One thing we should have learned over the past year or so is you can take any narrative being pushed by the corporate media and Democrats, and assume that the exact opposite is true. The current Trump-Russia hysteria could very well turn out to be the latest and most embarrassing example of this phenomenon. In fact, well known Putin-critic, Masha Gessen, recently warned in an interview with Politico that her biggest fear is a Trump-Putin conflict, not some imagined alliance.
Below I provide the excerpts from this lengthy interview which I believe are relevant to the topic.
From Politico:
Glasser: I want to talk a little bit about where we are right now. And then back up to why it is, in your life, you’ve figured out this expecting the unimaginable. But recently, you know, American politics has been consumed by Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. And you wrote something that a lot of people were surprised by the other day, although I was not. And you said, “Beware the conspiracy trap.”
And that, in fact, the Russia scandal that now threatens to engulf President Trump’s very new presidency, you wrote, “In effect, could be actually helping President Trump and amount to a sort of a colossal distraction for us.” What did you mean by that?
Gessen: Well, a couple things. One is that, if you look at, you know, what we actually know about the Russia story, which changes every day, but what—at this point, what we actually know suggests that the likelihood that there’s going to be a causal link between the Russian interference in the American election and the outcome of the election. The likelihood that was a causal link, and that that causal link can be shown, is basically vanishingly small, right?
So—and I think that part of the reason—there are basically two reasons that a lot of journalists and a lot of activists have been focusing on Russia is because it serves as a crutch for the imagination. And again, I’m coming back to this topic of imagination, which obsesses me.
So one way in which it serves as a crutch for the imagination is that it allows us to imagine that, maybe, Trump will be so sullied by this Russia scandal, by this connection, even if he can’t prove a cause—causal link, just that the darkness of the scandal will be thick enough of a cloud that he will eventually be impeached by a Republican Congress.
That’s a huge leap. And it also, I think, doesn’t take into account the tools—the rhetorical tools that will have to be used to sully Trump in such a way, right? Which are basically xenophobic and, you know, corrosive to the public sphere. And the other way in which it serves as a crutch for the imagination is it also serves to explain how Trump could have happened to us, right? The Russians did it.
Glasser: That’s exactly right; if it’s an external thing. And you wrote that very, very early on. Actually, before this latest round, that the real threat to Trump would be to misunderstand where this comes from. And if it’s not Americans who voted for him, but somehow, it’s a wily, dark conspiracy theory. That leads you down a whole different set of responses to Trump.
Gessen: Right. Which—
Glasser: I think that’s your point.
Gessen: That is my point. And also that it’s destructive to politics. Politics is what happens out in the open. And there’s lots of politics happening, right? There’s this endless barrage of frightening bills being filed at this point. There are the Cabinet appointments. There’s the, you know, dismantling of the federal government as we have known it for generations.
All of that is going on out in the open. And we only have so much bandwidth. If we’re not talking about what’s going on out in the open, if we’re talking about conspiracy instead, then we are, by doing that, destroying the politics that we should be preserving, right? I mean, how do we emerge out the other end, when Trump ends, and Trump will eventually end. Everything ends, right?
If we’ve engaged in conspiracy theorizing this whole time, instead of engaging in politics—and only by engaging in politics can we actually preserve the political space…
Gessen: I’m worried about Russia. I’m—this is—I mean, we’re already out of the honeymoon phase, and it’s been less than two months. And I think it’s—I mean, the danger of having these two unhinged power-hungry men at their—respective nuclear buttons cannot be overestimated. But—
Glasser: So you would see them as potential enemies as much as potential friends? That this scenario—
Gessen: Oh, absolutely.
Glasser: —we should worry about is Trump versus Putin, not just Trump and Putin uniting?
Gessen: Right. I’m actually worried about a collision with them.
She’s exactly right. I completely agree that the disaster scenario with Putin and Trump is if and when they actually clash. Once that happens, the corporate media and Democrats will pretend they had nothing to do with it, as they always do. As Mark Ames noted on Twitter:
All the worst Iraq war liars still have their fat media jobs—where they now tell us public distrust in Establishment is a Kremlin conspiracy
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 20, 2017
Moving on, I want to once again turn to Robert Parry of Consortium News to highlight just how ridiculous the whole “Putin bought off Trump aides” conspiracy is. From yesterday’s piece, The Missing Logic of Russia-gate:
Democrats circulated a report showing that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, had received payments from several Russia-related entities, totaling nearly $68,000.
