Summary: Donald Trump’s campaign may be about to self-destruct. As more and more revelations begin to surface suggesting close linkages between Donald Trump and the Moscow Kremlin, those red flags, all puns intended, that I raised about three weeks ago are now being seen and waved by other, more “respectable” sources. The recent Wikileaks publication of roughly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee has all the hallmarks of an operation initiated by, and planned by, Russia’s intelligence apparat. From CNN to Talking Points Memo to Forbes to defenseone.com, numerous media outlets in the West, together with the Hillary Clinton campaign itself, are connecting the dots and discovering a trail that leads right back to the Kremlin. One headline in defenseone.com this afternoon reads “How Putin Weaponized Wikileaks to Influence the Election of an American President.”
What is clear is that a Russian kriegßpiel is very much in progress against the West. In many ways, we are at war right now with Russia. Naïve Democrats, too conditioned by fear of what happened with Joseph McCarthy to regard any form of calling Russia out as unacceptable, need to understand that the evidence is far clearer now than it was 60 years ago. Again, a kriegspiel is very much underway against the West, Russia is using every malign instrumentality it can to secure the election of Donald Trump, a useful idiot it thinks it can control. We are at a point where failing to support Hillary Clinton for president is very close to being treasonable.
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In the last 48 hours the Donald Trump campaign has begun to show a new kind of vulnerability, one that we had never expected in an American political campaign. Media sources from CNN to Forbes to Talking Points Memo to defenseone.com have begun to connect the dots linking Trump Tower with the Moscow Kremlin. The Clinton campaign has also begun to connect those dots, and as the dots come together, we begin to see evidence of malign attempts on the part of the Russian government to influence the outcome of this election. Three weeks ago, had anyone suggested that Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence apparat were trying to influence the outcome of an American election, “right-thinking” Democrats, conditioned to reject anything that smacks of McCarthyism, would have said such a soothsayer his or her tongue for uttering such a heresy.
I was almost fed my own tongue for suggesting, last month, in my post of June 29, entitled “The Disastrous Ramifications of Brexit: Russia's Kriegßpiel Against the West” (http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-disastrous-ramifications-of-brexit.html), that part of the reason for the success of Brexit was that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his minions within the Russian intelligence apparat had attempted successfully to influence the outcome of the Brexit referendum. My fellow Democrats, conditioned by the history of American McCarthyism in the 1950s, were quick to denounce my ideas as being “unhelpful.”
Unhelpful to whom? I responded. At the risk of sounding like Donald Trump congratulating himself for the Pulse nightclub shootings, I can’t resist a certain measure of schadenfreude, a certain temptation to say “I told you so.” Because ultimately, the evidence before us points not only to malign Russian intervention in our election, but also to the treasonable nature of Donald Trump and of the Trump campaign. In a previous post, entitled “Donald Trump’s Treasonable Protection Racket,” (http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2016/07/donald-trumps-treasonable-protection.html) I suggested that Donald Trump’s unwillingness to defend the Baltic state members of NATO constituted evidence of treason.
Again, I was pooh-poohed by all the bien pensant Democrats who read my post. And again, I must confess to feeling a certain measure of schadenfreude.
However, the fact that we are betrayed at the highest levels isn’t limited to the treason being committed by members of the American right. Many of us in the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party have noted with increasing dismay the tendency of diehard supporters of Vermont Independent Senator Bernard Sanders to echo and repeat the often poisonous Hillary-hating tropes that find such a ready home in the campaign of the Kremlin’s own candidate, Donald Trump. We find, indeed, that some of the Sanders diehards, the so-called Sandernistas, speaking from a standpoint of excessive white privilege, have gone so far as to state very publicly that they would prefer four years of Donald Trump to one day of Hillary Clinton.
