Thoughts on Russiagate and Greater Corruption in the Trump Administration

Most people are at least loosely aware of Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.  These allegations are broad and, mostly, as of yet unproven.  Though there seems to be a substantial amount of growing evidence that something shady is or has taken place.  That being said many things have happened under Trump that are quite anti Russia.  These include putting military vessels in the Black Sea, increasing the NATO buildup on the Russian border, increasing sanctions against Russia, bombing and occupying Syria, pulling out of the Iran deal, and approved weapons being sent to Ukraine. I implore everyone to do their own research on the subject and come to their own conclusions, though all of these will likely come out soon.

The main result of this for the Democrats is that their emails were stolen.  Honestly I think that this was mostly a good thing.  It showed us how the Democratic party rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders, in the favor of Hilary Clinton.  If they had not done this they would not be in the position that they feel the need to defend themselves.

Now a number of pundits have began to “fight against Russia.”  Often their approach is to push for escalation with Russia. It seems that these individuals think that inching closer to war is a better option than deescalation.  They do this by viewing everything that Trump does in regards to Russia as a sweetheart deal without actually evaluating the situation based on its merits.  I have a few propositions for individuals who actually want to prevent meddling in our election, be that from Russia or any other country.

One of the ways they could pursue this is that Democrats could push for a cyber security bill.  If we care about protecting our information and democracy then we need to get serious about hacking.  It is well-known that many nations try to obtain the data of other nations through hacking, the US included.  In the current world we have found ourselves in we are mired in technology, it is imperative that we take drastic steps to defend ourselves from cyber attacks.  This is why the nuclear launch codes are on floppy discs.  This seems like a very outdated way to do things, but it is impossible to hack this way and therefore is much more secure.  The unfortunate thing about this is that no representatives seem to be pushing for this policy, even though it seems common sense to do so, though this is not the only thing many who love to scream about Russian interference seem to be overlooking.

Another potential policy that would certainly help with election security would be returning to paper ballots.  This may seem like we are reverting to an older, more archaic system, which in actuality is accurate.  However, it would be safer in terms of hacking.  Just like the aforementioned nuclear codes, paper ballots are unhackable.  This gives us more security.  This being said paper ballots come with their own set of issues, however they are much more manageable than trying to fight against hacking threats from other nations.

Again it seems that there are no elected officials who wish to pursue these types of measures to protect our elections, which they seem to think are under imminent threat.  They may be right about that, but escalating tensions with Russia does nothing but push us closer to war.  While I think it is pretty unlikely that we would go to war, especially of the nuclear variety, with Russia, it seems much more sensible to deescalate and push for more peace throughout the world.

Another note to this story is that while many who refuse to cease yelling themselves hoarse over Russia constantly turn a blind eye to other nations and powers that are literally influencing our elections.  One is Israel.  The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, just had an audio leak of him saying he made the US get rid of the Iran deal.  This is clearly bad for our nation and the world, and once again pushes us ever closer to war.  The Iran deal made us much safer, as it allowed bodies to oversee Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that levels of enrichment were far lower than those needed to  manufacture weapons.  Iran never broke the deal and all the US had to do was not sanction Iran and give them back money that we had stolen from them.  Now we have no idea how their program is going and they are in no way obligated to refrain from developing nuclear weapons.

Jared Kushner, he President’s son-in-law, has received around $30 million from Israeli banks.  There was also meeting between the Trump campaign and Israeli officials prior to Trump being sworn in, which is a clear violation of the law.  Not to mention the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something no other US president would do and negatively impacts Palestinians in Israel, though many of them talked about it.  Though no one seems to care about any of this because many, especially the Christian right, in America have a longstanding love affair with Israel.

Saudi Arabia is another nation that often influences US politics. Keep in mind 15 of the 19 hijackers during 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, something Trump used to detest before getting into bed with them.  During the campaign Trump registered 8 new businesses in the nation.  When top Saudi officials visited the US, they stayed in one of Trump’s hotels and paid him $300,000.  Of course it did not cost that much money.  One likely reason that these officials would spend such an inordinate amount of money is that shortly after Trump approved a $100 billion weapons deal with them.

If we want to look more inward we can also look at our own corporations.  The US has become an oligarchy.  Corporations can do essentially anything they want and studies show that “representatives” do what large corporations say at essentially every step, often in direct opposition to the American people.  One could look at gun control, the drug war, private prisons, single payer healthcare, and the list goes on.  This is not helped by the fact that companies can give politicians unlimited money because the Supreme Court said that money equals speech.  Good luck getting that to work for you.  Try buying drugs and saying “I wasn’t buying drugs, I was just saying that I am in favor of them with my money, it is just speech.”  The truth is that we have a two tiered system in America and it favors the rich massively.

You also have a better chance winning the lottery than seeing any of this mentioned on mainstream news.  This is why we have to spread the word and demand our representatives do their jobs.  You have to tell the news companies you frequent that they need to cover everything, not just Russiagate.  It doesn’t help anyone to drone on about Trump being a Russian puppet with insufficient evidence.  Focus on the things that we can already prove.  I’m not arguing that we stop investigating Russia ties, I’m only saying that there is already so much that you could get Trump on, use that instead of tying to connect dots that just aren’t there yet.  If you want to resist Trump, you have to do it intelligently and honestly, that is the only way to win.

 

Photo: Elijah O’Donell @elijahsad