The largest payment of $45,386 came for a speech and an appearance in Moscow in 2015 at the tenth anniversary dinner for RT, the international Russian TV network, with Flynn netting $33,750 after his speakers’ bureau took its cut. Democrats treated this revelation as important evidence about Russia buying influence in the Trump campaign and White House. But the actual evidence suggests something quite different.
Not only was the sum a relative trifle for a former senior U.S. government official compared to, say, the fees collected by Bill and Hillary Clinton, who often pulled in six to ten times more, especially for speeches to foreign audiences. (Former President Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin, The New York Times reported in 2015,)
Yet, besides Flynn’s relatively modest speaking fee, The Washington Post reported that RT negotiated Flynn’s rate downward.
Deep inside its article on Flynn’s Russia-connected payments, the Post wrote, “RT balked at paying Flynn’s original asking price. ‘Sorry it took us longer to get back to you but the problem is that the speaking fee is a bit too high and exceeds our budget at the moment,’ Alina Mikhaleva, RT’s head of marketing, wrote a Flynn associate about a month before the event.”
So, if you accept the Democrats’ narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaged in an all-out splurge to induce influential Americans to betray their country, how do you explain that his supposed flunkies at RT are quibbling with Flynn over a relatively modest speaking fee?
Of course, you’ll never hear any of this emphasized in the corporate media, they’re too busy pushing for a conflict between the U.S. and Russia. A conflict that once it happens, they will vehemently deny playing any role in propagating.
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It’s complete mass hysteria at this point. Investigation = evidence, talking to the russian ambassador = treason. Christ i saw a chart of Trump-Putin ties that included Russian MMA fighter Fedor Emelianenko!!
The thing that scares me is that it seems like more and more ppl are being duped and the establishment isn’t gonna drop this story anytime soon…
Sorry Michael;;;;;early on in the conversation..she says she ‘Obsesses’ over this multi-faceted Trump/Russia/Putin narrative..correct? I am sorry.anything that follows that word is beyond any hope of being objective and further removed from realistic truth or speculation…than that which is being referenced…lolol
Once again, this Russia canard is primarily about the World Bank and the Ukraine.
But you know who is loving this more than anyone?
The Peoples Republic of China. Which is far more dangerous and powerful than Russia is at this point in time.
It is both scary and amazing that I haven’t heard a single pundit point out that incredibly obvious fact. China is the 800 lb gorilla sitting in the room that no one seems to know is there.
Gessen said absolutely nothing in that interview. Nothing.
She said plenty, and I highlighted some of it.
Here is a longer piece. She has come down from her tone at the NYT a year or two ago.
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/06/trump-russia-conspiracy-trap/
This whole bag of tricks is like descending into a sub basement maze filled with smoke and mirrors and then trying to decipher the way forward to the exit. One thing for sure those that set up the maze know which way is which but the confusion they wish to cause is very real. So if we stay with the basic facts, like a liar and globalist sycophant in the past is also one today, that the strategic goals of the western apex elites has not changed, and that the politicos dance to a tune most cannot hear we will be doing better than most in understanding what is what.
putin critics can also jsut be talking their book of nonsense. russia’s play is simple. they play the long game of survival and wait for the west to burn itself out by playing cost effective blocking defense against all obvious major western acts of aggression.
the west can assasinate as many ambassadors and russian spies as they want. so long as no major information is gained or destroyed it’s just pointlessly ineffective acts of murder.
the western wars of aggresssion are increasingly costly. the soviet union can be said to have experienced a supply meltdown which is , ultimately , what hyperinflation is. it is a network failure (network is money) where the supply of real goods and services fails to be effectively distributed or transacted because the network fails.
the soviets had their own network of command and control accounting beyond mere money but it’s the same thing——-a network. and ultimately it failed. putin or any other would be top dog’s would all have the same basic strategy of defensive blocking. wait for the empire to run it’s course……..burning the candle on both ends.
thing is, the u.s. of course is run by groups of interests that well understand this dynamic and wish to head it off not by ‘improving’ the system itself which might require a slow down, but by possibly having an interim period of triage where the country is restructured internally.
stalin did this in a particularly violent way with his purges, but as thuggish as mao was, the chinese communists definitely display that social restructruing really is a psychological process at heart because whoever remains alive must toe the line . thought reform in the red communist purges that propogandists have been able to rebrand as a ‘cultural revolution’ in many ways parralels a totalist version of the seeds of our own current political correctnss.
imagine a world where you go to prison to be forced to believe in political correctness, you lose your money, your position, your family your health, and often enough for those who don’t cooperate or escape—-you’re life.
