Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
No. Trump was a useful idiot for Putin. Still is. The Ukraine tragedy/criminal war is something different.
Think of it this way... Putin has certain chess moves he can make in his quest to expand or protect Russia's sphere of influence. While Trump was in office, he could blunt NATO, the biggest threat to that influence, through Trump's policies. With Trump out of office, he uses a different move - threat of war, and now war - to blunt NATO.
My criticism of the media was twofold: (1) Russia isn't an existential threat to us; (2) Trump was not in control of any of the alleged "collusion" (a very vague word, btw). I think this war validates (1) as we've seen Russia's ragtag army perform miserably so far, embarrassing Putin before the world. And I stand by (2) because the more information that comes out the more we see Trump was the textbook definition (Soviet-coined term, btw) of a useful idiot. The Russians fed him crumbs that helped him beat Hillary and they used the promise of more of them to maneuver him. To use a Breaking Bad analogy, the media wanted to make Trump "the one who knocks." In reality, he was more Saul Goodman. Hustling for the next dollar, or to get past the next political obstacle (usually created by his own fuck-up).
I agree his posture toward Putin looks worse, particularly his recent lauding of Putin's "genius."
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Well, of course Russia is very much an existential threat to us (which is why the people who want a no-fly zone over Ukraine are being stupid).
I asked a question about the real world -- the relationship between Trump and Russia -- and you instead started talking about your criticism of the media. That's clarifying. Instead of talking about what actually did happen involving Trump and Russia, e.g., see the Solnit article I linked to, you'd rather rebut some narrower set of claims about Trump's "control" over "collusion." You're not pro-Russia, and you're not really anti-anti-Trump, you're anti-media.
I find it hard to have this conversation with you, because it's hard for me to tell what you're talking about or reacting to. It's less that you see "the media" saying things with which you disagree, and more that you have snorted some lines of Taibbi or Greenwald complaining about the media and you excitedly agree.
At the risk of changing the subject to talk about the real world, I am extraordinarily disheartened by the war, even if it's clear that the Russian military initially underperformed.
See this interview with Russia expert Fiona Hill in which she explains what Putin is trying to do. She also explains why she thinks Putin might use nuclear weapons, just to bring things back to the existential-threat issue.
eta:
The WSJ article quoted in this tweet seems interesting too, but I don't have a subscription and my company is too cheap to get one.
