If it were 1956, this plot line would sell for a million bucks and win you dinner with Hollywood big shots.
Americans watch in horror as a presidential candidate, employed by the Russians as a kind of electoral Trojan Horse, seeks to dismantle the divine way of American life.
Absurdity aside, this has been the narrative blasting through the airwaves at the command of the Hillary Clinton campaign. In a new anti-Donald Trump video released by the Clinton campaign on Aug. 12, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough suggests Trump’s business is “built on Russian loans,” and this is why Trump refuses to release his tax returns.
Though Trump is likely refusing to make his taxes public because his welathy persona is less than it appears to be, there is no evidence that points to Trump being bankrolled by the Russian government.
Since the Democratic National Committee leaks, the media has cleverly twisted public opinion to create an actual fear that Russia is subverting this election. This is “The Russians are coming” paranoia at its zenith, but it’s working for Clinton.
The bloody Syrian proxy war between Russia and CIA-supplied rebels seems to validate anxieties about a reemerging Cold War. However, when people speak of Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, I assume they aren’t considering the countless acts of aggression committed by the United States or are disregarding the historical and cultural ties eastern Ukraine has with Russia.
I also assume they don’t consider what would have happened if Putin hadn’t annexed Crimea.
Ukraine would have joined NATO, which would place troops on the Ukraine-Russia border, the back porch of the old Soviet Union.
I, unlike Trump, don’t intend to be an apologist for a Russian authoritarian, but we must acknowledge the full context of Putin’s decision making in regard to the eastward march of NATO.
Funny enough, Joseph Stalin saw this coming. In 1952, the Soviet government sent a note to the West offering German reunification on the condition that “All armed forces of the occupying powers must be withdrawn from Germany ... all foreign bases on the territory of Germany must be liquidated.”
Stalin saw the threat posed to Moscow by a European military alliance and was willing to allow German reunification to stop it.
This is what the stage has been set for: Clinton takes office in January poised to go toe-to-toe with the Russians, and the public — having narrowly dodged Trump — is more than willing to give Clinton a mandate to wipe the Russians off the map once and for all.
luwrobin@indiana.edu
