I have written quite a bit about Russia (the Diplomad archives will so reveal). Back when I was somebody doing something useful, I dealt a lot with the Russians when they were under their USSR disguise. I respect and admire Russia and Russians. As somebody pulling for America, I don't always like what they do on the international stage, but they are smart, tough, practical patriots who live and die for Russia and want to see their country as a great power. As a country also a great power, we Americans can and should deal with that in a smart, tough, practical way. One of the greatest blunders the West made after the collapse of the USSR was how we treated Russia. There was a palpable condescension, and even disdain for Russia. We treated them as though they would always remain a collapsed joke of a country, full of gangsters and prostitutes; Hollywood, of course, made "Russian" synonymous with "Villain," and regaled us with films about Russian/Serbian terrorists posing an existential threat to our nation. They, of course, could not get this worked up about the previous Soviet threat, but that's another topic.
During the election campaign of 2012, Governor Romney recognized that Russia had recovered considerably from the collapse of the USSR. He noted that Russia had become our number one geo-political foe. Well! You'd have thought he said FDR was not the greatest president since the beginning of time! The snickers and derision from the left were quite something. Obama, of course, uttered his incredibly clever riposte, "The 1980s are calling; they want their foreign policy back." So clever!
How the blini flips, eh?
We now see the Hillary campaign and its media echo chamber up in arms over supposed Russian hacking of the DNC servers and the subsequent release of some 19,000 emails by WikiLeaks which show the DNC, to say the least, in a highly unfavorable light. So bad, in fact, that the despicable Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC Chair and Clinton Crime Family confidant, had to resign her post and flee the Democratic Party convention with jeers and boos ringing in her ears. It's Putin's fault! He is in alliance with Trump! The party that denied the existential threat from the USSR and its espionage, now sees Slavs under every slab.
Trump, of course, knows how to rub it in. He just gave a press conference in Doral, Florida (Full disclosure: I own two condos there; hope Trump makes the value go up) in which he, brilliantly, stole the limelight that normally would have gone to Bill Clinton in the wake of his bloated, silly speech last night at the convention. Trump is willing to face the press, unlike Hillary Clinton. Trump, of course, makes headlines. He made, what I took to be a joke, a "plea" to Russia to find Hillary's missing 30,000 emails. OMG! The progressives have gone mad! Look it up. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, etc., not to mention the broadcast networks and the other donkey kissers, have gone full pecksniffian. We see them full of patriotic outrage over Trump calling for a foreign country to hack Hillary Clinton's emails!
First, of course, Trump was making a joke--and one can argue over whether politicians should make jokes, but that's what it was. Second, Hillary no longer has that "private server/servers," and it/they presumably sits/sit in some dusty FBI lock-up. Trump was kidding the Russians by saying if you hacked her server arrangement, then do us a favor and send us the missing 30,000 emails. It was NOT a call for hacking by the Russians.
On Russia. Trump is right.
There is no reason for inevitably bad relations with Moscow. Trump is right that NATO is a joke, at least the way it is presently organized and funded. We need to rethink NATO and come up with a new security alliance that includes, yes--horrors!--Russia. Yes, Russia should be our ally. Let's be blunt. There's nothing wrong with having this large powerful Christian (Oops! Said the "C" word) country with a skillful military and world class intel service on our side when fighting the 1400-year war with Islam. The Russians understand invasions and the threat from Islam pretty well.
Meanwhile, of course, the progs will scream about their own patriotism and promote the liars of Black Lives Matter . . .
I wish Trump would stop stealing my foreign policy lines!
ReplyDeleteThat goes for you too, Mr. Mad!
:)
(for the lefties: that's a joke, not an accusation of malfeasance or plagiarism)
- reader #1482
Election campaign of 2012 & Romney, you mean
ReplyDeleteYes, my mistake
Delete"There's nothing wrong with having this large powerful Christian ... country with a skillful military on our side when fighting the 1400-year war with Islam."