And, of course, the same over-the-top Sandernistas pitched an earsplitting snit when Hillary Clinton Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate. Yet, the whines that Tim Kane wasn’t “progressive enough” soon proved to be bullshit. It wasn’t so much that Sandernistas didn’t think Tim Kaine was progressive enough, though some of the stupider members of that tribe probably lapped up such nonsense with their silver spoons, while applying nonsensical purity tests that even God himself could not pass, but that more subtle, clever, and malignant Sandernistas realized that Tim Kaine was exactly the kind of progressive who could draw votes from the left wing of the Democratic Party, who could induce them to come home to Hillary.
And because Tim Kaine was indeed a progressive choice, Trump moles in Sanders world could not run the risk that Tim Kaine might actually be seen for the progressive choice he represents. Something had to be done. And so, against the possibility that Hillary might choose a genuinely progressive candidate, even if also a cautious one, the Sanders holdouts and the Trump apparat quietly let it be known that they believed that Tim Kaine would be Hillary’s choice. And once Moscow became aware that Tim Kaine was Hillary’s choice, it gave WikiLeaks the green light to dump the 20,000 emails which Russian hackers had obligingly provided to WikiLeaks to hold in case some development like Hillary’s selection of Tim Kaine should occur.
Because the WikiLeaks data dump was timed very carefully to drop a turd into the DNC’s punch bowl to counteract Hillary’s announcement of her vice presidential candidate. No doubt instructions also went out from the Trump organization and from such foolish Sanders supporters as former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner to pitch a fit over the veep selection itself.
And certainly, this Russian offensive against Hillary Clinton’s campaign has scored one victory already. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has resigned, effective at the end of the convention, as Democratic National Committee chair. This represents a gift to the Kremlin and Donald Trump. To the extent that Bernard Sanders and his people have been responsible for procuring DWS’s departure, it is not unreasonable to suggest that they have allowed themselves to become useful idiots and willing dupes for Vladimir Vladimirovich. In such case, we ought to appoint another Vermonter as chair of the DNC. We should bring back Howard Dean, who was a brilliantly effective Democratic National Committee chair. Bringing back Howard Dean, and acknowledge Hillary Clinton supporter, will send a powerful message to the Kremlin and to Bernard Sanders that the Democratic Party won’t take such bullshit lying down.
At all events, the Democratic Party needs to conduct a thoroughgoing purge of the Russian sympathizers in its midst, and it needs to insist that a similar purge be conducted throughout the nation. Not since the days of Charles Lindbergh have we seen such obvious treason being perpetrated in the context of an American political election. And while the Republicans love to chant “Hillary is a traitor, lock her up!” it is more than ever apparent that the true treasonable conspiracy aimed like a dagger at the heart of America is the one emanating from the Kremlin and from Trump Tower.
I leave to the labors of abler commentators than I the recitation of the detailed mechanism by which Trump and the Russian government have made common cause together. But we do know now that Donald Trump is the Manchurian candidate, and that the revelations of the extent to which the Russian intelligence apparat is deploying all the tradecraft that it can to try to secure his election as President of the United States has given the Democratic Party in general, and the Hillary Clinton campaign in particular a stick with which he may ultimately be bearbaited and beaten to death. Let’s not do the typical Democratic thing and be too afraid to unwrap the gift this represents. Instead, let’s open up this priceless gift, and not be afraid to be “opinionated, brash, fearless, partisan, hectoring, rude, cunning and unfair,” as the late John Mortimer, QC put it in his Rumpole stories. Above all, let us, as Rudyard Kipling put it “make ye no truce with Adam-zad, the bear that walks like a man!” If redbaiting is no longer an option because Russia is no longer communist, then let us never be afraid to engage in a little baiting of the Russian bear. After all, the Puritans didn’t oppose bearbaiting because of the pain it gave the bear, but because of the pleasure it gave the spectators.
Let us also not be afraid to forthrightly declare that we are at an unprecedented pass in American history, where, for the first time, opposition to a particular presidential candidate, in this case, Hillary Clinton, is in fact tantamount to treason.
Then, let us set about the pleasurable enterprise of bearbaiting Donald Trump and his campaign to death. Until. There. Is. Nothing. Left.
#NeverTrump.
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