America, resembling a mental patient inside some government-run psychiatric ward, truly believes the Russian bogeyman is out to get it. What will it take to shake the superpower from its delirium?
The question must be finally asked – on the proverbial shrink’s couch if necessary – if America’s deep-seated Russophobia, which has been gnawing away at the nation’s brain since Soviet times, is symptomatic of some deeper psychological disorder. After all, a nation that is loaded to the eyeballs on antidepressants, armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry and bursting at the seams with random violence could never be confused as a model sovereign state. So at the risk of sounding politically incorrect, has the United States of America finally cracked?
When Black Lives Matters protesters, for example, took to the streets to condemn excessive police force, they were not motivated to action by their own volition, of course, but rather by the invisible hand of Russia; when Instagram carried advertisements for “LGBT-positive sex toys,” that was the dastardly doings of Russian hackers, attempting to “sow discord” from sea to shining sea; and when Hillary Clinton suffered defeat and humiliation against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, it was not because she was the least popular candidate; nor was it because a majority of Americans were dreaming of a wall on the porous Mexican border. Of course not. The reason she lost was because Russia. Period. Full stop. End of story.
Even as the anti-Russia witch hunt was finally laid to rest by the two-year Mueller investigation, many Americans seem to slip further and further away from a safe space known as reality, imagining Russian fingerprints on everything where there are none. Even the perennial problem of American racism, which has been around since at least the days of the African slave trade, is believed to be the dream works of the Kremlin, according to none other than Kamala Harris, a Democratic contender for the highest office in the land.
According to such thick-headed arguments, many decades of US racial tensions – from the Civil Rights era, to the Rodney King riots, to the OJ Simpson murder trial, to the Black Lives Matters marches – are all of little actual consequence. The real problem is Russia flaming racial tensions on social media. It takes a very special kind of mind to believe such nonsense.
The non-stop anti-Russia campaign, however, which amounts to nothing less than vulgar racism, extends beyond the borders of politics and media into the world of entertainment.
“Basically, the Russians take hold of any division in our society – racial prejudice, class war, fear of vaccines, any division that has two sides – and they work it,” Crosby warned in the Daily Beast. “They… say awful stuff about whites, and then they turn around and play white supremacist KKK crazies and say we should ship all blacks back to Africa. They do it with every issue they can. Their plan is to divide us and… render us helpless.”
Russians would respond to Crosby by asking why, with all this control they purportedly enjoy over the White House, does Trump continue to expand NATO up to Russia’s welcome mat, while continuing with an aggressive sanctions campaign against Russian companies?
If such unfounded comments prove anything, it is that the full-scale media assault against Russia has worked, and many people are convinced that the Kremlin is awake at night cooking up new schemes to divide Americans against themselves.
My personal take on all this madness is that the liberals understand they have little chance of unseating Trump in 2020. Their candidates, as well as their platforms, inspire no confidence whatsoever. I would guess they fully comprehend their desperate political state and that is why they continue to push the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory, which ultimately makes them appear ridiculous. Never mind what it is doing to the bilateral relationship between the two nuclear-armed countries.
Indeed, if by some unpredictable fluke of political nature the Democrats do legitimately win in 2020 – and I emphasize the word ‘legitimately’ – I shudder to think what will transpire then between the US and Russia.