February 24, 2020

Las Vegas . . .

Americans who now remain in any degree infatuated with Trump must make a life changing decision. Any unable to understand the danger of openly supporting him as he openly applauds Putin will increasingly find themselves as isolated inside America as he is becoming isolated throughout the world.

If America’s citizens, their Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents had read the book “Putin’s People,” which others and I too reported on recently, they could have been able to discourage Putin’s War. But, far too many American financial and petroleum corporations, perhaps unwittingly but eagerly, accepted billions of funds from KGB-produced fake corporations laundering Russian Rubles into American dollars.

Russia’s current petroleum strength matters not only to Europe but to the U.S. Our social and political system is so entangled by self-serving personal and corporate profit interests that its ability to function has essentially become tenuous. With the highest-financed military in the world, we did not win in Vietnam. The same for Afghanistan. Further, we have a slippery grasp of nature’s mastery of the universe, including the dangerous weather of our tiny earthly home base.

Regarding Putin, little rational potential exists for us to stop his war if we continue to treat him as a man capable of behaving with any reason or logic making sense to us. If we don’t stop being intellectually disabled by our own corporations’ avaricious profit lust, our politicians’ Republican/Democrat feud, and – most important – our U.S. oil industry’s financial stake in Russia’s petroleum business, only fragile potential exists for us to stop him from the manufacture of increasing major worldwide military havoc.

What do we have on our hands? A Russian president whose entire government is made of KGB thugs similar to Hitler’s head-bashing team. Also, a former American president who today openly praises Putin and actually stands a chance of being reelected. Some 30 million Americans still support Mr. Trump, even as he promotes the “genius” of Mr. Putin.

We seem so hypnotized by our fanatical U.S. consumer society that we have blindfolded ourselves to our planet’s reality. Our Internet, TV, and digital/print publications are so sales oriented that when we reach out for real news, we are preemptively barraged with disgusting ads selling the silliest things to us in the silliest ways.

Cartoons, singing commercials, gimmicky deals, outright cons – American business has become a primary international seller of ignorance. Republican politicians remain addicted to a fool who once finagled himself quite cleverly into the Presidency. Democratic politicians remain addicted to the shallow, self-serving corporate marketing that dominates our lives.

Our U.S. political culture has become such a dubiously-functional phenomenon, we appear largely incapable of objectively grasping that the planet is ecologically, economically, philosophically, politically, and humanly in serious trouble. We need deep reflection and considered response. Neither is a strong point of our rampant consumer society.

However, hope stubbornly lifts its ever-optimistic head.

Putin may have awakened the world with his czar-like viewpoint that war offers him a solution to his authoritarian aches and pains. Although his oligarch entourage of billionaire buddies has invested billions, if not trillions, of rubles and dollars into American and other nations’ corporations, he now has likely alienated all of them. Perhaps they have finally seen that he is not a real corporate team player.

The hopeful international proponents of free democratic governments are surely capable of stopping Putin – if we can actively become organized and concretely accept that highly competent military defense is necessary. The big wild card is China. It is still ambivalent about Putin. It has $15 billion in annual trade with Ukraine, but shares with Putin his dislike of NATO. Even as Putin invades Ukraine, China has been expressing publicly it supports a diplomatic peaceful conclusion to this war.

Nonetheless, should China conclude it is not able to see that its future fortunes depend on engaging with America, Europe and our allies, may we all soon see up-close exactly what a 2020 world-war looks like? That question is above my pay grade. However, as the various opposing autocratic and democratic countries select which side they wish to align themselves with, let me repeat that one thing is clear.

All Americans who openly remain in any degree infatuated with Mr. Trump are now facing a lifechanging decision. Any of them unable to clearly understand the danger of supporting Trump as he continues to openly applaud Putin are going to find themselves as isolated by most other Americans as Russia is becoming isolated by most of the free world.

A possible silver lining?

Maybe.

Hal