The F Word: Putin’s Alleged Crimes Distract from the GOP’s Real Ones
Two months into the first Trump term, top Democrats and the money media seem obsessed with the Trump administration’s putative ties to Vladimir Putin.
And here was I, thinking the White House ties to mad misogynists and the KKK were going to be their problem!
One cabinet pick has aleady been dropped for all the wrong reasons: having conversations with Russians, rather than being uttlerly unqualified - and Jeff Sessions is under scrutiny for lying in his confirmation hearing. Perjury’s bad, but being a pathological racist, redbaiter, xenophobe and opponent of the Voting Rights Act should be more than enough to disqualify Sessions from becoming Attorney General.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s compared alleged Russian hacking to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, even though, as he himself told NBC the other day, there’s no actual evidence. He wants Congress to go looking for it.
The Obama administration, concerned about Russian meddling in our politics, seems to have done everything it could to green light the leaking of secret intel which should be a scandal in and of itself, shouldn’t it? Unless we think that using national intelligence for political purposes as isn’t going to come back to haunt us.
Just about everyone has a stake in keeping the obsession going. Everyone except for we the public. Hillary Clinton supporters get to blame Putin for her defeat. Democrats get to put off considering what else- apart from Russians might have swung the election. Trump keeps the focus on himself –his favorite thing - and the Republicans? For as long as the public and our media are pondering possible Putin crimes, the longer we’re distracted from the all too real crimes coming down the pike against sanity, ecology, and civil society thanks to new GOP laws and practice.
Let’s not forget that both the US and Russia have nuclear weapons. I dunno, I just thought it might be worth a mention. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, moved its Doomsday Clock half a minute closer to doomsday in january—the closest its been to the end of humanity since the birth of the arms race. Rachet up the Russiaphobia too far and it could have some unfortunate consequences.
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