Allegories Of Greed

Back when the words on everyone’s lips was no hope in hell and Dad was up, the year is 2015 and it is fall as I remember the leaves where changing. “I’d vote for him… if I could”, and you want to see my shocked face, you’d a seen it back then, well, if you’d been sitting on the hood of my Dad’s champagne white Lincoln SUV with North Carolina plates.

He’d spent almost 50 of his 70 odd years of his life in Canada, and it stunned me to hear him say this, as no one I knew thought such crazy shite. Only my American father, being the only southerner most people know up here and I suppose that affords him some kind of special status in our neck of the woods, SW Ontario, right in the thick of the redneck belt, which lies just a little more south of the snow belt, and just at the heart of the once tobacco belt that drew him north, to begin with.

“Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.”
Aristophanes, Plutus

We all know the rumptus was speaking solely to his base, as that is now probably all he knows he can count on, and he knows that they’d follow him over a cliff.

Now, Putin on the other hand, who was HE speaking to?

Trumpster, lapped up offers that any other American in possession of even a smidge of patriotism would have balked at, but no, not him.

My new BFF has this great idea. We’ll send them that Ambassador to Russia they kicked out, and some other diplomats to be interrogated in Russia, and in turn, he’ll send those 12 Russians! See? Wonderful, wonderful. {I’m, ahem, paraphrasing}

Who would think THAT is a good thing? Throw your own people to the wolves, for what? A tyrannical oligarch that murders his own people, invades other countries that don’t want to be invaded, and meddles in everyone else’s blawdy affairs to put America to shame (literally), imagine that, succeeded BIG time, and this guy wants to invite him over for… why? Didn’t get enough snuggle time?

Diplomacy and making friends with the Russians is all good and well, stupid, but, does it require one kisses the rump of the guy who robbed your house? They attack the very heart of democracy, the U.S. elections, and he capitulates like a little toddler that wants a nummie?

These actions by Russia could have serious consequences. You weaken peoples faith in their elections, and you weaken the people’s faith in the results, and democracy gives way to something else – like autocracy, tyranny, dictatorship, or just an extended adjunct of Russia, maybe.

“You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it’s only in troublous times that you line your pockets.”
Aristophanes, The Knights

Can not bring myself to watch any FoxNews vids of late, not even if their part of some other newscast, as they have a tendency to completely wreck any faith in humanity I happened to muster back from the brink after working, peripherally, in retail, and I can feel my atoms atrophying whilst watching that squishy logic and far-right pablum, pandering and puppets of the prez, no thanks.

No, instead I just go to the DrudgeReport and read the headlines, click a few, gives me a snapshot of the trending conservative talking bits and bobs of the far right to the middle of the pack republican.

Well, yes, and of course the occasional chit-chat with my father.

One would maybe ask, what would a real estate wanna-be-tycoon, now president of the United States have to fear from a Russian?

He talks tough on China, was initially all tough talk with North Korea, and doesn’t seem to have any problem talking tough to allies, but put him in the room with Putin and he goes weak in the knees, and why is that?

Pee tapes, of the sort mentioned in the Steele Dossier? Maybe, and not to say that wouldn’t be embarrassing to him, more so, he is in debt to some oligarch up to almost a BILLION, and by oligarch read Russian mob, or so say’s one theory.

Putin is happy to sow confusion and distrust in America’s system, of course, but to assume that’s the basis of this operation is to overlook a much simpler motive: money.
The financial connections between Trump and various Russian banks and oligarchs (business elites with ties to the Kremlin) stretch back decades, which is likely a big reason why Trump won’t release his tax returns. Trump’s election, Gunitsky contends, presented Russian oligarchs with an opportunity to recoup losses and leverage Trump’s debts for political gain.
VOX.com – “Set aside Putin and follow the money”: a Russia expert’s theory of the Trump scandal – By Sean Illing, Updated Jan 3, 2018

Bada-boom-batta-bing…follow the money.

And I recall the convo with my Dad again that fall when that man down yonder was still just a new candidate making waves, and Dad saying that another thing he liked about Trump was that he couldn’t be bought.

Yeah, I almost snorted some of the contents of my coffee all over those beautiful champagne coloured seats.

It’s not that obstructing democracy wasn’t important; it’s that it was potentially a happy byproduct of these financial relationships. And I think for Trump it was always about the money. It’s just that now he’s undergoing a level of scrutiny that he’s never experienced before.
IBID

My father’s naiveté, such as it was, and understand I in no way question my father’s intelligence, but we all have our weakness’, our preconceived notions based on nothing, and wealth and the accumulation of more wealth, and the power that brings, and eventually it becomes an addiction that many do not really understand.

To be fair, I didn’t really understand it myself till I worked in the fast-paced inside sales for a Fortune 500 tech distributor, dealing with guys and gals with a taste for more in their mouths every day, and eventually learned that I should have been looking over my shoulder, and realized sooner I was swimming with sharks, but, too late, and thank god that part of my life is over. Good riddance to that greed, the anthill suburban hell I had to get through on my way to where I needed to be.

Seva Gunitsky
I think the idea of parallel interest is key here, that the Russian intelligence service, once they saw what Trump was doing, quickly latched on in order to push their own agenda, which was very similar to the Russian oligarchy agenda. And it’s hard to even separate the two because, as you probably know, in Russia the distinction between political power and economic power is very fuzzy.
IBID

Maybe that financial angle is key, it also makes a lot more sense that he would not want to release his tax returns. Because that would expose just how deeply embedded he is with Russian money.

I guess that if my father didn’t understand, he may understand more after this week. Such is love and politics, and war, and anything to do with money, hard, cold and indifferent as it is.

That the very undoing of the 45th could be for the thing that Dad thought the man was immune.

So, and maybe most importantly, going on the premise that Putin owns Trump, or, if you prefer, Trump owes somebody(s) in Russia, it serves Putin to make a spectacle of the President of the United States looking like a jackass, he and others paid a lot of money to see this, and Vlad now has himself a front row seat for the next act.

We’re not looking at so much an intricately hatched out conspiracy, but more of an interconnected mesh of networks that happened to all collude, or collide, maybe, at around the same time, and Putin, being the ex-KGB guys he is, took advantage of what was transpiring, on the ground, real-time?

Could all be a whole bunch of coincidences, lined up like soldiers in a shooting gallery, but, either way, people have taken advantage of the chaos that has been stirred up, and where the dust settles is anyone’s guess.

“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

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