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    Having gone back and read your (johnr) original posts and the replies, I think it's interesting that you and I, who would both be in the same boat in the sense that we don't follow US politics as closely as others on here, find that the article broadly confirms our instinctive impression of what is actually happening with regard to Russian electoral interference.

    In spite of what the article claims (and as stated I do think it's a very good article) I do believe there was Russian interference in the 2016 election. Why wouldn't they interfere? It serves the interests of Putin and Russia's ruling class to have a geopolitically weakened America, its head of state and government consumed by chaos. The thing is that there has probably been Russian "interference" of one kind or another in American elections for a considerable time. Thanks to the advent of the Internet and modern telecommunications technologies there is perhaps greater potential to subversively influence another country's democratic process than ever before (short of assassinating its leader or invading or any other tricks from the Offical CIA Handbook) so it's not insignificant that Russian intelligence sought to influence the vote. But why has the prospect of foreign influence in an American election only become such a huge issue, such a contentious issue, now? American institutions have been hacked before, mostly by Chinese intelligence, why is this particular hack so vexing? It's largely because of Trump. He's rightly despised by anyone who didn't vote for him and if there's a chance that the charge, if proven, can bring down his administration then it becomes an object of fixation.

    ursus notes that the conspiracy theory is far from being orthodoxy or something that's utterly consuming the Democrats and their discourse. That's probably true, I don't follow American politics closely enough to say otherwise and Christ knows this story isn't the only important thing happening in America at the minute. But you could be forgiven for coming to that conclusion (that it's an obsession among liberals and status quo Democrats) if you went by what America's late-night satirists talk about*. It seems that so many of them, and the demographic they represent, don't want a radical reformation of American politics. They want their Democrats back. The same casually destructive, neoliberal orthodoxy that has inflicted massive damage on huge swathes of the world. And there is an opportunity in the wake of their defeat in 2016 to reassess the state of their party, to reconfigure just what radical politics means in Trump's America. But that opportunity is being squandered. I'm not saying that the Russian investigation is solely to blame for that but it provides an excuse for the Democrats not to engage in any self-examination.

    Apologies for dredging all this up again after a few pages. Just one thing that Berba mentioned:

    Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
    But Trump is still a russian puppet, who is doing everything that Putin could want of him and more.
    Trump is far too unpredictable to be considered a puppet. For that accusation to hold, he would have to be capable of receiving covert instructions from Putin or his government and adhering to them without anyone realising what's going on. If there's one thing that's become apparent it's that secrecy ain't his thing. I know there's the allegation of kompromat but I honestly don't believe that Trump is bothered too much by anything incriminating coming to light. He's already on record as a sex predator ("Grab 'em by the pussy") and he still won the fucking election. What else is out there that could trouble him?

    *On that note, is there a hole deep enough to fit John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert and their ilk? My God, their shows are dreadful - unfunny, infantile, smug, jokes you can see coming from a mile off, the inescapable sense of the converted being loudly preached to.

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      I broadly agree with all of that.

      Another reason why certain people cling to the omnipotent Russian theory is that it allows them to maintain their pre-November 2016 delusion that there was absolutely no way that 45 could win because "we are not that kind of country". I don't watch late night talk shows (very few people do, in the broader scheme of things*), but I could see how someone fronting such a show would be tempted to focus on that take rather than face the reality that a significant portion of one's audience voted for the racist madman.

      *Colbert is the only one to get more than 3 million viewers, which is less than 1% of the country, andd someone like Noah gets barely half a million on average.

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        It's worth pointing out that he can be a Russian puppet without taking orders, because he's so easy to manipulate. You can see Xi doing it as well — to the extent that Trump has gone from bashing China at every opportunity and threatening to label them a currency manipulator to frequently praising them and basically handing over America's Asian foreign policy to them. It's just that with Russia, we also know for a fact that Trump's senior campaign staff were up their necks in Russian dodginess, and that he appointed one of them (also up to his neck in Turkish dodginess) as NSA.

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          Though that very attribute makes him a much less reliable puppet than any decent puppetmaster would want, as it appears to be equally easy for others to pull the strings.

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            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post

            *Colbert is the only one to get more than 3 million viewers, which is less than 1% of the country, andd someone like Noah gets barely half a million on average.
            I think The Daily Show is deliberately going after YouTube numbers rather than Nielsen ratings. Of course, even then, they get only a few hundred thousands within a week of broadcast. Over a few months, hits accumulate to a couple of million. But the importance of Colbert, Oliver, Noah et al (all of whom I rate) is not so much in the viewing numbers, but in the way the can identify and articulate the issues. And while I think that in terms of satire Trevor Noah is hit-and-miss, when he editorialises he is on point and highly articulate.

