Long (and I do mean l-o-n-g) story short, the article lays
out the proposition that Trump has been a Russian spy since 1987 because of
various financial entanglements and his other possible blackmail-ready activities,
and that his becoming the president of the United States was a bonus that
Vladimir Putin and his government couldn’t have expected from their American
asset back then but can now exploit to the maximum in 2018 and beyond.
Frankly, after investing the time required to read all the
way to the end, part of me would like to believe that every word of this story is
true, and that it is already known to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his
team investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election and
whether he has attempted to obstruct the investigation. I want to believe that
it will eventually force Trump and his regime out of the White House and into a
federal prison somewhere, hopefully soon after Mueller makes his final report.
At least, the devil on my left shoulder wants that to be
true.
The angel on my right shoulder, however, isn’t all that convinced.
The article qualifies its own theory by stating up front, “The unfolding of the
Russia scandal has been like walking into a dark cavern. Every step reveals
that the cave runs deeper than we thought…. The cavern might go just a little
farther, we presume, but probably not much farther.”
The “most likely outcome,” the article continues, is that Donald
Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort “told Trump about a meeting at Trump
Tower with a Russian lawyer after they were promised dirt on Hillary Clinton,” that
Trump and Kushner “have some shady Russian investments” and that “some of
Trump’s advisers made some promises about lifting sanctions.”
Then it teases, “But what if that’s wrong? What if we’re
still standing closer to the mouth of the cave than the end?” And into its conspiracy
theory it goes.
All of which leads me directly to Occam’s Razor.
For those not familiar, Occam's Razor is a problem-solving
principle attributed to a Franciscan friar and philosopher which states that “when
presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, one should select the
solution with the fewest assumptions.” In other words, the simplest solution
tends to be the right one.
So with all due respect to Occam, I have concluded that the
article is highly entertaining and worth a read, but may very well stretch some
known facts into a wild fantasy that Liberals and anti-Trumpers will happily believe.
Of course, it could also be accurate, in which case one of two things is probably true:
(1) Donald Trump is so stupid that he unwittingly allowed
himself to become a dancing puppet at the hand of an ex-KGB officer who is good
at manipulating the strings and, oh, by the way, stumbled into the jackpot of a
lifetime when Trump decided to run for president, or
(2) That Trump is so stupid that he thought he could knowingly
pull off this overthrow of the American government and global democracy and no
one inside or outside the United States would notice. Sort of the “I alone can
fix it” philosophy of a malignant narcissistic con man racist liar.
You can read the article if you’re interested and decide for
yourself what is real, and whether Trump is Stupid 1, Stupid 2 or none of the above.
* * *
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be much of a blogger if I failed to
mention the Republican Congressional delegation’s sojourn to Moscow for talks
with Russian leaders that occurred on the Fourth of July. The trip came 242
years after the United States declared its independence from Great Britain and
formed what became the greatest democracy in the history of civilization…and only 29 years since Republican saint Ronald Reagan took credit for defeating Communism by bringing down the
Berlin Wall.
So that brings us to these eight guys who – instead of riding in Independence Day
parades, cooking hot dogs for their constituents or attending fireworks
displays – chose to fly over to Moscow and audition to become extras in Vladimir
Putin’s new World Domination reality show. This is the same Vladimir Putin who continues
to deny Russian involvement in the 2016 election, all evidence to the contrary,
and kills people who don’t see things his way.
The stated purpose of the holiday junket, according to
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, was to talk tough with Russian officials about that
election interference ahead of Trump’s visit to Helsinki on July 16, but according
to reports, they actually struck a conciliatory tone once there, striving to
cultivate “a better relationship” with Moscow and not “accuse Russia of this or
that or so forth.”
At least one member came home mulling over the possibility
of lifting U.S. sanctions against Putin and his government. Wow, what a surprise!
Clint Watts, an information warfare specialist and noted expert
on Russian influence operations, tweeted, “Cannot believe GOP, once
the party that stood strong against Soviets & only a decade ago sought to
democratize the Middle East, is now surrendering so foolishly to Putin and the Kremlin’s kleptocracy – only two years after
Russia interfered in U.S. election.”
I’ll say it a different way:
Seriously? You guys go to Russia on the Fourth of July of
all days? Colin Kaepernick can’t take a knee during the national anthem without
the president calling him an un-American son of a bitch, but members of
Congress can cozy up to our greatest international enemy on our most patriotic of
national holidays and talk about removing sanctions? And no one seems to care?
The world really is upside down, my friends, and I’m afraid that
some of us will soon be falling off.
No comments:
Post a Comment