in their faces.

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

The Czech novelist Milan Kundera published The Joke, his first novel, in 1967. It traces the fortunes of Ludvik, a young student, after his politically correct girlfriend shows the Communist authorities a postcard he had written to her as a joke: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.” As a result of this whimsy, Ludvik finds himself expelled from the Communist Party, the university, and is eventually conscripted to work in the mines. 

That’s the way things are in totalitarian societies. No jokes allowed, especially not jokes told at the expense of the regime. 

Thus it is that North Korea banned sarcasm and irony. 

Poor Ludvik suffered for his joke. But he got off easy compared to Douglass Mackey, a social media “influencer” who wrote under the pen name “Ricky Vaughn.” 

During the 2016 election cycle, Mackey/Vaughn posted a funny meme urging Hillary voters to “avoid the line and vote from home” by texting “Hillary” to a certain number. 

Who would be stupid enough to fall for such a joke? No one. But his satire was effective enough to get him banned from the pre-Elon Musk era Twitter. And the feds thought—or said they thought—that it was part of a “plot to disenfranchise black and women voters.” I guess that shows you what they think of black and women voters. 

It sounds stupid. It is stupid. But Mackey was charged with a felony and on Friday was convicted in the Eastern District of New York. He faces up to 10 years in jail for (as an official announcement crows) “his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”

Yes, that’s right. A Trump supporter posts a silly (but amusing) meme that mocks Hillary voters and he is tried and convicted of a felony. In the course of that official announcement, an assistant  U.S. attorney for the Eastern District called Breon Peace continues with this stomach churning bit of agitprop:

Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election. . . . Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.

In fact, that verdict proved nothing of the sort. It merely confirmed the corruption and politicization of our judicial system. The real moral of this sorry episode is this: Make a joke, go to jail. 

This is Soviet-style intimidation. It has, or had, no place in America. It is the kind of thing that, once upon a time, we would hear about and deplore in distant lands ruled by communist despots. Now we emulate what we once deplored. Increasingly, alas, such totalitarian expedients are business-as-usual in an American regime that is staffed by apparatchiks of both parties who are drunk on power and care not a whit for free speech, individual liberty, or the impartial enforcement of the law. What they care about is the consolidation and perpetuation of their own power, period, full stop. 

Tucker Carlson was right to call the verdict against Mackey “the most shocking attack on freedom of speech in our lifetimes.” There is absolutely no evidence, Carlson pointed out, that anyone’s “sacred right” to vote was impinged by Mackey’s meme. 

But the same cannot be said of the thousands of people who were essentially disenfranchised by the Democratic machine in 2016, 2020, and 2022. The entire “Russia collusion” hoax, for example, was cooked up and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and put into action by a coalition of the willing in the media, the Justice Department, and the intelligence services of the United States. Its initial aim was to suppress the vote of Trump supporters and, when that didn’t work, to drive Trump from office and make him radioactive to voters forever after.

The bogus, almost surreal indictment of Trump by the George Soros-funded D.A. Alvin Bragg is part of that same anti-Trump campaign. Nancy Pelosi let her botoxed mask slip when, gleefully commenting on the former president’s indictment, she tweeted “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.” 

As I noted elsewhere, former speaker of the House Pelosi got it exactly backwards. In America, it used to be the case that the burden of proof fell upon the state. It was not up to an accused to “prove innocence”—often an impossible task. Rather, it was up to the state to prove that an accused was guilty of certain specified crimes. 

It has been amusing, in a macabre sort of way, to see how the phrase “no one is above the law” has flooded the zone from the Left. Tucker Carlson, in the clip linked to above, provides a sampling of its deployment by the ditto-heads. 

What makes that mendacious exercise infuriating as well as amusing, of course, is the fact that many, many people are “above the law,” such names as Hunter Biden, Sam Bankman-Fried, Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, Peter Strzok, and Kevin Clinesmith remind us.  