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              You also have to consider what Colbert and others are up against, which is Jimmy Fallon. Daily late night TV is really dire to the extent that Colbert feels like he is going out on a limb on a relative basis.

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                The big problem though is that around about the time of the DNC email leaks, the republicans changed their platform from suspicion and opposition to Russia, to Russia should keep the Crimea, and there's nothing to see over there, and the first item on the foreign policy Agenda was to take a hammer to Nato, much in the manner of someone having a breakdown and smashing up their own car.

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                  That rather overstates the platform change, which was from supporting the US arming Ukraine to one of offering “appropriate assistance” to the Ukrainians (essentially the Obama Administration position).

                  That said, I tend to think that this Administration’s path on Russia-related issues would have been quite different if Flynn was still NSA.

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                    Appropriate assistance really depends on who is deciding what is appropriate though isn't it? There's a massive difference between a policy of arming the Ukraine, and having someone decide what is appropriate. especially when so many of the people involved were all having supposedly secret chats with Kislyak, and trying to set up secure lines of communications out of the Russian embassy.

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                      Thus my point on Flynn, and the fact that Obama didn't think it wise to arm Ukraine either.

                      It's also worth noting that US party platforms are notoriously worthless documents.

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                        In any event, today's story is that odious toad and professional Murdoch sycophant Michael Wolff has gotten Bannon on record for his book on the campaign.

                        Some highlights of the excerpt released so far

                        https://twitter.com/JohnCassidy/status/948589387129946112


                        https://twitter.com/JohnCassidy/status/948589585646448641
                        Last edited by ursus arctos; 03-01-2018, 16:22.

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                          I keep repeating this, but I remain of the opinion that the big deal about Russian interference is Trump's thin skin. Certainly, some of the Trump team were balls deep in Russian dodginess, but they mostly appear to have been shifted off the scene. And it wouldn't have even been a big problem if Trump hadn't repeatedly got everyone to perjure themselves saying that nobody ever had anything ever to do with Russia. And he's go them to do this because Trump hears that there was Russian Interference (which, as Reg notes up the page, has happened in every US election for a long time: and chaos and US geopolitical weakness is the goal of Russian interference), and interprets that as saying that his election wasn't legitimate. So he feels a need to lie about everything Russia related because he thinks it shows him as not having been a Winner. And being a Winner is what matters most to him.

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                            I can't look past his long history of using russian money to keep his pretence of being a successful businessman afloat. That money comes at a cost.

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                                As SB said . . .

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                                  So are we having our Bannon-Trump war, now? It was always on the cards as soon as Bannon left the White House. Alabama - both the primary and general - were obvious fuel on that fire. If so, it could get very entertaining.

                                  But why is a Murdoch-toady backing Bannon, here?

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                                    Wolff has always been primarily out for himself, so I would guess that he is just doing it for the attention and money.

                                    That said, it is somewhat interesting that it was the Murdoch NY Post's Page Six gossip column that yesterday ran the "story" that one of the Trumpites who has been to the Grand Jury said that it "looked like a Black Lives Matter rally" with the prosecutor being the "only white person in the room". Whether that in any way reflects Ruppert's view, I dunno.

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                                      I know we’ve been there so many times before in the last year but l look over that statement on Bannon again and again just repeating to myself “The President of the United States of America had this formally released...as an official statement!”

                                      Last night I went out with a friend of mine who emigrated from London to Florida a year ago and he said it’s been like living through a psychotic episode. He’s convinced that if and when Trump gets brought down large armed groups of his supporters will take to the streets.
                                      Last edited by Ray de Galles; 03-01-2018, 23:51.

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                                        Let them. Maybe they will finally learn about what happens with a lack of gun control

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                                          Two months ago, on a NYT podcast, Bannon was calling Trump a great "revolutionary leader" and comparing him to Lincoln and Washington. Nothing that comes out of the mouth of either of them is congruent with sense or reality.

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                                            Has Bannon been questioned by Mueller?

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                                              Not that we know of.

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                                                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                In any event, today's story is that odious toad and professional Murdoch sycophant Michael Wolff has gotten Bannon on record for his book on the campaign.

                                                Some highlights of the excerpt released so far

                                                https://twitter.com/JohnCassidy/status/948589387129946112


                                                https://twitter.com/JohnCassidy/status/948589585646448641
                                                Buzzfeed has a whole bunch more. Sharks eating themselves.

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                                                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                  Not that we know of.
                                                  What would they talk about. Bannon seems perfectly happy to call it treason, and also hamfistedly incompetent. In fairness, the whole thing does reek of the two evil ken dolls trying to be clever, and a nasty little local oligarch leprechaun all out of his depth and all at sea.

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                                                    Well, presumably Bannon would know where some of the bodies are buried. And he would know how nefarious - rather than just stupid or clumsy - meetings with the Russians were.

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