ReplyDeleteQuite. Why did the State Department ever think otherwise?
All one has to do is look at the State Dept. and who fills it. The worldview is like a socialist loving care bear. Totally without reality.
Deleteleaperman
I've been saying this for the last 10 years, Russia may very well be the future of democracy for the next 100 years or so. They are a country it seems to me standing on a cross roads. Much of it depends on Putin, who I find to be a very strange man in many ways.
ReplyDeleteJames the Lesser
I don't think Mr. Putin drove around with his kiddie pals with the windows up trying to fill the interior of the car with marijuana smoke. Nor do I think he wrote creepy poems as a young man. Obongo is one really strange hombre.
DeleteYou would be surprised. The top tier of our defense industries is filled with kids who used to do that. And the vast majority do a VERY good job.
DeleteYou might find this bit about the 4G warfare going on in our cities of some interest.
http://classicalvalues.com/2016/07/winning-the-race-war/
Yes yes yes! I lived there from 1992 to 1994. Russia should be our ally and our politicians should be saying so, often, and working to make it so. There can be a strong and prosperous Russia on the same planet as a strong and prosperous U.S. Why ever not? Our quarrel is with nutcases like the Norks and the Islamists who cannot even conceive of living peacefully within their own borders. I don't believe that the Russians are inherently expansionist. Their economy was pretty much destroyed in 1992 when the free market hit it and their captive trading block fell apart. They are still fundamentally struggling with the problem of figuring out how Russia is going to make a living going forward.
ReplyDeleteI think they are a rival and will be one for a long time but that is not the same as an enemy. Trump seems willing to say so and to commend Putin on his rule. Hillary will get us into worse trouble as the election nears. She, not Trump, is the one I hate to see get near the "button."
DeleteIn his future history series, Jerry Pournelle called the alliance between Russia and the US the Co-Dominium. Letting all of the nations on Earth have a voice in things proved too dangerous, so those two powers allied to keep the rest of the world in order. That, plus his take on the domestic situation of a Socialist US 25 years on from when he was writing in the early 1970's, is amazingly prescient.
ReplyDeleteI've said this for over 30 years: Russians and Americans are natural allies. We have similar core cultural values. Russians protected their Western Heritage through the darkest days of Nazi attempts to subdue them. (Watch the film "Russian Ark" sometime.) Russians are imaginative and thoughtful people by their nature.
ReplyDeleteWe have starkly different ideas of the type of government we want or need for ourselves. But that is no reason not to co-exist, and learn and support each other in this now worldwide battle for cultural survival.
The battle for cultural survival is a secondary phenomenon. The true battle is against this satanic possession that afflicts almost all Western elites and makes them attack their kinsmen and worship the savage, unteachable foreigner.
DeleteOne shot into the air at any European border followed by one to head for any who choose to try their luck anyway would solve the "refugee problem" instantly, but no Western leader will give the order to adopt this approach.
The wishes and needs of foreign invaders will always trump local wishes and needs.
A loathsome sickness is abroad.
Have you read the account by the Mayor of Calais about what is happening there now? It is a nightmare and they get no help from Hollande.
DeleteWhere is this account? I very much would like to read it.
DeleteRussians protected their Western Heritage through the darkest days of Nazi attempts to subdue them. (Watch the film 'Russian Ark' sometime.)
ReplyDeleteAnd if you don't watch it for that, watch it for the fact that it was filmed in a single continuous shot.
I still would love it if you, WLA, would spill the beans on Lavarov ...
ReplyDeleteI'm probably the 10,000,001st person to say this, but the Russians didn't WRITE the damn DNC e-mails, they just exposed 'em.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I didn't start out as a Trump guy, I do admire how he's going full-Alinsky in the campaign.
Yup - I thought at first that a Trump campaign was a tasteless joke and he was a buffoon - but he fights back. He doesn't curl up in a sniveling little ball of apology.
DeleteYup - I thought at first that a Trump campaign was a tasteless joke and he was a buffoon - but he fights back. He doesn't curl up in a sniveling little ball of apology.
