Washington’s endless navel-gazing obscures the security benefits to be derived from Trump’s impeachment, in particular the potential avoidance of nuclear war. Let’s unpack that seemingly bizarre statement:
Traditionally, when a country is weakened from within, enemies seize the moment to attack. And yet, America’s alleged enemy, Russia, has not taken advantage of the three-year long crisis that began when the worst president in US history was elected.
It’s difficult to imagine how the beltway would present the 2016 election of Donald J Trump if Russia didn’t exist: it would have to recognize the fact that it was thanks to the Electoral College, created by the Constitution in order to mitigate the weight of the popular franchise, that Trump attained the White House, diminishing the clout of messages supposedly posted by Russian ‘bots’ to ensure his victory. Never mentioned is the obvious link between the gradual progress of NATO troops and tanks across Europe, coming to ‘rest’ on Russia’s western border.
But there is a new factor at work here: while accusing Russia of every imaginable sin, the Democratic Party is trying to tamp down the growing interest in socialism among American youth which, if recognized, would ensure it a win. A hundred years after the Russian Revolution, with most countries around the world— including those deemed underdeveloped practicing similar versions of democratic socialism— the US still claims that its ‘liberalism’ is a better response to the Enlightenment’s call for equality.
And yet, the president’s behavior has bolstered the power of the FBI and the CIA, replacing the ‘checks and balances’ of a tripartite distribution of power with a Janus administration, in which both investigative arms turn their weapons against the administrative and legislative branches of government.
Meanwhile, the ‘former KGB officer’ can sit back and watch the US melt down, while growing his own ‘base’: dozens of leaders across the world, not to mention thousands of businessmen and academics, pay hard cash to attend the talkfests he organizes several times a year to discuss specific issues. These events are never mentioned by the US media, much less their contents reported on.
Since 2016, Washington has substituted the term ‘democracy’ for the classical term ‘political system’. That’s because the claim that ‘Russia intervened in our ‘democracy’, is much more powerful, rapidly becoming the most used word in the lexicon, while its ‘spread’ involves practices ranging from open military action to the promotion of color revolutions.
The US is a nation where, in service to eternal hegemony, it is ‘propaganda’, not ‘democracy’ that rules, thus newscasters and analysts are prohibited from reporting President Trump’s sotto voce admission that our practices are much more damaging than that of Russia. Moreover, as long as the impeachment of Donald Trump claims the bulk of air time, Americans will fail to realize that their so-called ‘enemy’ is being remarkably indulgent.
Deena Stryker is a US-born international expert, author and journalist that lived in Eastern and Western Europe and has been writing about the big picture for 50 years. Over the years she penned a number of books, including Russia’s Americans. Her essays can also be found at Otherjones. Especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.