Why and How PUTIN’S RUSSIA IS BACKING DONALD TRUMP

a reply to: AboveBoard

Putin is decidedly winning with his thumb on the back of America, his compromised President installed. We need to wake up or we are doomed.

AB, you were among the few who brought this up in 2016/2015. Sadly, few ATS members listened or cared. The biggest, real conspiracy was missed.

Gary Kasparov on a recent NATO article:

Good piece, but I was saying it five years ago, when Putin's budget moved to military & security. He's been fighting this war for years.

From the NATO article (bold mine)

within Russia’s national security establishment there is also a belief that the same non-kinetic instruments – subversion, corruption, disinformation, misdirection – can accomplish the desired results without the need for any shots being fired. This ‘political war’ model is currently in favour because it reflects the degree to which NATO and the West are stronger by every objective index, yet as a constellation of democracies vulnerable to the kind of measures a ruthless authoritarianism is able to employ.

The USSR used to try to work through the miniscule American Communist Party. Fail. This time Russia hit the jackpot when they were able to work through one of the two major American political parties, the Republican Party. Hillary tried to warn us during the campaign when she called out Trump for being Putin's puppet. Instead, Russia's attack (putting a thumb on the scales) worked, and we indeed end up with Yuri The Puppet as POTUS.

The USSR always used to try to find defense hardware and individual weaknesses to exploit. In the 21st cent cyber era, Putin and Russia tried to find computer system and population weaknesses, and this time they were successful on a massive scale. We were attacked, and we lost Cyber World War 1, or, optimistically, at least the first major battle. Just as major wars span years, we will be in this war for years (IMO generational due to the nature of this warfare) until we might be able to claim victory.

Fifty years ago, the Republican Party was warned not to give power to their extremists. Warning ignored. After decades of the power and national influence of dark money from the extreme right, twenty years ago the extremists began their takeover in earnest. Eight years ago, the party drew their swords. At the same time, Americans began to succumb to homegrown irrationality. Finding a major vulnerability to exploit, Russia swooped in to drop the cyber equivalent of a nuclear weapon, Donald J. Trump. The effects have been devastating.

a reply to: DJW001

I'm currently reading WARNINGS: FINDING CASSANDRAS TO STOP CATASTROPHES by Richard Clarke and R. Eddy. About Cassandras, those who give warnings but are doomed not to be taken seriously. You, AB, and ante tried to warn us.

"As they explain, “It involves four components: (1) the warning, the threat, or risk in question, (2) the decision-makers or audience, who must react, (3) the predictor or possible Cassandra, and (4) the critics who disparage or reject the warning.” Each of these four components is accompanied by several factors that characterize them, such as “erroneous consensus” for the warning, or “ideological response rejection” for the decision-making, which add up to 24 factors in total. These 24 factors enable the user to assign the four components a score of high, medium, low or absent in order to ascertain the likelihood of a Cassandra-type warning to be accepted or not."

review

I just want to share my thoughts about America now, how we have a symptom with an underlying cause.

I was three days from death once. After two other doctors missed the signs, the third doctor saved my life. However, even after surgery, I had seven days of (for then) high powered antibiotics. Surgery alone was not enough; the antibiotics had to kill off any of the specific bacteria remaining, so I didn't die from the underlying problem.

What took me to the doctor were the symptoms with an underlying cause. Trump is the huge pus-filled abscess that needs to be surgically removed, but unless we knock out the underlying extremist bacteria, we will not be better off.

The homegrown economic, governmental, and conspiratorial far right extremism needs to be contained. Remove Trump, but there is still the decades buildup of extremism, courtesy of the money from Koch etal wealthy far right extremists. Note: David Koch ran on the 1980 far right extremist (economic, governmental) Libertarian Party, before moving back into the RP. Note: the Sr Koch helped start the extremist conspiratorial John Birch Society in the 1950s; Alex Jones discovered it in recent years and has become a Russian equivalent of the "firehose of falsehoods" propaganda.

The Kochs are the nexus for today's American extremism. After 20 years of RINOing out members, the New Republican Party was born. The 2016 election was really when the Koch extremism ideology finally and completely took over the RP lock, stock, and barrel. And when Russia could claim victory after its new, non-kinetic attack on American soil.

Our ship of state has been steered into unknown waters, where nothing is normal, all the old rules don't apply.

There is no more GOP of modern times. It's over, done. Get rid of Trump, their extremism still rules. This is the extremism that Republican Party members warned their leadership about 50 years ago. If today's New Republican Party can be turned around, IMO the frontline in this war has to be all those RINO'd Republicans. Unless they can take back their party to the one that held for 140 years, up until the 1990s, the United States of America as our Founding Leaders envisioned will no longer exist.

Personally, IMO, those GOP members that acquiesced to this winnowing out, either unable or refusing to fight the Koch money and influence, may not be strong enough to take their party back.... it is not MAGA but rather MRGA, Make Republicans Great Again. And that IMO may be too much to do.

If we cannot succeed in having two functional political parties again as our Founding Leaders envisioned, we are doomed; with the GOP so entrenched in extremism, there is nothing meaningful on which the Democratic Party can compromise, as before 20 years ago. (As a note, we are not set up governmentally for a multi-party system, as found in Europe. No pinning hopes on third+ party to save us.)

America changes by grassroots movements outside pushing politics inside the parties. IMO that may be our only hope now. We are fighting a multifront war. One front is to change out the extremists in Washington (and state govts), the other is to continue to push from the outside on multiple issues. .... there actually is a lot of grassroots resistance growing now, younger people who love this country, patriots, becoming activated, we just don't hear about it in our communities, let alone national news. ... and that resistance is frightening to those in power now.

At the moment, America is starting to look like a Cold War puppet state of Russia, with a POTUS too extreme for even the Koch bros!... haha if you can imagine! the Libertarian money behind Trump was from a pro-Russia Libertarian extremism even too extreme for regular far right New Republican Party extremism! The Republican Party that became a faction (we were warned about that by our Founding Leaders) has factions haha These things do happen though.