- All challenging summits are rocky. Sure, you can stroll up to the highest point in Kansas and wave to the cows along the way, and your biggest obstacle will be dodging their pies. But the challenging summits are all rocky. The footing is unsure.
- The view from those summits will reveal things you'll never see if you don't pursue the summit.
President Trump's summit with Vladimir Putin was challenging, no doubt, and it was a no-win proposition in terms of the reception from Dems, thanks to Sore Loser Syndrome. Had he canceled, they'd have criticized him for that. Had he gotten Putin to give up his nukes, get out of Crimea, and give us back the uranium that Hillary gave him, the left would find something wrong with that: "He ripped Crimea from the arms of Mother Russia!"
As one pundit put it, Donald Trump could walk across the Potomac, and Nancy Pelosi would say, "Trump can't swim."
I don't know all that transpired in the summit. All we have to go on is the brief presser that followed. Beyond that, the left (if they even watched the presser, and they weren't in the room where the meeting took place either) has formed its opinions based on what Anderson Cooper, John King, Rachel Maddow and Christiane Amanpour have told them to think. They think that everything that comes out of the mouths of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi is manna from heaven. (Of course, Pelosi has so much trouble forming a coherent sentence that her words come out scrambled, which begs the question: can you scramble manna, like eggs?)
Even John McCain called Trump's press conference "One of the most disgraceful performances by an American President." Not that McCain, a failed Presidential candidate, would have much expertise in that regard. Look, John McCain is a war hero. But he's also a member of the Keating Five (google it - we had a financial crisis back in the 1980s as well, kiddos, and at the time it was as hard on our economy and banking system as the more recent one that was architected by Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Maxine Waters).
But more to the point today, McCain's deep hatred of Trump over Trump's comments about McCain's military service - an admittedly loathsome comment that Trump should never have made - has led to the "R" behind McCain's name looking like a double-amputee "R," that now resembles a "D."
The left has its collective hair on fire over Trump having downplayed Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, based on Putin's denial.
Well, he made those statements while he was appearing with Putin. What's he going to say, "He denies it, but I think he's full of borscht?"
Look, we've heard what Trump said. We haven't yet seen what he'll do. Will he lift sanctions? Doubtful. Will he impose more? Maybe, but we need Russia's oil interests to help us neutralize Iran, which is a greater threat to us at this point.
(I know the left now disagrees with that, calling Russia our greatest threat, but it wasn't so long ago that President Obama was dismissive when that was suggested by Mitt Romney: "The 1980s called, and they want their foreign policy back." Obama certainly never treated Russia as though it were a threat, and he was equally dismissive in the days before the 2016 election of the notion that our elections could be tampered with by anyone.)
Trump has been vilified with accusations of treason, and the usual petty name-calling: "Comrade Trumpsky," etc. When Hillary sold our uranium interests to Russia, did the right call her "Clintonev?"
And when Obama told Medvedev - in front of a live mic - that after he was re-elected, he'd have more flexibility to work with Putin, did those on the right call him "Obamavitch?" The left believe that when candidate Trump jokingly invited Russia to find Hillary's deleted emails, it was an open signal that he wanted Russia's assistance in getting elected. Could not Obama's statement to Medvedev have been a similar invitation? "Help me get re-elected, and we can work together." Consider Medvedev's reply: "I will transmit this information to Vladimir."
No, I don't believe Obama was asking for help, any more than I believe that Trump's campaign trail joke was a similar request. (No matter how stupid the left thinks Donald Trump is, nobody would be stupid enough to make that ask in public. Not even Maxine Waters.) Both are half-baked conspiracy theories.
A side note: when you start throwing around unsupported terms like "treason," "impeachment," and the inevitable comparisons to Hitler, you've lost the argument before it has a chance to get started.
As to the summit itself, let's go back to the analogy of the views you gain at a summit. Speaking from experience, the better I get to know someone through one-on-one conversations with them, the better able I am to tell when they're lying to me, and to figure out what to do about it.
FDR met with Josef Stalin in Yalta. Stalin was far worse than anything we've seen from Russia's leadership since.
JFK met with Krushchev in Vienna. Krushchev wasn't much better than Stalin.
Reagan met with Gorbachev, and was the only U.S. President that's been able to make much of a difference in U.S.-Russian relations.
And Obama also met with Putin, on several occasions, the first on Putin's home turf in Moscow during the infamous "Apology Tour." The result of that relationship, which began with Obama apologizing to Putin for America being America? The annexation of Crimea, the Syrian civil war, the banning of U.S. adoptions of Russian children, to name a few.
Why did those leaders - at least the first three - meet with their Russian counterparts? To gain insights - the views that only come with pursuing a challenging and rocky summit. Reagan got results (which didn't last); the others didn't. And Trump likely won't, either - or if he does, those results won't last.
The reason lies with Russia itself.