Delete'sniveling little ball of apology'... yes, that well characterizes our government's reactions to various violent outbursts around the globe. Well said.
Delete- reader #1482
Garry Kasparov wrote, "Many in West have forgotten the Cold War vocabulary of being against dictatorship while supporting a dictator's main victims—his own people." 2016-07-27
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/758394188568334336
I remain deeply suspicious of the Donald, but I am now just a tad lukewarm towards him now--while utterly repelled by Shrillary Shrooooo. However,I like his Veep, and it looks as if Rudy Giuliani will get a cabinet position. My impression of his comments inviting the Russians to find Shrill's e-mails struck me as a bit of sarcasm. It may well be that he entered the campaign as a Clinton plant, and his determination to fund an anti-Cruz/anti-Kasich PAC appalled me when he should have been going full tilt at the Dems. However, his ability to turn things on the Dems has gotten my respect.
ReplyDeleteHere's a new twist on the Trump/Clinton race:
Deletehttps://medium.com/autonomous/bailout2016-the-election-bailout-plan-that-could-save-us-from-both-trump-and-hillary-63c9d42f5cf2#.kyut39ql4
...Brad Thor is running. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090c44a5aa2aa4fb6-volunteer
I couldn't agree more!
ReplyDeleteYOU Matter...
ReplyDeleteTill you multiply yourself times the speed of light.
Then YOU ENERGY.
leaperman
squared... :)
Delete- reader #1482
I can't reply up there for some reason, but I would like to point out to Clayton Barnett that Pournelle considered the CoDominium a dystopia, much as Tom Kratman considers the America described in Caliphate.
ReplyDeleteLewis,
ReplyDeleteYou might get a kick out of this. I took it from the adaptive curmudgeon.
https://adaptivecurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/political-conventions-are-hilarious/
Last week:
“We here at America’s Pravda are bringing you the news report for the future scene of what we expect to be a Class VII Shitpocalpse. After carefully considering all of our biases, we have decided that the Republican convention is almost certainly going to bring about the end of life as we know it. Reliable reports (that we made up) indicate the Donald Trump is not only the Antichrist but that he is going to rape a monkey on stage. We fully expect that the entire city of Cleveland will be burned to the ground. We recommend to our listeners that you shelter in place and pray for the lost souls of the everyone in Cleveland who will be certainly killed by Trump’s hair.”
This week:
“Despite the fact that virtually nothing exciting happened last week we are still making shit up. Now we’re concerned that Hillary Clinton’s coronation may be mildly disrupted by the unexpected discovery that Hillary Clinton plays just as fair as the doped up Russian Olympic team.
We’re aware that everyone with a pulse knew the Democratic Party was going to pull out all the stops to get Hillary elected (like the 450 superdelegates wasn’t a big enough hint?). But we had no idea that those unemployable “Feel The Bern” commie dipshits would figure it out too! Who can blame us? Who could possibly have imagined that Hillary Clinton would be associated with unpleasant leaked emails? I mean the first 30,000 e-mail leak was merely clear evidence of felonious mishandling of classified material. All we had to do was twist the FBI into a pretzel to get out of that. Now there’s another 13,000 e-mails from a different scandal? No rest for the wicked eh? We had no idea that people other than Hillary could get hacked. We use Apple products so we thought we were immune! Besides nobody in our industry studied science so we think computers run on magic.
Also, we’re surprised to find out that hippies and Commies can read. Who knew? We haven’t found a way to blame this on Trump or his hair but were pretty sure that we can blame it on the NRA or guns. So it’s all cool.
Incidentally hippie socialists who really like to protest stuff, when gathered in a place and informed en masse that they’ve been fucked, have a tendency to protest. What’s up with that?”
What a difference a week has made. I’m starting to enjoy the decline.
Also if I’m locked in my truck forced to listen to America’s Pravda at least it’s on the one day they ‘re hoisted upon their very own petard.
