Why I want to be wrong about Trump on Russia

There are many liberals who seem to be gloating at the idea that Trump could go down due to the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and his possible connection to it, but I am not one of those people. The idea that a hostile foreign government like Russia, led by a former KGB agent, could potentially have the leader of the free world compromised is a frightening thought that I hope I am wrong about.

Yet the way Trump acts, complaining about witch hunts and blaming the FBI for the school shooting in Florida because they are supposedly obsessed with the idea that he is in collusion with Russia, it makes him look guilty as sin. If I were truly innocent of treason yet accused of betraying this nation, I would want a full and fair investigation to prove that I was completely innocent, and I would want that investigation to be above reproach. Yet it seems that Trump is trying every tactic to deflect attention to the investigation and to try and trip it up anyway he can. Does a completely innocent person do this?

I’m 47 years old as of this coming May, and I remember living through the Reagan and both Bush administrations. While I might not have agreed with their policies or their politics, I never once doubted their commitment to this nation nor their loyalty to it. Same goes for the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations, and for the record I discount Nixon and Ford as I was too young to remember them. For the first time in my life, I seriously worry that the president of the United States doesn’t have the best interests of this nation first and foremost in his heart and in his mind while working in the Oval Office.

Then Trump comes along and it seems chaos and anarchy reign inside the Beltway, and the unpredictability that we see day to day from the White House has made me worry about the short and long term future of this nation. For someone whose motto during the campaign was to “make America great again”, he has seemingly done more to make us less so than to improve our standing in the world, and I sometimes wonder if this were not by design of Vladimir Putin and his cabal in the Kremlin.

I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but this doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy as much as an intelligence operation designed to undermine America’s position in the world by finding ways to split Americans apart from each other in a myriad of ways. We’ve all heard about Russian hackers and Russian bots on Twitter and the fake news posted on Facebook and other social media by Russian agents during the election. We’re told by Trump’s supporters that there is nothing to this, but yet the evidence of this existing continues to mount. If there is nothing there, then why do we keep finding more proof that Russia is trying to undermine America through social media and other platforms?

The question that sends a chill down my spine though is this: Did Trump get help during the election from the Russians, either directly or indirectly? Even if their interference didn’t help push him to victory, the very idea that they could try and influence our election is chilling and needs to be thwarted. But if they did help propel him to victory, then it’s a highly disturbing threat to the very essence of this democracy.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope that Trump and his associates had nothing to do with the Russian interference in the election. For the good of this nation, I hope they won it cleanly and without interference. Because if they did NOT win it cleanly, and they actively worked with Russia during the campaign, then we find ourselves in something that could potentially be far worse than Watergate ever could have been.

But my gut instinct, which has a legendary reputation of being right when I really don’t want it to be, is screaming at me that Trump and his cohorts are deep into this mess, farther than even I could imagine. It is a feeling I don’t want to have and hope to God Almighty that it’s wrong, because the implications of it being right could wipe away what we know as America forever and turn us into something unrecognizable.

We stand at a difficult time in this country, one that makes the aftermath of 9/11 seem simple and easy. Our nation hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War, and it seems that Trump not only doesn’t want to bridge these gaps but is relishing in the friction. This is not the behavior of someone who wants to lead a unified nation, but of someone who wants to help his allies to better those who oppose him.

I’ve never felt this uncomfortable and uneasy with any president before, and it is scary. I disagreed with a lot of what Reagan and the Bushes stood for, and I even had my qualms about what Carter, Clinton and Obama did at times, but I never once felt that this nation’s survival was at serious risk, not even in the early 1980s when Reagan’s rhetoric with the Soviets threatened to turn the cold war hot at times.

Ever since Gorbachev came along and helped thaw relations between the now former Soviet Union with the West, I’ve not had to worry about the idea of nukes falling on us like I did when I was a kid and made the mistake of watching The Day After. Now, though, we are facing the prospect that we could see North Korea launch nukes at the United States because Trump goads their “Glorious Leader” into a fight. We came way too close last year, and I wonder sometimes if there wasn’t someone who was lobbying Trump to strike.

Think about this: who benefits most if the United States and North Korea have a nuclear exchange? If any American city were to be hit with a nuke from North Korea, or anyplace in the country were to get hit, the consequences of such an action would be unprecedented in our history. Even though China has pledged not to stop us should we retaliate against a North Korean attack, if we hit them with nukes too, how long would Beijing sit out the fight while their next door neighbor and ally is getting acres of its territory and countless numbers of its people vaporize by atomic fire.

The answer is easy: Russia benefits most, and that’s why we’re seeing this division being sewn among us. It is the dream scenario for a member of the KGB to bring America, and potentially Europe, to its knees, allowing Russia to become a superpower again like it was during the Soviet Union era. And it this scenario takes down China a few pegs too, so much the better for Moscow.

My God, I hope I’m wrong about this. I hope that Trump gets some backbone and tells Putin to keep his greasy KGB hands off our nation and its elections. Congress should be doing what it can to secure our voting booths and making sure that no one can hack into them to sway an election.

My fear is, though, that I’m NOT wrong.