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How Russia Mercilessly Played Trump for a Fool
From Vanity Fair late yesterday, subhead "He and his coterie of idiots, nihilists, and opportunists were the perfect prey for Putin’s spell":
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/how-russia-played-trump-for-a-fool
The caricature of the artless American, like that of the ambassador, has its basis in truth. The first three American presidents of the post-Cold War era were propelled by a sometimes unsophisticated vision of how the world ought to be; they made deals or assumptions they shouldn’t have, but they also tinkered and toiled behind the scenes. They trusted, and they verified. On balance, they were not as adept at handling the Russians as their predecessors were with the Soviets, but they were not a disaster. Now, with the election of Donald Trump, the tone has shifted, and the basic assumptions—about the competence of our elected officials and the things they might say to their counterparts in Moscow—feel misplaced. Who invites Russian officials into the Oval Office and accidentally discloses top-secret Israeli intelligence? Who engages in a tête-à-tête with the Russian president without his own interpreter, without someone to make sure America is not getting played? Suddenly, the caricature feels less like a perversion or elongation of the truth than a terrifying new reality.
-snip-
All this seems to have been lost on Trump, his retinue of loyalists and hangers-on, and the odd assortment of tertiary characters, like Russian recruitment target Carter Page, who peopled Trump’s campaign. These are not the best Americans. They are nihilists à la Steve Bannon, “idiots” like Page, neophytes like Trump Jr., or opportunists like Manafort. They have acquired, over many months of politicking and quasi-governing, the language of the patriot without understanding what they are saying. Not only that. Their pretend patriotism, their ignorance of American history, its poetries and injustices, its constant existential confrontation with itself, leaves them especially susceptible to the allure of the authoritarian. There is a logic and clarity to the authoritarian, with his shiny toys and Potemkin bullet trains and airport terminals. The authoritarian knows how to put on a good show, and these people love to be dazzled. They are vulnerable to Putin because they admire him while not understanding where he comes from nor who he is. They have no idea whom they are doing combat with. They do not even know that they are engaged in battle, and that the battle is already won.
The ironies are legion. The American, we are often told, is like a child incapable of memory formation, constantly learning and relearning the lessons everyone else has known for centuries. There is something indisputable about this. We have a tendency to believe that it is incumbent upon us to meddle in elections, to prop up opposition movements, to lecture, to scold, to pontificate. But the outsider forgets or does not know that these tendencies, however irksome or maddening, are symptomatic of a belief that we can make the world better. Many awful decisions, most of them having to do with war, have sprung from this belief, but that doesn’t mean we ought to abandon it. Those who are quick to bemoan American hegemony never seem to mention what might replace it: a Pax Sinica? A world devoid of any super- or hyperpowers? Then what? The wars of late will look like playground skirmishes when the Pax Americana ends.
Donald Trump, the first American president ever to abandon our idealism completely, to declare that the United States is now all about cutting deals and not getting screwed by the Iranians nor Democrats, has not made us safer or stronger. That is because our ideals are not fantasies about how we’d like the world to be, but powerful buffers against hostile forces, agents, interlopers. They define us. So long as we know who we are, we also know who we are not. One imagines the 8 (or 10, or 200) people crammed into the conference room in Trump Tower last year, ostensibly talking about adoptions, believed that they were doing what had to be done to beat the Clinton machine, or to drain the swamp; that they were being tough, and breaking someone else’s rules because “that’s politics!”—ignorant, as always, of the depths of their ignorance. They were, of course, wittingly or otherwise, providing the Russians with a beachhead. This is not an exaggeration. The Russians will call it an exaggeration, and they will make many Americans believe that their fellow Americans are overreacting or acting in bad faith, but we should not be swayed by this, because it is disinformation. They are better at this than we are.
-snip-
All this seems to have been lost on Trump, his retinue of loyalists and hangers-on, and the odd assortment of tertiary characters, like Russian recruitment target Carter Page, who peopled Trump’s campaign. These are not the best Americans. They are nihilists à la Steve Bannon, “idiots” like Page, neophytes like Trump Jr., or opportunists like Manafort. They have acquired, over many months of politicking and quasi-governing, the language of the patriot without understanding what they are saying. Not only that. Their pretend patriotism, their ignorance of American history, its poetries and injustices, its constant existential confrontation with itself, leaves them especially susceptible to the allure of the authoritarian. There is a logic and clarity to the authoritarian, with his shiny toys and Potemkin bullet trains and airport terminals. The authoritarian knows how to put on a good show, and these people love to be dazzled. They are vulnerable to Putin because they admire him while not understanding where he comes from nor who he is. They have no idea whom they are doing combat with. They do not even know that they are engaged in battle, and that the battle is already won.
The ironies are legion. The American, we are often told, is like a child incapable of memory formation, constantly learning and relearning the lessons everyone else has known for centuries. There is something indisputable about this. We have a tendency to believe that it is incumbent upon us to meddle in elections, to prop up opposition movements, to lecture, to scold, to pontificate. But the outsider forgets or does not know that these tendencies, however irksome or maddening, are symptomatic of a belief that we can make the world better. Many awful decisions, most of them having to do with war, have sprung from this belief, but that doesn’t mean we ought to abandon it. Those who are quick to bemoan American hegemony never seem to mention what might replace it: a Pax Sinica? A world devoid of any super- or hyperpowers? Then what? The wars of late will look like playground skirmishes when the Pax Americana ends.
Donald Trump, the first American president ever to abandon our idealism completely, to declare that the United States is now all about cutting deals and not getting screwed by the Iranians nor Democrats, has not made us safer or stronger. That is because our ideals are not fantasies about how we’d like the world to be, but powerful buffers against hostile forces, agents, interlopers. They define us. So long as we know who we are, we also know who we are not. One imagines the 8 (or 10, or 200) people crammed into the conference room in Trump Tower last year, ostensibly talking about adoptions, believed that they were doing what had to be done to beat the Clinton machine, or to drain the swamp; that they were being tough, and breaking someone else’s rules because “that’s politics!”—ignorant, as always, of the depths of their ignorance. They were, of course, wittingly or otherwise, providing the Russians with a beachhead. This is not an exaggeration. The Russians will call it an exaggeration, and they will make many Americans believe that their fellow Americans are overreacting or acting in bad faith, but we should not be swayed by this, because it is disinformation. They are better at this than we are.
7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Not only is Comrade Casino being played for a chump, the whole freaking GOP is betraying America by looking away and pretending that russia is not meddling with our power grid, our nuclear facilities, and our American elections. Heinous. Deplorable.
