Some of the significant historical events that set the stage for Trump's election

[GliderGuider]

In deconstructing "L'affaire Putin/Trump", it's clear that the USA was to a great degree the victim of its own history of policies and practices. It seems obvious that unless the USA was already near a political tipping point, Putin's meddling could not have tipped the scales so dramatically.

It's worth looking back and identifying the historical events that led to this softening of the USA towards illiberal values. It's also worth looking back at the events in Russia that led to Putin exploiting those weaknesses.

This list has the events I see as significant. Depending on what you know and/or believe you may have a different view. If you think there were events I missed that were an important part of the setup, please feel free to add them in the comments.

Significant events since WWII that paved the way for the election of Donald Trump:

Significant events in the USA:

1950 - HUAC hearings under Joe McCarthy
1956 - COINTELPRO founded under J. Edgar Hoover
1963 - JFK Assassination

Those three events above marked the development of the power of American intelligence and surveillance communities. I'm undecided as to whether the Nixon/Kissinger presidency belongs in that set. It might.

1971 - Powell Memo laid out the blueprint for corporate control of commercial and academic information flow.This is the most overlooked event of that period, and perhaps one of the most significant.
1981-93 - Reagan/Bush presidency - overt and covert approval of illegal right-wing political and military action, e.g. Iran-Contra.
1987 - Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters opened the way for right-wing talk radio.
9/11/2001 - consolidated the right-wing surveillance state, started the militarization of police forces, used to justify foreign interventions that brought the USA into direct conflict with Russia.

Note: One other thing worth mentioning, but it's not an event, is the rise of the Religious Right and the "philosophy" of Dominionism.

Significant events in Russia:

1989-91 - Collapse of USSR left an ideological vacuum in Russia, enabling the rise of the oligarchs
1997 - Publication of Aleksandr Dugin's book "Foundations of Geopolitics" triggered the resurgence of neo-fascism in the top levels of the Russian political and military structures. Putin appears to be a Dugin idealogue.
2000+ - Putin's leadership of Russia used Dugin's geopolitical ideology to reignite the Russian appetite for a Cold War with the West. Dugin's book seems to have prompted Putin to look for ways to destabilize the American political system. To do that he took advantage of the combination of the climate that had already been created within the US, and the opportunity presented by Trump's candidacy.

I am convinced that the final (but not the only) reason Trump is in power today is because Putin used him as a pawn or "useful idiot" in a his geopolitical power game with the USA. Putin won this round decisively. It remains to be seen how long the US will take to recover, and what other hegemonic moves will come out of Russia while the USA is preoccupied with their child president.

[Locrian]

1. and this little fun thing

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3614_summers_hated.html

Larry Summers, who today heads President Obama's National Economic Council. Glazyev wrote about the August 1998 collapse of the Russian short-term government bond (GKO) pyramid: "Evidence indicates that the decisions on declaring the Russian financial and banking system bankrupt on August 17 were coordinated beforehand with U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer.... The coordination was carried out on behalf of the Russian leadership by Mr. Anatoli Chubais, who is known not only for his destructive activity in the realm of privatization, but also as a successful player on the government securities market."


https://www.thenation.com/article/harvard-boys-do-russia/


http://www.sras.org/shock_therepy_russia_fail

In the wake of the 1990's, the future of nascent post-Soviet Russia was in the hands of four groups of reformers, who were entrusted with applying a medicine known as "shock therapy" to a collapsing patient. These "doctors" were independent foreign advisers, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the US government, and, most importantly, President Yeltsin's administration (Aslund 2007a, 2007b). Only the fourth was an internal group; the other three were external to the country. All four groups were, for the most part, committed to shock therapy. While no one was more invested in the cause than Yeltsin's administration, the West, with its accumulated capital and experience, could have played a decisive role – but it did not. This essay examines the role of each "doctor" in detail and argues that help from the West was minimal, while Yeltsin's administration was too politically polarized and weak to successfully implement the policies of shock therapy. As a result, shock therapy failed to achieve its fundamental goals in Russia