Republicans are fascists.
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Agree with this but this didn’t just fall out of the sky into Russia’s lap. They have been actively pushing ideology that weakens the US. Lots of people in the Trump wing of the Republican party had their Soviet style fascism activated by this propaganda, they would have been perfectly happy with some home cooked American fascist propaganda (Guns And God And Wall St And Structural Racism) without Facebook turning them on to Russian propaganda.
Somebody owns Lyndsey Graham.
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Paul Manafort was not acting on the basis of Facebook derp.
The sheer volume of criminality obscures what actually happened. Paul Manafort owed over $10 million to oligarch Oleg Deripaska and took the Trump campaign job for no salary. Huh!
The REPUBLICAN intelligence committee said:
“ Manafort’s ties to individuals connected to Russian intelligence while he was Trump’s campaign manager “represented a grave counterintelligence threat” by creating opportunities for “Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign.”
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If I recall correctly, he was giving Deripaska free briefings every so often, right? Which was basically working off his debt. Deripaska was then tight with Putin, I recall something about hanging out on a yacht right after the briefings.
Agreed, I am saying there are two parallel Russia problems with the deplorables, one is the type you’re talking about but there is a related issue of the Russians directly provoking brainwashing among the deplorable base.
I think Ukrainians have enough metal balls, thank you very much.
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We wouldn’t expect Trump to say he’d be fine with Putin invading Ukraine, even if that is the case, which I think it is. I think Putin was simply waiting for Trump’s second term. Invading during his first term wouldn’t be such a good look during a re-election campaign, would it? But invading early in Trump’s second term would have given Putin three or four years of shade while Trump installed a few more monkey wrenches into NATO.
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https://twitter.com/biannagolodryga/status/1502696598542893061?t=bhG49dOyF-TBU8bJjL62Kw&s=19
https://twitter.com/IlyaYashin/status/1502687513655361537?t=3xODJ92WkcMdnZxGfidwBg&s=19
Protesting with blank posters is kind of genius, like an art project.
They should pass a law making it illegal to not be happy.
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If you really want to turn the firehose on full blast, this guy has daily detailed maps and narrative for every sector.
https://twitter.com/JominiW/status/1502528320369569792?t=o2ynldTH9UDXM9AJuhb1vg&s=19
Some of them even went to Russia to be wined and dined by Putin!
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If Trump came out and said that’s not our business, America First, we won’t intervene, no weapons, no lethal aid, nothing, NATO would not have been able to do much of anything without the US. Putin would then have had a much easier time. The Ukrainians would have put up the same fight, most likely, but once they ran out of javelins and stingers, they’d be screwed.
But Trump would never cut lethal aid to Ukraine, right? … right?
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https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1502684749667700745?t=BM5K93d6lzKY2cUqgiQmrA&s=19
I mean if you’re Putin and you see constant disharmony in the west and relative harmony among Russians, must be easy to think that western society is decadent and weak. Oops, guess not.
Right, any argument over whether the GOP is/was “owned by” Putin/Russia is a semantical argument over the colloquial definition of “owned by.”
They were accepting shit tons of Russian oligarch money funneled through the NRA to Republican candidates. The Trump campaign had close ties to Russian oligarchs through Paul Manafort. Trump’s campaign had the GOP alter its party platform to Putin’s advantage vis a vis Ukraine. Putin’s team of bots was providing material support to Trump and other Republican candidates as part of an effort to divide the American populace, the populist right in America took a liking to him, the Tucker Carlsons of the world started pushing his bullshit, and the lines blurred.
Owned by? Reliant upon funding from? Working with? Shared interests/goals? Legal? Legalish?
One can argue over the semantics of it, but it was clearly wrong from any objective analysis of the American political spectrum and the expectations/demands the American populace would place upon its politicians absent the trolling campaign/information warfare. At best. At worst it was treason that will never be prosecuted, either because the powers that be deem that such a prosecution would be too divisive or because they were able to get around the letter of the law while shitting all over the spirit of the law.
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"The biggest surprise for Putin was the West. "All the nonsense about how the West is decadent, the West is over, the West is in decline, how it’s a multipolar world and the rise of China, et cetera: “all of that turned out to be bunk.”
Hitler and the USSR really pissed on Putin’s cornflakes here. Institutional memory is still way too strong.
I think it’s interesting that one of the possible, if not likely, outcomes of this is actually going to be giving America a geopolitical boost that may prolong its status as the primary superpower. If this ends in a Russian withdraw with no major gains at the negotiating table, the US will be able to flex that it led NATO into helping Ukraine to victory without putting one boot on the ground or firing one shot. Against Russia, no less! There will potentially be a round of expansion for NATO, and an increase in defense spending by NATO countries.
If Russia fails to keep Ukraine from joining the EU and NATO, on top of the Marshall Plan-style assistance that will be headed Ukraine’s way, you’ll also see a lot of corporate investment from the west flow into Ukraine as it westernizes more. That’s going to be a benefit to the American empire.
Before all this, Russia was actually in a decent position to play a long game. China on the rise, inevitably taking over the US and likely within a couple decades. As China gained power on the international stage, the US would be less and less able to battle Russia geopolitically. Meanwhile, climate change would likely benefit Russia’s economy. If they took steps to be increasingly friendly to foreign investment, they could have been on a long-term upward trajectory.
They could have continued to sabotage democracy with near impunity, and continued to meddle in Ukrainian political affairs without resorting to large-scale war.
Instead, Putin is reversing some of the polarization he caused in America. Very very slowly, and a very small amount for now, but it’s happening under the surface a bit. I don’t think it continues for long, but if this conflict lasts past the election I continue to think it could make a tangible difference. He’s also unifying western allies and strengthening NATO by implicitly threatening it.
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I liked the comment in one of those purported FSB threads about how it was amazing that Putin is ex-KGB and forgot how much their reports to leaders are bullshit propaganda, and actually believed it was all true this time lol…
Putin could be assuming the amount of corruption from when he was mid-level KGB, and not accounting for the inevitable creep over the years to feed more and more mouths with tastier and tastier morsels.
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