Never Play Russian Roulette With A Russian
We can’t expect the rest of the world to play by our rules. We had them all fooled up through the Obama administration, that the united States put forward to be the shining city on the hill, a beacon of democracy, truth, justice and the American way. But with the election of Donald Trump as our president and supposed leader of the free world, all bets are now off.
The thin veneer of proffered American integrity has been wearing itself down for some time now, especially after our CIA started muddling in the politics and elections in the middle east after World War II. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser once told a senior CIA operative in the late 50’s that, “The genius of you Americans, is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves.”
For a good background as to the current pickle America is in regarding the middle east and now with Russia, and the rest of the world, read ‘America’s Great Game’ by Hugh Wilford. Our meddling, the precursor to “hacking”, in places like Iran and Egypt in the 1950‘s has resulted in governments being overthrown, leaders deposed, even assassinated. And it continues with our involvement in Iraq with Saddam Hussein, and Libya with Muammar Gaddafi ..North Korea with Kim Jong-un, Syria with Bashar al-Assad ..and now with our old cold war arch-enemy Russia with Vladimir Putin. Our propensity toward greed, power, entertainment and self-aggrandizement has led us to the worldwide jam we’re in today, and it seems that this has all escalated since Donald Trump took office.
The recent spat of flybys, shoot-downs and military collisions at sea are becoming more frequent as the Trump administration sneaks forward.
It all brings to mind an applicable quote from the film ‘The Hunt for Red October‘ ...“This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.” The quote is from Admiral Josh Painter played by Fred Thompson, who, ironically, was himself a United States Senator from Tennessee and GOP candidate for president in 2008.
Now, however, the United States is calling fowl because the Russians are “hacking”, meddling, with our politics and elections. Call it poetic justice or call it cyber warfare, either way, all’s fair in love and war.
What we need to do is stop splashing it all over the news confusing it with our daily dose of entertainment, and stop complaining about it. Who in the world cares? It only makes us look weak. The fact that the Russians have intercepted our communications and are causing a disruption is secondary to the fact that we are allowing them to do it. Technically, we should be able to apply countermeasures to disrupt their disrupting. If we can land a spacecraft on Mars and communicate across time and space, we should be able to trump a couple of Russian gameboys.
The real damage being done by the Russians is the psychological stress that they are using our own media to impose on us.
Whether there is any actual “collusion” between the Trump administration and Russia is another question. It appears that there have been some shenanigans regarding Russian financial investments, money laundering, and even Russian Prostitutes. Even if these are all unsubstantiated allegations, perception is reality and it only serves to further trump our democracy, American values and self-image into the ground.
The Trump administration, however well-meaning it may be, is playing the margins and as the rest of the world reels in shock and confusion as to what’s going on over here, the Russians, especially, are taking maximum advantage of it.
Donald Trump has represented himself as a marginal man. His moral values are documented as less than principled, and this, above all, should be the backbone of any effective president, especially, a United States president ..or any man or human being worth his salt. Trump is compromised in this and other categories, and whether you like his braggadocio, his policies, or his ideas, it is his seeming moral decay that lessens his integrity and credibility to be the President of the United States.
I’m not one to cast the first stone and make judgements regarding other people’s morals or personal lives, or the way they view they world, but often you can tell a book by it’s cover. And from the perspective of imagery, Donald Trump is more like having Andrew Dice Clay as president as opposed to, say, Harrison Ford. Take your pick.
President Trump is on the ropes and I can’t imagine him surviving his presidency. His once over-confident posture is now eroding into a paranoia that is contagious. His administration is in disarray and under fire, he is being investigated for possible crimes against America, and he is tweeting himself into a corner.
For someone who thinks he knows how to use the news media to his advantage, the Russians are showing him, and all of us, how it’s done. And our media, under the guise of journalistic integrity and investigative immunity is playing Russian Roulette with our country and its future.
Our free press has license and is free to unwittingly bring us down.
We’re falling all over ourselves in a public venue, exposing our weaknesses to the world in the name of freedom and a democracy that only we care about, as the rest of the world reevaluates America.
Let’s be smart and play this game of Russian Roulette with fewer bullets in the gun.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
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