A Thought Exercise on Russia

Here are some things we know:

- America is not a conservative-leaning country.  Conservatives constitute about a third of the country.  Support for progressive ideals like gay marriage and universal health care actually make up majorities of the country.  By population nearly three million more voters in the last election were progressive than conservative - they just happened to live in the wrong states.

- The seemingly overwhelming power of conservatism in this country is institutional.  That is, conservatives have won state houses and gerrymandered their districts, denied judicial appointments during Democratic administrations and then quickly packed them in under Republicans, and so forth.  Much of it is crooked, but some of it is also not crooked, just throwbacks from an era when conservatives had great power and reformed instutions to enshrine that power.  For instance: the electoral college, which favors rural voters over urban.

- Russia had a hand in getting Donald Trump elected president in 2016.  Possibly they hacked voting-adjacent systems like registration rolls and the like.  It's supposedly impossible to hack actual voting systems, but that hardly matters if, say, a vote-counting system is hacked, or someone is not allowed to vote because the registration system was hacked.  But let's say, for the sake of argument, they didn't influence anything directly.  We know with near certitude that the Russian government launched a disinformation campain to help Trump win.  A reasonable person can assume Russia desired a Trump win.

Here's a question, though.  Why did Russia want Trump to win?

Let's take a departure from orthodoxy.  The general assumption, at least among liberals and progressives, is that Russia wanted Trump in charge because Trump is a stooge who would favor Russia.  Certainly his behavior doesn't belie that fact, which makes it seem like a stronger conclusion.  Rescinding our sanctions against Russia and consistently praising Putin seems like a fruit basket sent from the winner of a prize to his greatest patron.

But let's be real.  Russia didn't organize a massive disinformation campaign and possibly more in order to receive a fruit basket.  They did it for geopolitical reasons.  And having a compliant stooge in the White House, while useful, is not exactly a grand slam.  In a Third World dictatorship, sure, that's all you have to do.  In a system with free elections and institutional checks and balances, it's just a start.

Let's consider another unfortunate fact:

- Russia is almost certainly going to interfere in the 2018 mid-terms.  And we have done literally nothing to shore up our election systems against this.  It has been entirely in this administration's interests to pretend like nothing happened, and therefore, nothing to fix it has happened.

So back to my departure from orthodoxy.  Putting a stooge in the White House is a great first step, but it's only a first step, in any overarching Russian plan.  My suspicion is that Putin isn't interested in having a buffoon in charge of the U.S. because he's compliant and he'll do what Putin wants.  Because no matter how compliant Trump may subconsciously be, or even consciously desire to be, even if he disregards every democratic norm (what a shock that would be, eh?) at a minimum popular pressure from his supporters would prevent him from cavorting through the flowers arm-in-arm with Putin.  The GOP has always been hawkish about Russia, and as recently as 2012 their presidential candidate declared Russia the greatest geopolitical threat in the world.  (Funny, isn't it, that one way to defang such a hawkish party would be to put a pro-Russia clown like Trump in charge - but don't try to tell them they're being led by the nose.)

No, My suspicion is that Putin wants to knock the U.S. out of its role as a global leader.  Or at least lift the pressure that having the U.S. in such a role produces on Russian desires, i.e. invading Crimea.  I'm trying not to use apocalyptic, sky-is-falling language here, but to be blunt, the goal is not to make America compliant, it's to cripple America.  

Just my thought, anyway.  I have no proof except logic.

So here's the next question: if the goal is to cripple America, not to bend it to Russia's will as everybody seems to think, what's the next step in the plan?  Surely Russia didn't say, "Hey, let's meddle in 2016 and then never do it again."  In fact, they likely said, "Shit, it worked so well in 2016 let's keep doing it as long as we can get away with it!"  

Orthodoxy seems to think that they'll shore up Trump's win by packing Congress with Republicans.  And while I, as a leftist, think that Republican rule in and of itself is destructive and disruptive, and most on the left have come to the same conclusion, I think it's an erroneous one.  Russians aren't blinded by American ideological proclivities.  Remember: if I'm right, all Russia cares about is sowing chaos and leaving America gazing so deeply into its own navel that it trips over its own feet.

So the question is, what would cause the most chaos next?  Well, shit, son, not a Republican congress.  A Democratic congress.  If the Democrats were in charge, they would start leveling all sorts of charges at Trump.  And they wouldn't get any laws passed, and it wouldn't matter, because any laws they got passed Trump would feel honor-bound to veto.  (Well, except that he has no sense of honor, but I can't think of a better word except spite.  So, spite-bound, maybe.)

With Trump in the White House and the self-proclaimed Resistance in the Dome, business in Washington would grind to an absolute halt.  The gridlock of the last decade and a half would seem like a fucking eight-lane super highway by comparison.  America would be unable to do a whole lot of anything.  With its leader constantly in court and under siege, he sure as shit wouldn't be weighing in on any moves in Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan.

Meanwhile, the left would be eating it up with a spoon.  We'd be cheering so triumphantly at every trial and tribulation of that orange-haired fucknut that we probably wouldn't even notice that our influence on the world stage was waning into a starved, Gollum-like shadow of its former self.  Europe and Asia would be houses with the guard dog chasing its own tail.  Sure, Russia would still have to contend with China and Germany, but without American interests being defended, all of that would go a lot more smoothly.

It's my expectation that the Democrats will win big in November.  Not just big, but 'uge.  'Uge enough to start rasslin' with the Executive Branch and turn the whole country into a big WWE arena.  And while everybody's watching the show in the amphitheater, the Russians will just be sneaking across the street and knocking over as many gas stations as they can get away with.

Or maybe then, purely in their own self-interest, conservatives will get interested in foreign meddling in our democracy.  Maybe they'll stand shamefaced and admit that while it was temporarily in their favor, they never should have sold out to Russia.  Maybe they'll change their tune, start deciding that we need to shore up all of our 18th century voting methodologies, and work towards a more perfect, democratic system.

Yeah fucking right.  It'll be the rasslin' match thing.