Suckers no more
With the Helsinki summit behind us and our US/Russia relations back on a normal track political life in America has finally settled down. Er, wait...I meant in the aftermath of the firestorm that was the Helsinki summit political life in America has never been so inflamed. Pundit after pundit expressed their HORROR after watching President Trump express skepticism about the entire Russian hacking/collusion affair.
I have to say, I agree with the president. I don't believe for a second that the outrage that has been filling websites and airwaves is genuine. It seems to have come on so fast and so strong that I suspect it had been lying in wait for the right time to pounce. All they needed was a weak or ineffective statement by President Trump. If it involves the Russians more the better. I highly suspect no matter what he would have said at the post summit press conference the result would have been similar.
Remember, one of the reasons that people voted for President Trump was a highly tuned skepticism of the neocon and neo liberal push towards unnecessary conflicts and wars. The heat had been turned up on Syria during the primaries by both the right and the left with the stated goal of combating the Russian influence there. For some reason a country with the economic output of New York state was still directly in the crosshairs of both republicans and democrats. The Soviet empire was a definite and certifiable threat. Russia today is not in the same universe. Were it not for their nuclear arms they would barely get a mention. Yet somehow they eclipse all other countries when it comes to the oppobrium of the political pundits in DC.
Trump voters were skeptical and rightly so. We had been sold on pointless conflicts since the horror of 9/11. Intelligence agencies were the sacrosanct bodies that provided information that lead to many of these mistakes. In retrospect, it seems silly that we were all so easily duped, but we were. We were duped about Iraq and their weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell regrets his part in that to this day. We were duped into believing you could nation build Afghanistan. A country with a 1000 year history of repelling invaders and one that more recently left the Soviets bloodied and battered. We were duped after Benghazi where the blame for that horrible attack fell on a YouTuber in California. We were duped into believing that removing Gaddafi from Libya would stabilize that country and the region more generally. We have been sold a false bill of goods again and again. Most of us are tired of it and rightly skeptical of the foreign policy experts who got us into these messes again and again.
Russia is a competitor. A relatively minor one. China poses a much greater threat and one that has ACTUALLY hacked into important government databases. If you haven't heard of the OPM hack here is quick summary from Wikipedia.
On June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting the records of as many as four million people.[1] The final estimate of the number of stolen records is approximately 21.5 million. This includes records of people who had undergone background checks, but who were not necessarily current or former government employees.[2]It has been described by federal officials as among the largest breaches of government data in the history of the United States.[1] Information targeted in the breach included such as Social Security numbers,[3] as well as names, dates and places of birth, and addresses.[4]
The data breach consisted of two separate, but linked, attacks.[5] It is unclear when the first attack occurred but the second attack happened on May 7, 2014 when attackers posed as an employee of KeyPoint Government Solutions, a subcontracting company. The first attack was discovered March 20, 2014, but the second attack was not discovered until April 15, 2015.[5]
In the aftermath of the event, Katherine Archuleta, the director of OPM, and the CIO, Donna Seymour, resigned.[6]
On August 27, 2017, the FBI arrested a Chinese national suspected of helping to create the malware used in the breach.
The Chinese hack was a real and certifiable threat to our national security. Do you remember threats of war? Do you remember much of anything? it was almost like it never happened if you listened to the mainstream media and DC politicians. Since they hadn't encrypted the database which made the information easily accessible after the hack I can believe they wanted it go away quickly lest Americans realize how inept the security was.
There is a contingent in government and in the media that seems to desire conflict over peace no matter what the cost. In most cases they are also the same people who were opposed to Donald Trump from the start. Trump supporters are realistic doves. We believe in peace through strength. We believe in discussion over conflict. We believe that you can't remake the world in the image of the United States. We believe in the value of different viewpoints. Believing that Russia isn't our greatest threat isn't treasonous, but sensible and rational. Those pushing for conflict with Russia are the same people who destabilized the middle east and most of Europe with the migrant flows. They are either truly inept or are insane. Either way, it's up to us to end the madness and apply some rationality to our discussions. Because they won't.