General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnd Again, Putin is Enjoying Himself
To Pootie-Poot, it doesn't actually matter if his stoogepoodle is getting kicked up one side and down the other by the Mueller report.
What matters to Pootie-Poot is what has always mattered to Pootie-Poot: Perdition, Distraction, Disinformation, and Division.
His goal has never really been to have any one particular stooge take power in America, or in Britain, or in the EU, or in any of the nations he regards as enemies.
He doesn't actually want any of them to collapse entirely OR to degenerate into an autocratic dictatorship. Russia isn't in a position to take advantage of any such outcomes.
He just wants to keep all of the nations he regards as enemies (and has regarded as enemies since back when he was liaising with the Stasi in East Germany and scheming his way up the ladder at the KGB) as weak, chaotic, and divided as possible.
His endgame isn't to eliminate democracy but to degrade democracy into a sham and a shadow. To discredit it slowly and manipulate it into poisoning itself from within.
His weapons aren't elaborate conspiracies and carefully-planned domino chains of specific subversions and events, but pervasive and subtle manipulation and propaganda. Social media was the ultimate gift for him to help his enemies damage themselves.
I don't believe there will EVER be a big "aha!" reveal of elaborate Russian operations and witting American stooges to subvert our government.
He is not that clumsy. He doesn't NEED to run hands-on operations that can be traced back as direct attacks.
He just needs to spread a lot of money around in iffy ways, through layers and layers of knowing and unknowing intermediaries, and keep running his social media provocation campaigns of the dumbest, greediest, meanest, most destructive human elements in each target nation, and let the results play out for themselves.
Ongoing pot-stirring from behind the veil of social media and fellow-travelling "news" and other media stooges is all that is required to keep the vicious cycle going.
And as long as we're fixated on "finding" or "exposing" a culprit or culprits to pin the blame on, in the hopeful but misguided belief that there are a few high-level, high-profile villains that can be caught and prosecuted and taken down and that will bring the trouble to an end, he keeps winning. Because while there are hundreds, even thousands, of his stooges at all levels of the GOP, they're not part of some intentional "conspiracy", they're just the dumbest, greediest, meanest elements acting on their natural impulses, enabled by a clever but formless propaganda operation and supported by the vast numbers of stooges and dupes of that same operation in the American electorate.
Until we focus, not on targeting and enacting retribution on some powerful and knowing villains within our own ranks, but on the overall strategy being applied, we'll keep falling into the same trap, and keep tearing ourselves apart.
The foofooraw about the Mueller Report is perfect for him. It's all about who did what to whom among America's Griftiest, not about how Putin played us, and is still playing us, on a grand scale, and how to stop that.
wearily,
Bright
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)And it's almost like we really don't deserve any different.
anarch
(6,535 posts)NATO is effectively weakened to the point of uselessness; he's able to deploy troops in Venezuela without even any real comment from the U.S....the war is over, and we lost.
The especially hilarious part of it all is that his strategy here was basically "let's help the right-wingers get what they want," recognizing that this would be disastrous for the U.S. and U.K.
If aliens landed somewhere in America tomorrow and demanded "take us to your leader," what should we say? "Hold on, we'll try to locate Mr. Mogilevic and see if we can arrange a meeting; he doesn't like to be disturbed without good reason--what's in it for him?"