But don’t try this if you are a supporter of Donald Trump or his populist agenda, or even if you are just not sufficiently hostile to it. Then you can expect dawn raids from the FBI or personal visits from the IRS, as the journalist Matt Taibbi just experienced to his surprise.

The melancholy truth is that the United States has become a banana republic (but without, as some wag put, any bananas). 

In such corrupt regimes, the ruling party intimidates, persecutes, and prosecutes rival parties and anyone who challenges its prerogatives. This is a truth that Nayib Bukele, the robust president of El Salvador, underscored in his response to a chortling piece in the New York Times. 

Embracing the news of Trump’s indictment, the Times speculated joyfully about what was going to happen to the former president during his arraignment: “He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed.” “Imagine,” Bukele tweeted, “if this happened to a leading opposition presidential candidate here in El Salvador.”

But let’s return to the idea that “no one is above the law.” I mentioned several people who clearly are above the law as enforced by the Biden Administration and the permanent government in Washington. But since Douglass Mackey, a Trump supporter, has been convicted of a felony for making a joke, what about Kristina Wong? She did the same thing that Mackey did in the 2016 election, only her meme supported Hillary. “Hey Trump supporters,” she tweeted, “skip poll lines and text in your vote.” 

Where is that wretched U.S. attorney who was just pontificating about “the sacred right to vote,” “subvert[ing] the ballot box,” etc.? Where is sh? Where is the slimy, fake-news media? True, Wong suppressed no more votes than Mackey did. But Mackey faces a decade in the slammer while Wong is serving as an elected official on a neighborhood council in Los Angeles and acting as a “performance artist.” 

When agents of the deep state hector you about “the rule of law,” etc., laugh in their faces. Then remind them of what the next president of the United States said about retribution. 

The Anvil and the Woodchipper

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

In the communication era before the internet, the average person likely had a contact group with aligned political discussion of around four to six friends, outside family.  A communication network of around ten people.  External awakenings, unattached to your contact group, were -as an example- recognized in the letters to the editor of your local press.

In the modern era that contact scale is now represented by the metaphor of you sitting in a football stadium holding 100,000+.

Whether you realize it or not, contact groups are now exponential in scale. External awakenings have become visible everywhere, particularly on social media.

In the largest of motives, this contact scale is why government responded in the modern communication era with a need to control those social media platforms. This facet of their effort is ongoing, simultaneous to the awakening.

Why does this matter?

It is important to put context to the scale of what we discuss.  You are not alone; far from it, you are in the biggest assembly of like-minded people than any member of your heritage could ever fathom.  You can literally talk to millions of people.  This ability is the baseline of govt response.

Every day more people are becoming aware of their false assumptions.  Every day the social compact between citizens and elected officials is now being scrutinized.  Every day more people are starting to realize everything they thought about the construct of government in the United States is now something entirely different.

We send politicians to stop the madness of government, but nothing changes.  Why?

Washington DC is a Potemkin village.  We focus on the visible but the constructs that impact us do not originate from the false facade.  There’s something behind that facade, and what we see is…. entirely… a facade.  That’s why sending the politicians doesn’t change the outcome.  To get to the core of the issue, we must first stop looking at the Potemkin village and instead look behind it.

Legislation, rules, regulations and laws are not written by congress.  The paperwork comes from the assembly of legal and lobbyist foot soldiers on K-Street.  That’s where the ink is put to the paper and the legislative outcomes first originate.  K-Street is where the corporations, multinationals and financial organizations control the process.

If the corporations behind the DC facade want to shift the money, they proactively write the rules, regulations and laws that steer the actual policy outcomes to their financial target or destination.  Their wealth expands and they reward the participants, the politicians.

Most of the entry level politicians are oblivious to where the corporations have proactively moved; however, a few of the politicians -the leadership groups- know exactly where the destination of the legislative intent is going.  The latter are tenured in the power structure behind the facade.

Two private domestic corporations, completely unaffiliated with the constructs of constitutional government, known as the RNC and DNC, require membership in order to participate in the pretense of American democracy.  The same financial entities that fund the K-Street operation, fund the private political clubs.

