Reading Judt's 'Postwar' -- the Russians are doing to us what the Russians have always done. [View all]

[byronius]

Manipulating elections for fun and profit since 1917 because of deep national feelings of insecurity and powerlessness. Stalin really upped the game, though, stuffing ballot boxes and smearing or murdering political opponents without compunction. In Eastern Europe of the late 40's the classic technique was to co-opt the weak right-wing party while splitting the moderate left using infiltration, propaganda, and assassination. Judt's book sets forth powerful history that screams at me from the page.

For instance: the anti-Communist Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia 'jumped out a window' in 1948 -- sound familiar?

On 10 March 1948 Masaryk was found dead, dressed only in his pajamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry (the Černín Palace in Prague) below his bathroom window. The Ministry of the Interior claimed that he had committed suicide by jumping out of the window, but it was at the time, and is still, widely assumed that he was murdered on behest of the nascent Communist government. Others in the country put it thus: "Jan Masaryk was a very tidy man. He was such a tidy man that when he jumped he shut the window after himself."

I don't wish to be unnecessarily bigoted about this; but since the GOP continues to do Putin's bidding on a daily basis to the destruction of all I hold dear as an American patriot, fuck that.

Russia's a spider. A weak, insecure, mean, stupid spider that always defeats itself in the end. But for the moment -- they are effectively running this country, and it is horrifying to watch actual Americans act as if Russia's sinister sneak attack is a good thing.

I look forward to the Reset, and the Reckoning.