We know that there is a tug of war going on between Left and Right (not a true analogy but will work for the limited mentality of Trump followers)…..on one side Russia is an evil entity sitting there feasting on the US cyber world and then on the other hand Russia is just a fake topic meant to bring down the Dear Leader from his Ivory Tower (the White House).
But let’s look at the Russian thing…..
The United States is – still – the world’s most powerful and most wealthy country. It cannot and will not be brought to its knees by a band of alleged mercenary Russian hackers, oligarchs and intelligence operatives, though they likely had some kind of distorting effect.
No, the assault on American democracy and its global standing originated not in Moscow but in Washington, and across the length and breadth of the United States. Like the Soviet Empire before it, America is crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions, its imperial hubris, and its squandering of vast amounts of resources to enrich the very few at the expense of the very, very, very, very many – both abroad and at home.
Russia did not create Donald Trump, the brash, abrasive and corrupt opportunist and grifter. Russia did not transform this self-centered and self-serving business tyrant into a counter-factual television and (social) media sensation, admired by millions, who has been marketing hollow image without any substance and peddling falsehoods for decades.
Russia did not put a gun to the heads of white, conservative voters and force them to elect an alleged billionaire with zero political experience and zero interest in the plight of other people as someone who would “drain the swamp” as the representative of ordinary folk.
Even suggesting that Russia was responsible for the brainwashing of the Republican electorate would be to give it way too much credit, and too little credit to homegrown propagandists, polemicists and twisters of truth. Of course, Moscow is an old hand at fake news and propaganda. But Sputnik and RT have limited reach in America and can simply not compete with the likes of Fox News and Sinclair for the hearts and minds of Middle America.
It all comes down to the US and its self-inflicted political wounds over the decades.
This Russian thing is a bit much……not to take anything away from the on-going investigations but could we move on from this…….yes there is other stuff happening around the world that could be used to fill the time on air….just a thought.
But let’s take a look…shall we?
Cold War Two is thriving, having been initiated and fostered by West and especially by the Pentagon and much of Congress, whose members benefit enormously from cash donations by weapons’ manufacturers whose generosity so far this election cycle has totaled $19,332,442 in traceable hand-outs. The Pentagon is reported as having calculated that “overseas weapons sales by US firms rose $8.3 billion from 2016 to 2017, with American arms makers moving a total of $41.9 billion in advanced weaponry to foreign militaries last year.” There is profit in supporting confrontation.
Development of the new Cold War was described succinctly in February 2018 by Stephen F Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at NYU and Princeton, in that “[President] Clinton pursued winner-take-all policies consistent with viewing Russia as a defeated power, presiding over a massive intrusive crusade to shape that former rival into ‘the Russia we want’; beginning the expansion of NATO, now on Russia’s borders; and bombing Moscow’s traditional Slav ally Serbia in 1999, despite Yeltsin’s protests. Indeed, the extreme vilification of Putin by former members of the Clinton administration, including Hillary Clinton, who equated him with Hitler, are not unrelated to their unwise Russia policies of the 1990s — loudly applauded, it should be added, by media journalists now also in the forefront of demonizing the current Kremlin leader.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/keeping-russia-as-an-enemy/