We The People, voters, are engaging in their construct to send ‘representatives’ into a political construct that is a facade.  The financial entities on K-Street, those who position wealth and generate the rules to maintain it, are the same financial entities that fund the mechanisms of the two private corporations (RNC/DNC).

The United States system of government is now operating to maintain this construct of common benefit.

The institutions within our government are now operating with the primary purpose of maintaining this system.  Maintaining the Potemkin village is their first line of defense, to stop any larger awakening from recognizing the futility of sending ‘representatives‘ into the woodchipper.

All of the institutions we discuss are mission-focused on preserving the system as described.  The intelligence community, the federal police, the federal courts and every institution and subsidiary agency within this construct now operate to preserve the DC system.  A system, where the core of the originating activity does not take place in the Potemkin village of our focus.

The two political parties, two private corporations, funded by the multinationals and financial interests, are intended to keep us focused on the village.  As long as we focus on the false front, the system can operate as designed.  The financial institutions behind the village retain and hold the power, the politicians -many unwittingly- fulfill their role, and the bread and circuses are maintained.   This is the baseline for what comes next.

In 2016 we disrupted the system.  We threw an anvil into the woodchipper when we nominated then elected, Donald J Trump.

Trump didn’t come with the private club approvals.  The private RNC corporation, meaning the people within it who control the operations of it, was not okay with the non-approved member getting the 2016 nomination.   The multinationals and financial donor institutions who control the RNC corporation were furious.

The DC corporations who are at the epicenter of the power structure in Washington DC, did not and do not approve.

The woodchipper could not handle the anvil we threw in it.

Immediately, all of the mechanisms of the system, a system entirely designed to defend and protect itself, were laser focused on removing that anvil.

Part of that removal operation is what Stephen Miller is describing in this interview.  WATCH:

Russell Brand Debriefs Matt Taibbi With Some Solid New Intel About Internet and Social Media Control Operations

U.K. cultural and political pundit Russell Brand sits down for an interview with U.S. Twitter File journalist Matt Taibbi, to discuss Taibbi’s experience with his recent congressional testimony, the advancement of the ‘Restrict Act’, and new revelations still coming from his exploration into the Twitter communication files. {Direct Rumble Link Here]

After some general overview and sense about the issues in/around congress, at 06:45 of the interview Taibbi begins to highlight new information he is discovering about how the Aspen Institute group was organizing, discussing and planning a larger objective about controlling any/all information on the internet.

Mr. Taibbi notes how the network of aligned NGO’s, government agencies and policy advisors from within the Aspen Institute were communicating with Big Tech about the best plans for both European and U.S. government regulation on speech and information on the internet.   As Matt notes, the senate ‘Restrict Act’ and the EU ‘Digital Services Act’ carry commonalities of purpose.  Additionally, as they government overseers trigger Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do the search work within content, the mechanisms within the machines will all deploy similar ideological algorithms. WATCH:

WaPo Offers Nine 'Helpful' Tips on How to Tell Friends and Family Their Conspiracy Theories Are Nonsense

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

In this episode of What Could Possibly Go Wrong?…

Look, we’ve all seen it. And some of us have displayed it, as well — although we never see it in ourselves. Wild-ass conspiracy theories with no basis in reality that our friends and loved ones fervently believe with every bone in their body, and zero amount of information to the contrary will ever change their (our) minds.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, conspiracy theories have ranged from the belief by some in the term “Deep State” — way too “shadowy” and Tom Clancy-ish, as it were (which we later discovered was as real as could be) — to the JFK assassination to the “fake” moon landing, “flat” earth nonsense — and beyond.

And I didn’t even mention any of the current political conspiracy theories.

Anyway, as reported by The Washington Post, even when a source of information is known to be unreliable, research shows, many people will start to believe a claim if it’s repeated often enough — a phenomenon we’ve seen throughout history — often with disastrous consequences.

WaPo opined:

It’s important to debunk misinformation when we can — a task that often, unfortunately, starts at home. Correcting friends and family members about what they share online can be stressful, but it counts.

