Elections have consequences. Give a new president a chance and wish him well. These platitudes have power in a normal election. Progressives can hardly expect to love a Republican agenda. If my qualms with Trump were merely on policy grounds, I would hope for the best, and work politically, to fend off the worst.
Unfortunately, Trump is not a normal president. Democracy in its purest form is a clash of ideas. But the battlefield must be composed of a common set of facts. Alternative facts and the conspiracy theories they foster, tear the fabric that unites America. A plurality of Trump supporters believe that George Soros paid women to march on the 21st of January. The president believes massive voter fraud deprived him of winning a majority of the popular vote. You cannot argue with crazy. Democracy suffers when discourse dies.
Equally troubling is the Russia connection. First lets examine the facts. Trump has had a campaign manager and foreign policy advisor with close ties to Putin and Russia, His soon to be Secretary of State received the highest award that can be given to a non-Russian, directly from Putin. Russia used information from cyberattacks to help Trump and to discredit Hillary.
Trump has taken pro-Russia and pro-Putin positions for no obvious reason. He changed the plank in the platform supporting the Ukrainian efforts to fend off Russian attacks. He has floated plans to remove sanctions on Russia and called NATO obsolete. The pro-Putin stance is almost as unpopular with his supporters as it is with his detractors. He gains nothing politically. Trump has fired the senior State Department Officials best positioned to oppose a pro-Putin policy. The fired four served under multiple presidents. They were fired on no notice, without replacements ready. One of the four was on a plane to Rome to attend a non-proliferation conference, and was ordered to turn the plane around and clean out his desk.
Whether it is emotional, financial, or even darker, Putin has an untoward influence over our President. Absent tax returns, we cannot know if his enterprises our in debt to Russian oligarchs. Then there is the dossier that alleges that Putin is able to blackmail Trump. The dossier is not alternate news. The source is a former British MI6 agent who has been a reliable source. The claims in the dossier may not be immediately verifiable. They may be false. But the terrible truth is they could be real, and would explain both Russian support of Trump's candidacy and Trump's strangely pro-Russian positions.
You think Putin is a little worried that maybe he went a little too far? Not in hacking the elections. That's all good. I mean in the quality of the candidate himself. I mean, sure, Putin wanted him to be an idiot, but a useful one. Trump's level of idiocy is of huge proportions, and he just makes it way too obvious what happened here, thereby blowing Putin's cover. Putin might have to push the auto-destruct on his remote-control robot.
ReplyDeleteSowing discord about our elections is already a win. Getting rid of the most experienced State Department Officials is a win. Getting a Putin leaning
DeleteSecretary of State is a win. Now if he gets sanction relief and a frayed American relationship with NATO it will be one of the greatest intelligence victories in history.