It used to be said in the early 1970s that Richard Nixon was the only U.S. president who could go to China and initiate detente with the Soviet Union. That’s because in the course of his political career Nixon had built solid anti-communist credentials, whereas if a Democratic president had tried to pursue a similar course, he would have been called soft on communism.
The Republican Party has been so vociferous about being patriotic and solidly American – and, as for example Ann Coulter has done, repeatedly accusing Democrats of treason – that it can now openly side with enemies of the United States of America.
Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam to protest American military involvement in Indochina, is still being vilified as Hanoi Jane. When Donald Trump praises Vladimir Putin, declaring him a stronger leader than his own president, he still enjoys full support of the Republican base. When he promises to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea and remove economic sanctions on Putin and his entourage, he is hailed by his stars-and-stripes draped supporters. When he claims – in his usual BS manner, without a shred of evidence – that international investigators are wrongly accusing Russia of shooting down the Malaysian airliner, the chant “USA! USA!” at his rallies doesn’t get muted – as though he is indeed making America great again rather than currying favor with his buddy Putin.
Trump’s invitation to Putin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails is the equivalent of calling on ISIS to stage a terrorist attack on US soil. In some ways it’s even more heinous: he’s called on a foreign strongman to undermine America’s democracy and system of self-government, which for nearly three hundred years have been at the heart of its identity. That this man has not been kicked off the public stage by his own party is the greatest indication of America’s moral decline.
Republicans may object to the description of Trump as a conservative Republican. Some neo-con pundits have repudiated him and even declared that they would vote for Hillary Clinton. But elected Republican officials, with only a handful of exceptions, are squarely in Trump’s corner. Paul Ryan in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate are Trumpets. Senator John McCain, the most consistent Cold Warrior in Washington and a critic of Putin, is a Trump supporter. And, as of last week, so is the ultra-conservative Ted Cruz.
Some people may claim that Russia is not an enemy. When Jane Fonda went to Hanoi, the United States was at war with Vietnam and Vietnam held American POWs, whereas there is no war with Russia. Officially, Russia is not an enemy.
Well, officially American military presence in Vietnam wasn’t a war either. At least it had never been declared. As to Russia, if you want to know the opinion of the other side, you need only watch Russian state television. You’ll see Russian politicians, government officials, members of the Duma and presidential advisors declaring that Russia is fighting Americans in Ukraine – even though it is facing Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield.
Washington merely supports Ukraine, but it effectively sponsors moderate factions of Syrian rebels. It bears considerable responsibility for their safety. By bombing them Russia wages a proxy war on America. By killing hundreds of civilians and bombing hospitals it commits war crimes, which the United States, in its capacity as a world leader, is obligated to stop.
In a very real sense, Trump is a traitor to his country. His surrogates and supporters are his enablers. This includes those former and current members of United States military who prefer Trump over Clinton by nearly 20 percentage points.
Trump and Putin may have different styles – Trump is a boisterous, loud-mouth bully while Putin is a gray mouse acting on the sly – but they are remarkably similar in their essence. Both are poorly educated and quite ignorant of the way the modern world works. Both are thin-skinned and have a knack for holding grudges. As politicians, neither has a plan for making his respective country great despite claiming that he does – a secret one, of course. Both ad-lib and improvise and hope for the best.
Both hypocritically advocate family values even though the have dumped their old wives and taken up with younger belles. Putin is allegedly chasing skirts in secret while Trump does so openly, lasciviously and with gusto – until they bear him kids, when he seems to grow disgusted with them.
Trump and Putin share with Hitler aversion to alcohol, fear of germs and total amorality. In fact, they leave an impression of not even knowing right from wrong – a kind of moral castrati.
Both declare themselves patriotic while robbing money from their own nations. Putin is doing it on a grand scale: he has created a massive kleptocracy that has destroyed and perverted Russia’s social, political and economic institutions. So far, Trump has been pilfering comparatively little – a swindle here, a tax avoidance scheme there. But he’ll surely ratchet it up if he becomes president. He might quickly outdo Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych, if not Putin.
Both Putin and Trump hate America, its democratic principles, its live-and-let-live tolerance and its rule of law that at least tries to keep immoral thugs like them from gaming the system and exploiting the weak. When Trump talks about America, he sometimes echoes Putin and sounds as venomous and dismissive of it as Putin’s propaganda.
But there is an important difference: Putin and his supporters hate a country which they regard as their enemy. Trump and his supporters hate their own country.
