Sick thought: what if John Birch was right?

[duhneece]

I had a thought that almost made me gag when I realized what I was asking of myself inside my head, "What if John Birch was right and the communist RUSSIANS who said quite clearly that they would use any means to gain world sovereignty, changed their name and suckered the Republicans and Trump into giving them our world?"
None Dare Call it Treason.
They changed their name like Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC, so the Communists (who were branded badly by nations using the concept to install vicious dictators)..and voila, the Russians own our POTUS.

[TBA]

1. My Parents Were John Birchers

I remember my mom would not let us watch "Bewitched" because she thought it was part of a communist plot to normalized the abnormal.

I don't think "Bewitched" was a problem but we do seem to think the chasm between the right and the left is normal.

Oh and racism... she believed communists plotted to create racial division. To her the pawns were MLK and others in the civil rights movement. Maybe she was right except the pawns were really the white supremacists.

I actually read that book "None Dare Call it Treason" as a teenager. Don't remember much of it though.

I'm no expert by any means but I don't see a whole lot of difference between Russia and the Communist Soviet Union. They both seem totalitarian to me and I don't think anyone would dispute Putin worldly ambitions.

[world wide wally]

2. Whatever you might call them... someone has taken over America aand it ain't us

[duhneece]

3. Exactly

It's not the people of our nation, from sea to sea...from northern border to southern....just as the 1% took over Russian Communism and Russian Putin-ism with none of the 99% of Russians wanting the power to go to dictators who do nothing but hurt the people. Racism is always part of the story, however told.

[PufPuf23]

4. I have a copy of "None Dare Call it Conspiracy" given to me by

Mr. Killian in 1964 when I was 12. He had recently bought the Chestnut place.

I lived in a less than 1000 population small town and Mr. Killian decorated his white station wagon with Goldwater and Bircher paraphernalia and added a speaker to the top.

He drove slowly through town most days.

My parents thought while otherwise nice, that Killian was a crack pot.

My Dad was a union man who loved FDR and my Mom a Republican that voted Democratic in the post Eisenhower elections.

By 1968 JFK had been murdered, I was strongly anti-Vietnam War, and my Dad favored Nixon.

My Mom died in 1983 and Dad in 1996; but Dad after Nixon had gone full tilt Reagan-Bush-Limbaugh-Fox and we never came close to agreeing on politics after 1968. He hated the Clintons with a passion.

Unfortunately, I think many at DU are taking the Trump-Russia thing one or two levels deeper than reality. Trump is a crook and intertwined with Russian money and influence but the Russian government has not taken over the USA.

[duhneece]

8. I think our 1% and Russia's 1% want to 'milk' the US

...of public lands and our entire infrastructure to squeeze profit from the folks who work, are old but worked one way or another, ...

[PufPuf23]

11. One of my biggest concerns is the privatization of

federal lands.

My impression is that the goals of the Russian oligarchs and the 1% financial elite of the USA have more in common with each other than the common people of either country.

They share the same goal you state to remove lands and infrastructure from public good to their private profit.

[hamsterjill]

5. I don't think Russia has ever changed its spots.

I grew up in an era where Russians were not to be trusted and in my mind that has never changed. They have always been the greatest threat and adversary to our democracy whether directly or, in many cases, indirectly.

Russia has succeeded further this time around, and they are enjoying that success. It will be a test of our democracy (i.e., do any of the freaking Republicans believe in country over party) as to what happens next, and I am not holding out great hopes. I'd love to be wrong and go back to feeling reasonably safe again.

I still question election night. I'm sorry. I can't get it out of my thinking. Everyone that I know - even the Trump supporters in my red state of Texas - thought that Hillary had it in the bag. Simply amazing, isn't it? So I will discount nothing as being impossible.

[Wounded Bear]

9. There are threads that run through Russian history...

that still ring true in many ways, especially concerning their relations with Western Europe, and by extension the US.

They have always been a bit jealous of the West, and have always wanted to be thought of as a "great power." Certainly, there is fear embedded in there, too. They still remember the German invasions of WWI and II, and fought the reunification of Germany until the bitter end. In their minds, NATO and the EU are the new manifestation of Western threat to their power.

Layer all that over with the current basically criminal gangster mentality and this is what you get.

[duhneece]

12. Great summary of some important history...

I will copy and paste where I think appropriate...unless you tell me not to!

[L. Coyote]

6. What if there really is an Easter Bunny? Odds are far better.

John Birch Society is a delusional, paranoid, racist, far-right collection of wingnuts, currently epitomized by Glenn Beck.

Mitt Romney's Nutty Professor | Mother Jones
www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/mitt-romney-cleon-skousen-nutty-professor

You might want to update your geopolitics with a Big Oil perspective on what drives international political actions.

[duhneece]

10. 100% agreement. Your JB definition describes my Republican neighbors

I should have read all of these first, because I came close to mentioning it in talking public lands and national infrastructure....moving oil and coal and natural gas or some combo is among the big money makers...contract services for the military (update of words, "military industrial complex, just as KFC was the rebrand of Kentucky Fried Chicken)...prison industrial complex....pharmaceutical industry.
But oil is the biggest of them all and the others can't deliver their services without oil.

[Yavin4]

7. My crackpot theory is that Gorbachev was a CIA operative/plant

and Trump is the payback.