Update:
I just heard the newest idea they floated and it’s epic. The new theory is that these emails were leaked by Russia because Vladimir Putin is somehow enthralled with Trump’s hair. That’s pretty classic. I’m not saying that Russia didn’t do the leak but what I am saying is that if they’re worried about this level of Russian “blackmail” they ‘aint seen nothin’ yet. Hillary can’t make a week without committing malfeasance and if she gets elected it’s going to be 24/7 scandal until the wikileaks server melts.
There’s a solution to public revelations like this. Don’t lie, cheat, and steal. Then you don’t have new scandals every few weeks. I’m pretty sure I figured that out when I was six.
Copied by the leaperman, from the curmudgeon.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy impression is that Trump wasn't making a joke, per se, but was taking advantage of an opening to punch his opponents, using the press as his weapon (as usual). The opening was the flood of embarrassment stemming from the released DNC e-mails. The punch was the reminder that Hillary had a huge mass of unreleased e-mails, ostensibly deleted and perhaps lost; just imagine the embarrassing material which would be in those! A simple but brilliant attack; he smears Hillary, without it being necessary that her e-mails actually appear. Trump is counting on us to remember, without a specific hint from him, that when Hillary or the DNC are involved, it's probably safe to assume the worst; no proof is actually needed.
ReplyDeleteTacking on the bit about Russia just made what was otherwise a nebulous assault into something almost tangible, something which the press might imagine actually could happen. It really doesn't matter if the Russians, the Persians, the Israelis, the Poles, the Chinese, the Norks, or anybody else has the e-mails. In fact, it's hard to believe that they don't all have them already, since they were sitting on an unsecured server just waiting to be read by anybody with an electronic espionage program ... which means everybody down to a Roumanian hacker.
Trump's opponents have to punch back, even if feebly, so they pretend that all this was a request by Trump for the Russians to engage in some rather obvious espionage, and then let on that they've done it; which of course intel pros would never do, for fear of compromising valuable sources. That fantasy would be the joke, I suppose.
Ah but you missed the real trap. The 30,000 emails she deleted were the ones she said were just personal stuff, things like yoga class schedules and plans for Chelsea's wedding. Trump suggested the Russians should find them and suddenly this is a national security issue. It means the Dems did not believe her.
DeleteThe simple reason for the hack of the DNC and now the Clinton campaign could be that as SoS Clinton pushed for an investigation of Putin's "rigged" election. I think Putin has a long memory, just as I do. And I believe Russia has the E-mails from her server and I expect an October surprise.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have going on now is a contest between loyalists and nationalists, and with that in mind here is an interesting take on where Russia fits into the equation: http://takimag.com/article/putin_1_internation_vampires_0_costin_alamariu#axzz4Fl7mEPdO
ReplyDelete"There’s more than just jingoistic hysteria behind the many accusations that Trump is “Putin’s agent.” In a poetic way, this is true. The international interests that financially wrecked Russia in the ’90s are doing the same to the United States now. Putin stopped them in Russia and Trump is promising to stop them in America. They recognize Trump as the enemy and slander in the only style they know—the paranoid style."
Read the whole thing, as they say...
-LBascom
This is an excellent run-down of Putin's involvement in world--including U.S.--affairs in the recent past, by Chess Grandmaster & Human Rights Foundation Chairman Garry Kasparov.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/garry-kasparov/putin-trump-west_b_11263110.html
Read it, I suggest!
Yeah right. If Putin wanted to spread chaos in the world, all he had to do was sit back and let Obama (and Hillary) do their thang.
DeleteI suspect Russian engagement was at the core of Bush the Elder's "New World Order".
ReplyDeleteI don't consider Russia an enemy...they are a rival. Competition is inevitable...but cooperation is possible. But few people realize this.
Mr. Amselem,
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed your posts for the past couple of years, and look forward to your election *analysis.* But one question: When is the book coming out? You've already written the "book" on Hilary, so, write the book!