I’d planned my next blog post to take on that crucial issue of how baseball is too slow for the modern world. But I just started reading Andrew McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump and it brought home two things: First, even with a literary team of helpers, McCabe chose the correct career path in the FBI (OK that was bitchy). Second, McCabe is a patriot and we should heed his warning.
McCabe’s unquestionably an American patriot for shouting out the warning of an existential threat to our core structures: The infiltration of the halls of political and economic power by the Russian mob/state. As McCabe reminds us, in Russia the thieves run the state and the state is run for the needs of the thieves, and they are trying to remake the world in their image.
In this game, Trump and his inner circle are convenient dupes to be used until their usefulness has come to an end.
It’s sad that a failed state like Russia has infiltrated the US with the wink-wink, nod-nod from conservatives who used to rail against Russia when the kleptocracy was communist. With more than double the population of Italy, Russia basically has the same GDP. Its people are poor and stuck in their class, but the thieves who run Russia use nationalist pride to maintain their power by, say, annexing Crimea. Organized around a thief in chief named Putin, the Russian mob-state reaches tentacles into the halls of western governments and multinational businesses.
Don’t believe me? The Bank of New York happily laundered Russian mob money to the tune of billions of dollars. This is no longer a small concern that won’t affect our lives because the Russian mob is ‘only’ preying on small businesses and importing sex slaves.
Sadly, the Republican Party and the American conservative movement have become either a wholly owned Russian subsidiary or just happy to accept the Rubles and look away from the consequences. Either way, conservatives in America are in bed with a mob-state, and that kiddies, will certainly have long-term consequences.
The evidence is clear that the President has been compromised by Russian mobsters for decades, ever since his series of bankruptcies left him bereft of sugar daddies and they were the only source of cash. Just ask Donnie Jr. who when speaking of the family’s business empire in 2008 said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
Since then Donnie Senior’s needed even more infusions of cash from his Russian mob friends to help with things like his failing beauty pageant and his standard of living. The connections between Trump and the thieves from Russia are too numerous to mention – just try a google search and look for scholarly critiques if you don’t want to believe legit news outlets who’ve basically done the same thing and said “Holy Shite!”
Or pick up McCabe’s book.
I am terribly disheartened that a merely decent google search for Trump + “Russian Mob” or Republican Party + “Russian Mob” will prove scary enough to anyone worried about America’s ability to solve domestic problems, let alone our ability to tackle international problems like global warming.
But the incoherent conservative rage insulates the right wing from the consequences of Russian influence since most of their base of support would discount all the evidence. Why? Because they’re angry and responsive to a whole industry stoking their anger. Since time immemorial group anger remains the best emotion for keeping people hoodwinked.
Unfortunately, the consequences could be substantial for the 2020 election. If that happens I’d like to say that only the Republican party will shoulder the blame, but all of us should have seen it coming.