Putin, like Lenin before him, pretends to coddle the decadent royal family just long enough to hatch his nefarious plans.
As a longtime Kossack (do people even use that term any more?), I am well-aware of the prohibition on conspiracy theories on this site, which has served it well from long before anyone ever heard the term “fake news.” Check my DKos userid number and know that I am no ephemeral bot or troll here to stir up “divisiveness,” or whatever euphemism for “ sh*t-stirring” is being used this week.
Am I the only one to notice and associate a recent sequence of events leading up to the baffling surprise announcement that the two most zany authoritarian leaders on the planet just inexplicably “pivoted” from pledging Mutual Assured Destruction to a rom-com bromance?
A few months ago, when Kim was flinging bigger and better missiles toward the US with increasingly frightening power and accuracy, it began to be widely reported that those missiles were not the fruit of miraculous home-grown technology, but built with imported parts from idle Ukrainian factories, assembled with the help of unemployed former Soviet rocket scientists. www.cnn.com/…
More recently, as the US imposed ever-tightening sanctions in response to the growing North Korea threat, it began to be reported that Russia (ie Putin) was aiding North Korea’s resistance to the sanctions. Secretly thwarting the sanctions’ intended effect with mysterious off-shore transfers of fuel shipped out from Vladivostok, The Donald’s best buddy was literally throwing gasoline on the fire the rest of the world was trying to tamp down. www.theguardian.com/…
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Mueller investigation is reaching a crescendo as the noose tightens, White House staff flee for the exits and flip like red plastic cups in a frat basement, the whole stinking mess of oligarch mafia-style money-laundering is laid bare with all roads leading back to the Kremlin, and mid-term election predictions virtually guarantee impeachment. Oh, whatever could be done to head off the imminent disaster of the rightwing global criminal cartel’s losing its grip on power?
How about that tried and true technique called “distraction and deflection,” seasoned with some “wag the dog” and “Nixon going to China”? While we most often hear about China’s influence on North Korea, we hear much less about how Russia, which also borders North Korea, has a deep connection to the Kim family going back to Stalin, that becomes more vital as China steps back from condoning the reckless antics of its obstreperous client state.
Did you ever notice how the recent brouhaha over Little Rocketman's big missiles has driven wedges in America's once-impregnable East Asian alliance? South Korea’ s new pacifist government is distancing itself from Pentagon bellicosity and is apparently making huge strides toward "reconciliation," as so coyly portrayed in all that kimchee kumbaya at the Winter Olympics? And that Japan’s reaction has been the diametrical opposite, with burgeoning support for formerly taboo ideas like acquiring their own nukes and changing their constitution to allow for an offensive military capability? That the Philippines, once America’s Far East military bastion, is now a pariah state under another murderous authoritarian killing his own citizens at a rate Bashar Assad would be proud of, in the name of defeating terrorism and fighting drug addiction (and jailing political opponents and destroying the free press), making threats against anyone who might try to stop him (including priests and NGO’s)?
Does that kind of alliance breaking up remind you of anything else? Could it be… well, not Satan, but Putin’s well-established effort to destroy the NATO and EU solidarity that effectively enforces the sanctions against Russia’s Crimea annexation and eastern Ukraine “freedom fighters” incursion? Do we not see the common thread here of who benefits most from the destabilization of Pax Americana (or if you prefer Western hegemony)? Someone who has already been identified by every Western intelligence agency of diabolical subterfuge and nearly flawless execution of low cost/ low-risk plans to boost Russia’s relative global influence by undermining any Western institution serving to limit it? Someone with a reputed trillion dollars of ill-gotten gains to protect as law enforcement starts rolling up the far flung tendrils of a global criminal enterprise?
A year or two ago the idea that Putin could be undermining democracy and stoking polarization across the West seemed like a James Bond fantasy. Wasn’t there a James Bond movie about an inexplicably technologically-proficient North Korea about to take control of the planet by dropping nukes from space? (Why yes, there was, called “Die Another Day”)
So, at the risk of banishment or losing some mojo, may I suggest that, just for a moment, you consider that the breathtaking, improbable reproachment between North Korea and the United States could be another Putin-orchestrated crisis with a politically popular solution that serves his interests? Aren’t these the hoariest political tactics ever, to manufacture a crisis over here to divert attention from the real crime in progress over there? To foment a crisis that “I alone” can solve? Has Trump not sufficiently proven himself to be Putin’s lackey, willing to commit treason and ignore Syrian atrocities, for fear of losing his DeutschBank line of credit or having the peepee tape on blast on YouTube?
OK, class, let’s review:
1) Who is stoking North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear capability? (and has already been identified as violating sanctions to assist the regime?)
2) Who benefits directly from the disintegration of America’s East Asian alliances (well, besides China) and indirectly by distracting attention from their machinations on its western borders half a world away?
3) What could possibly alter the seemingly inevitable removal from power (and well-deserved imprisonment) of the Trump crime family better than a dazzling display of international diplomatic achievement that no other American president could pull off? (If you were the treasonously complicit Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, would you not be breathing a huge sigh of relief that Trump might yet save your bacon playing patty-cake with a ruthless foreign dictator?)
For extra credit:
4) Who has a crucial election coming up in a few weeks, with the only popular reason to vote for him being he has “made Russia great again” by humiliating the West with his KGB subterfuge?
5) Who, just a few days ago, further hyped Western anxiety about nukes by proclaiming, through video game footage recycled from the ‘80’s, that he now had fantastical atomic-powered missiles that could fly forever and defeat any American defense?
Even if the proposed “denuclearization” agreement turns out to be as fake as Trump’s weave, or doesn’t happen at all, just the prospect of success and the “give it a chance” ambivalence (looking at you, Bill Maher!) will bump up Trump’s ratings, and give the desperate dead-enders still defending his crimes a breath of fresh air.
If they can just maintain the pretense that Trump deserves to stay in power until November (for something besides transferring trillions more middle-class savings to the richest few percent), could the great Blue Wave be smashed into a ripple on the breakwater of purported “statesmanship”?
Could the whole treasonous cabal find safe harbor from the raging storm of popular fury behind an illusion of “achievement” just long enough to fend off the consequences of their actions until the next election cycle?
Are we about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind? A journey into a wondrous land of imagination? Next stop, the Putin Zone!
*with apologies to Rod Serling
