08-01-2018, 08:59 AM
(07-31-2018, 09:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-04-2017, 05:00 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(01-03-2017, 03:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If Russia does this in 2016... think of what China can do in 2020. Heck, even India. Don't fool yourself about India. The world's most powerful democracy might prefer having another democratic superpower in the world, one that used to be reliable and would be again if it enjoyed "a new birth of freedom".
A hint: watch for the formation of a Delhi-Jakarta-Tokyo Axis in the event that the USA loses its democracy.
As a Democrat, I do not want that sort of help in ridding us of Donald Trump and a GOP majority in 2020. We need free and fair elections even if we lose them. The essence of democracy is the willingness to lose elections.
I have yet to figure what Vladimir Putin has to gain from Donald Trump unless it is to have a 'useful idiot' as President of the United States. Acquiescence in Russian aggression first in the former Soviet Union, and then elsewhere? Lax treatment of the Russian Mafia? Splintering of NATO?
...Reagan foreign policy and Sanders economics? I'd go for that. Wouldn't you?
I sure wouldn't go that far; we don't need "evil empires," useless military buildups and phony weapons sales to our enemies to benefit terrorists. But I get your point. Putin has already played the USA for a fool in Syria under Obama; imagine what he would do with Trump. NATO is already splintering because Putin is splitting off Turkey from it. I don't know where we'll end up by 2020. Not in a good place, it seems. For certain, a major war will break out in Asia in Dec or Jan 2020-21.
I wish the tyrants good luck in trying to resolve the Syria mess. The Obama USA and its allies have failed.
For sure, Russia hacked the US election. For our part, we Americans fell for all the fake news generated from the hacking, along with the FBI interference. Ultimately, the people vote, and the people are responsible for whom they vote for.
Putin could play us for fools under Obama because Obama was no match for Putin. How much would we have to fuck around with Russia/Putin before Putin and RUSSIAN elites start having concerns for their own well beings? You're right, blue America and it's blue European allies have failed and it won't be long and you'll start seeing shit like that happening within blue America and blue Europe.
Putin could not play any fast ones with Obama. Obama did nothing to Russia, and Putin couldn't do anything to America -- which might have been the best of all possible worlds.
Trump is a foolish egoist, and Putin can play his foolishness and egoism in ways hurtful to America. Putin may have assumed certain norms of American foreign policy due to its inertia; Obama's foreign policy is little different from that of the elder Bush despite ideological differences. Trump has the absurd idea that diplomacy is like business dealings in which one sells schlock TV shows, steaks, gambling junkets, or overpriced apartments. The quid pro quo might be effective in selling policies to corrupt dictators, but it does not work with democracies in which the rule of law prevails. Think of how badly Joachim von Ribbentrop served as Ambassador to the United Kingdom; his style of person-to-person dealings in which he offered powerful people what he thought they wanted in return for concessions on German interests. This was more effective when he was Foreign Minister of the Devil's Reich, when Nazi Germany was offering things to dictatorial regimes whose leaders were interested as the Fuehrer was in dealings over things that others were to be robbed of.
...I have no love for corrupt kleptocrats. I prefer the sorts of leaders who don't put polonium-210 in the tea of escaped dissidents, who don't assassinate journalists, and who don't rob the national treasury to enrich themselves. I also prefer leaders who don't make scapegoats as excuses for personal failure, who don't stir up religious and ethnic bigotry, who don't assume the guilt of the accused, who don't lie about their electoral achievements, and who do not bait the media.
The rest of the world recognizes Donald Trump as an aberration likely to be defeated resoundingly in 2020 even if his political power isn't fully undone in November of this year. They see America in the long story; we get to endure Donald Trump in the here-and-now. I hope that we have learned our lesson.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.