Experts say we’re more likely to change our point of view if we’re approached by someone we care about, especially if the person is someone with whom we tend to agree.

OK, two things before we continue.

First, I’d rule out the proverbial “Thanksgiving table political debate.” Second, you’d have a better chance teaching a pigeon to speak French than changing anyone’s mind on these four issues: abortion, religion, strongly-held political beliefs, and the legalization of marijuana.

According to WaPo, researchers who studied the circulation of false information on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms found that “corrections” received from a family member or a close friend are reshared more often than those sent by a casual acquaintance. Fair enough — so far.

WaPo contacted six experts to study how misinformation and conspiracy theories spread, and how people tend to discern fact from fiction. The key is to be empathetic, they said.

“Listen and try to understand someone’s concerns. Share the sources you use to gather reliable news and information. And if you really want to change someone’s point of view, get ready for multiple conversations, not just one chat.”

The above approach suggests that the conspiracists don’t immediately launch emotionally-driven broadside attacks, I assume, which is far more common than seeking to understand why they “might” be wrong. Here are several of the tips:

Start With Friendship, Not Facts

Mike Wagner, a professor and political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, said it’s important to remember that “the facts don’t matter” for many people who share misinformation. They often don’t trust mainstream news sources or political institutions.

Find the shared experiences that bring you together and demonstrate you’re not on the attack or calling them stupid. “Aim for the heart, not the head,” he said. “If facts worked, there would be no need to have the conversation.”

Wagner said you can disarm someone by engaging in “costly talk,” which is when people share concessions that are “bad for their side.” From there, Wagner suggests trying to discover the person’s trusted sources. If they won’t listen to mainstream media outlets or public officials, for example, who will they listen to, and are those sources sharing accurate information?

U-huh. Been there; done that. Before I stopped trying to teach pigeons to speak French, that is.

Don’t Become Emotional

Leticia Bode, a professor at Georgetown University who studies interventions against misinformation, said her advice is always to be kind and empathetic. “We’ve all been misinformed at some point,” Bode said. “It’s best to approach the conversation with the best intentions.

“Take a deep breath and try to let go of whatever emotions you’re feeling related to the misinformation,” Bode said. “A lot of misinformation, and especially disinformation, is created to arouse emotions.”

Again, speaking from experience, part of why I finally decided to stop trying to have a conversation with a pigeon who had zero desire to learn to speak French was because it was the pigeon who always got emotional — not yours truly.

Of the nine tips offered by WaPo, this one struck me as the most important:

Be Willing to Walk Away

If voices start to rise, if your blood starts to boil, “you need to pull back,” Silva said. It’s nearly impossible to recover the conversation once it evolves into a confrontation.

“You’re not necessarily going to fix this in one conversation,” Silva said. “You might need to just pull back and say ‘Maybe we can talk about this later.’ ”

In Wisconsin, 1 in 5 people say they have ended relationships with friends or family members because of politics and the recent statewide and national elections, Wagner said.

Conversations about politics, especially with those to whom you’re close, can become personal fast. Sometimes, you may decide the “emotional labor” of these conversations is no longer worth it, Wagner said.

“Not everybody is persuadable,” he said. “It’s okay if you’ve tried your best and they just can’t see it.”

And there it was. Silva’s last sentence: “Not everybody is persuadable. It’s okay if you’ve tried your best and they just can’t see it.”

As best I recall, not one of those aforementioned pigeons ever learned to speak French — must less did they give a damn about even trying.

The Bottom Line

Pigeon “humor” aside, politics, including politically predisposed beliefs — no matter how strongly held — isn’t life. If it’s yours, get a new life.

Life is short; it should be cherished, particularly with friends and loved ones, and we only get one shot at it. Are political beliefs, including conspiracy theories, worth destroying valuable relationships?

When push comes to shove, the old axiom rings true: It’s okay to agree to disagree. Is it sometimes damn hard? Hell yeah, it is. But it’s often far better than the alternative.