there’s a reason mao did this. it is becuase his society that he engineered was failing and new powers were necessary to reorganize the network (money/credit) so that supply chains for labor and goods could be brought once again into harmony with those who controlled the state from centralized positions. that is, without cultural revolution mao’s communist government, and quite possibly that of any of his successors in that moment—–would not have sustained in any centralized manner.
i say this having analogized from the ‘decentralization’ of soviet moscow and its territories. by this i mean, while the soviet republics got their independence, moscow was being ‘decentralized’ . the poverty and destruction of social capital resonsates specifically at the level of the destruciton of central integral institutions. while they disappeared , people starved if they couldn’t fend for themselves. for russians, this was nothing short of a necessary tragedy. for russians, it was the death of their system. it is only a shame that it could not be reborn quicker for their sake. that said. u.s. and uk oligarchs faired quite well with the opportunities presented by this chaos.
they seek to do so again. but it’s not goingt to happen, not likely. intitutional inertia has been set in place by putin. the strong man narrative aside. anyone could take his place and keep the country running under his system were they given the reigns and a guide as to how to do it.
at least, this appears to the be the narrative.
only that putin critics support the detraction of this narrative that russia will collapse. it’s possible. they are coming off of a string of collapses but the inertia appears to demonstrate that they are in an established phase of rebuilding their society that will not simply fade away.
oil production is up. railroads are under construction. heavy industry and weapons development and sales are up. the chaotic post soviet gangster years are behind russia for it has been reborn. at least, it seems so.
also chelsea clinton sucks.
https://heatst.com/politics/chelsea-clinton-gets-lifetime-achievement-award-for-doing-nothing/?link=TD_nypost_articles.7c7e0f416376f79f&utm_source=nypost_articles.7c7e0f416376f79f&utm_campaign=circular&utm_medium=HEATST
I read Gessen biography of Putin. She’s no fan, but in the book she gave a pretty clear eyed account of his rise to power, and how he forcibly turned around a country that was a complete basket case after 8 years of extreme neoliberalism under Yeltsen by essentially snuffing out Russia’s nascent democracy. The woman is indeed a fierce critic, but she knows what she is talking about.
The Russians should be a natural ally against muslim terror. They’ve turned from Communism and provide a balance of power against China. That the Dems and deep state are trying valiantly to drive a wedge between Putin and Trump speaks volumes.
All Russia negative talk in the media by the brainwashed/compromised/bribed politicians and talking heads IS the brainwashing operation that is creating mass hysteria. If you disregard all of it, which is what people should be doing, you end up with a whole lot of quiet. Then you realize it’s all manufactured illusion.
Good relations with Russia is not a negative to American National Security. No. It’s a negative to the military industrial complex that thrives on fear, wars, conflicts and inflated military budgets.
Good relations with Russia being a negative for the average American walking around Memphis or Kansas City is as illusory as it gets. I pay no attention to any of the propagandized hysteria and neither should you. It’s very quiet out there. Unless you listen to the so called news media.
The only disagreement I have in the article is to put Putin’s so-called reckless behavior on a par with the US. Unlike the US and Nato which has not only destabilized the entire middle east which is in somewhat approximation geographically close to Russia, but has escalated armed forces to the border of Russia. I don’t see Russia sending troops to the border of the US in Canada or Mexico. This has not been done since June of 1942 and we all know what happened thereafter. Everything Russia has done militarily including re-uniting with Crimea in defense of the US supported coup in Kiev, defending South Ossetia against invasion by Georgia in 2008 and coming to the defense of Syria against US and Saudi supported Wahabi terrorism has been reaction to the west’s aggression. Russia is just defending its interests and is not the initiator of aggression. You stop the US and Nato aggression then you will have peace. End of story.
Agree with the post and most comments:
Aggression with Russia -> fear -> military build up -> defense-ralated corporate handouts
Aggression with Russia -> distraction -> non-defense corporate handouts
Abel, I’ll note that Russia has invaded 2/3 of the Russia-NATO border countries (Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus), and NONE have any NATO troops that I am aware of (you can correct me if I’m wrong on this). Also, the main reason why the Soviet Union has a smaller Middle East presence than they did during the Cold War is because they are a fundamentally weaker country than the US – as Putin has publicly admitted..
Also, the battle in Syria has at least three terrorist groups that are attacking each other: ISIS, Al Queda, and Assad’s regime. They all purposefully target civilians, which is the definition of terrorism. Even so, the US would have likely let Assad continue to kill his own people if he had managed to keep ISIS in check. ISIS’s propaganda has stirred up enough fear in many Americans that our government cannot ignore them.. ABel, hilarious.