Republican ‘Love Fest’ With Putin’s Russia: A White/Christian Thing?
American Mystery: How has Trump managed to ‘sell’ Putin & Russia to a ‘freedom loving’ Republican base?
After trying to make some sense of the state of affairs between the United States under Donald J. Trump, and the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin — failing to see how this sudden (forced) rapprochement makes any logical geopolitical or economic sense — I am left wondering. Is the curious ‘love affair’ with the thuggish Russian dictator born of something far more disturbing and dark than merely the blind fealty of Trump supporters to everything Trump ordains, or the abject cowardice of a Republican Congress unwilling to do little more than piss and moan,…the loudest being from those about to depart the halls and cloakrooms of the Capitol.
I can’t quite buy the simple proposition put forward by some, like Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron Reagan, that Republicans (Trumplicans?) ‘would vote for Vladimir Putin over any Democrat for president.’
“They really aren’t in touch with reality. The most important thing to them [is that Trump] seems to hate the same people that they hate,” Ron Reagan told Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Thursday. “That’s the real Trump derangement syndrome.”
On the other hand, they like the people Trump likes, Reagan said. Russian President Putin’s popularity is rising, he noted.
“If it was left just up to Trump’s base, they would elect Vladimir Putin as president of the United States over virtually anybody with a D after their name,” he added. “If Trump seems to love Putin, they’ll love Putin, too.”
I suspect that there are deep-seated cultural, religious, and racial reasons, far too complex within the political DNA of Trump’s overwhelmingly White and Christian ‘base’ to so easily dismiss them as a one-time election anomaly that delivered us to a Trump Presidency.
Indeed, that broad social dynamic is combined with, and enabled by a less discriminatory, but money-conflicted American oligarchy. A corporatist investor class all-too-eager to cash in on their all-in bet, that President Trump is their best chance to eviscerate the federal government and unwind a century of American socioeconomic progress. Progress achieved in the decades since FDR, with a host of government-backed programs and agencies that helped bring us out of the darkest days of the Great Depression; later enhanced — post World War II — by Eisenhower; JFK; and LBJ, which saw the beginnings of the paradigm ideological shift in America’s two major political parties.
So then, what is it that makes a former KGB colonel, thuggish dictator of a nation with a smaller GDP than that of Italy, and an unquenchable thirst to fulfill his life-long dream of restoring Mother Russia to the global greatness of the Soviet Union — albeit as a neo-Fascist Kleptocracy rather than a Communist monolith — so darned attractive to so many people who lived through the Cold War and the very real threat of nuclear annihilation?
“Q: President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election? And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”
“PRESIDENT PUTIN: (As interpreted.) Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.” (from official White House transcript of Helsinki Summit)
Russia, proper, is an overwhelmingly White, Christian nation; recognizing the fact that many of the former Soviet Union states (e.g., the ‘stans’) were (and are) dominated by vastly different ethnicities, religions, and languages which were never quite accepted by Russians as their moral, human equal.
I recently read an outstanding, slightly profane opinion essay by Michael Harriot, writing for The Root, which explores (and exposes) some of the harsh truths about Trump, and ‘Trumpism’ as we have come to know it…
“Like this country, Donald Trump is a mirage. His greatness is a figment of a collective white imagination that envisions a bright, shining star where there is only a dumpster fire.
He is a first-rate con artist. He is a counterfeit, autocratic dullard impersonating a commander in chief. He is every white foot that has ever been placed on a black neck. He is hate personified and incompetence exemplified. He is the imbecilic farce of a white man convinced of his own supremacy.” ~ Michael Harriot
The author makes many good points. Too many I fear. The small saving grace, for our future as a nation however, is that not all Whites aspire to reassert the racial (or religious) inequalities of our past,…or embrace the mirage that there isn’t any in today’s America.
Much of this inbred American disease of racism and religious bigotry is eroded daily,…in the normal workaday interactions of our younger generations; living a more racially, culturally diverse lifestyle than their parents and grandparents, in a much more integrated global society. The current, aging (largely rural) GOP population is struggling mightily with that reality, while blindly supporting a narcissistic cretin like Donald J. Trump, who promises them a MAGA return to the “good old days” — that never were all that ‘great’ for the ancestors of those Americans who were not White, nor necessarily Christian.
We are in the death throes of that struggle, similar to the last gasp struggle of Apartheid supporters in South Africa. Time will only tell just how coarse or bloody our uniquely American version of that struggle will turn out. But — long-term — the numbers (demographics) are on the side of change for the better, even as we suffer the current injustices of an angry, nativist GOP, clinging tenaciously to its gross, gerrymandered imbalance of political power. America’s youth may yet set us free of the old prejudices and privileges of a steadily fading White majority.
But, in the meantime, we must continue to resist this craven, illicit love affair with a tyrannical despot, yearning for world legitimacy through outright military conquest (Crimea; Ukraine; Syria) and its cyber-warfare undermining of all of the democratically-leaning governments of their European neighbors. And now,…even the United States of America.
Moreover, we must overcome our present domestic danger, as Mr. Harriot sardonically quotes — about the American presidency — a sage political observer from our checkered historical past:
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H.L. Mencken, July 26, 1920
We must march. We must vote. We must continue to #Resist!