(On Booman’s recent post Krym Nash, Trump Nash, Booman linked “Russian state TV is celebrating after seeing the recent report that Trump told G7 leaders that Crimea belongs to Russia because the people there speak Russian…’Krym nash, Trump nash!’ Skabeeva declared to the audience, which in English means ‘Crimea is ours, Trump is ours!’ ”
Frank Schnittger commented “So does this mean that Republicans are becoming the radical party overthrowing the existing world order and Democrats are becoming the true conservatives? The radical Republicans of Lincoln’s time became the conservatives of Reagan. Are they about to reverse polarity again?”
I started a reply. It grew. Here it is as a standalone.)
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Sadly, Frank…no. In a three-dimensional world there is always a third choice. What it really means is that many Republicans are totally throwing in the “conservative” towel and allying with an apparently much more efficient kleptocratic system than either the Republicans and/or the Democrats have ever managed to create. A Putinocracy, to coin a word. A system where real, effective opposition is met with secretive death while a dumbshow “democracy” is hoisted up as a diversion from what is really going on. The Russian people are aware of this game. They go along with it because they can still remember what followed the collapse of the U.S.S.R…years of serious, nationwide poverty. No food in the stores, people on the street selling their shoes to get by. I was in Moscow at the height of it. One day, in central Moscow…equivalent to midtown NYC…I took a three hour afternoon walk. I saw no open food stores or restaurants the entire time, and only about three makeshift open air markets selling a little produce and whatever household belongings that might raise a few rubles. The Russian musicians with whom I was working clued me in. Almost everyone was living in little families or communes…several people to an apartment. Everyone was working on anything that might raise money…legal or illegal (The black market was flourishing!!!)…each group had one person whose only daytime job was to leave the apartment early and wait on lines at various food stores to buy necessities before they ran out.
Putin’s approach…criminal though it certainly is…changed all of this.
Fairly rapidly. Within several years, I believe.
Read on.
This is a criminal enterprise on any number of levels, of course, but the Russians are going along to get along. I was in St. Petersburg several years ago. It was thriving, but the people on the street (and in the airports and hotels both there and in Moscow) looked to me to be fairly unhappy. Not broke, just under real pressure. Sullen, in a word. Caught in a web of absolute lies in order to prosper.
Trump appears to have similar ideas, only the U.S. is not in the sorry state of Russia pre-Putin.
Not yet it isn’t, anyway.
Another 6 years of Trump? Something that is looking more and more likely as more and more DC Republicans are accepting his rule to protect their positions while the Democrats are essentially running the same game that lost to him in 2016?
Anything could happen.
Massive media opposition has so far been completely ineffective. Trump still holds just about the same approval ratings that he had before he was elected…numbers that were lower than the truth of the matter, as all of the Dem wannabe/wishers found out on Election night. The Democrats are now actually edging rightward in an effort to co-opt Trump, while still playing bureaucratic hardball to checkmate the Sanders wing. The Mueller investigation and/or state-level investigations of his financial crimes appear to be our last hope, and my view is that even if they do come up with some real dirt on him…real, provable criminal actions…how will they enforce their findings? Say a NY court finally states “We find Donald Trump guilty as charged!!!” Then what? A bunch of NY State troopers bust into the White House and arrest him? Give me a break!!! Or the Mueller folks say the same thing. Then the Republican-dominated Congress and Supreme Court play the stall game while Trump’s numbers remain the same or go higher and he is re-elected?
As I asked above…another 6 years of Trump?
Anything could happen.
Bet on it.
AG