I recently read an excellent historical novel called, Russka, by Edward Rutherfurd. Okay, yes, it's a novel. But if you've read any of Rutherfurd's other works, you know that his works of fiction are based on historical fact. Rutherfurd - the nom de plume for Francis Edward Wintle - studied history at Cambridge University, and went on to do graduate work at Stanford, then was a political researcher before launching his writing career. One can learn much of world history reading his books, which corroborate and expand upon everything I learned in the numerous world history courses I've taken.
I've read several of his works, including some about places I've visited, studied, and whose histories I have some knowledge of, including Sarum (about the Salisbury region of England), London, Paris and New York. I've also further researched specifics regarding his novels about those places, and found them to be historically accurate, his observations about the people of those places insightful. Similarly, I researched a number of the things he wrote about in Russka, and found them to be accurate as well.
The reason that democratic reforms have never worked in Russia - and the reason that communism was able to work as it did, keeping the people oppressed under dictatorial rule - is that the Russian people know nothing different from centralized control. From the Tatars in the east to Poland in the west, through the tsars and the Bolsheviks and the Communists and on through Putin - the Russian people have always been ruled by centralized governments, for many centuries.
In addition, Russia is largely a vast nation of villages that haven't changed much since medieval times. You can see this in any documentary about the Russian hinterlands. It's a huge country, with nearly two times the land mass of the U.S. or Canada. Yet its population is about half that of the U.S., ranking ninth in the world. Its population density is nine people per square kilometer. Its urban population percentage is 73%, meaning that more than a quarter of its population is spread across those ancient villages that span its 6.6 million square miles of land.
I had the opportunity to listen to former Federal Reserve Governor Wayne Angell, who grew up on a Kansas farm, describe his visit to Russia after the Iron Curtain fell. He relayed two stories that were very telling.
Their small convoy of vehicles approached a railroad crossing in the middle of the Russian steppe. You could see and hear for miles around on that vast, treeless, flat terrain. There was no sign of a train, yet the cross-arm - which was operated manually by a guard in a wooden booth - was down, blocking the road. (Bear in mind this was in the 1990s, when as far as I know, all railroad crossings in the U.S. were automated.)
Dr. Angell grabbed his translator and went to speak with the guard, asking him why the cross-arm was down. The guard replied that it was 3:00, and that his instructions were to lower the cross-arm fifteen minutes before the arrival of the scheduled 3:15 train, and leave it down until the train had passed.
Dr. Angell asked how often the 3:15 train was on time. "Never," was the reply. He then asked how late the train typically was, and the guard indicated that it was sometimes more than an hour late - thus the road remained blocked for that time. He then asked why the guard didn't just wait until he heard or saw the train, since he could see and hear for such a long distance on the steppe, and he'd have plenty of time to lower it before the train arrived and cars were at peril.
The guard shrugged and said, "Those aren't my instructions."
Mind you, this was after the Iron Curtain had fallen. Yet nothing of Russia's infrastructure had changed. I doubt it has since across much of that country.
The other story was of Dr. Angell's group approaching some women harvesting wheat - something the former Kansas farmer knew something about. The women were using sickles, cutting the wheat by hand. He got out of his car, translator again in tow, and observed them. Each woman would swing her sickle once, cutting a small amount of wheat, then carry it to the wooden cart that they'd use to bring in their harvest. Then they'd go back, pick up the sickle, and take another whack.
Dr. Angell removed his jacket and handed it to his translator, rolled up his sleeves, and - through the translator - asked one of the women if he could borrow her sickle. She handed it to him, and he proceeded to swing it repeatedly, cutting as much wheat as he could carry. Then he picked it up and took it to the cart before returning to repeat the task. In short order, he'd cut more wheat than the women could cut in a much longer time, and with less effort.
He said that the women looked at him as though they'd just witnessed the Industrial Revolution.
Now, one might think that this mindset was a product of Communist rule. Reading Russka, you'll find that this mindset has pervaded Russia throughout its history. It's a function of ingrained centralized rule.
That's why democratic reforms failed in Russia, from the times of the tsars to the beginnings of Bolshevism to the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Russian people have no collective history of self-governance, and there are always despotic leaders like Putin at the ready to give them the centralized control they're used to before they can figure out the alternative.
And this is why Russia is likely not a serious military threat to the U.S. It's not an economic threat, either; its GDP is less than 2% of that of the U.S. In fact, its GDP is less that California's or Texas', and barely more than New York's.
True, it is a cyber-threat - or is it?
It appears clear that Russia meddled in our 2016 election. Yet, it appears equally clear, from intelligence sources and from the Mueller investigation, that its meddling did not change the outcome of that election, much as Hillary Clinton wants to believe otherwise.
So how much of a threat is Russia? It may have spread disinformation and propaganda. News flash: so did CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the New York Times, and pretty much every other media outlet.
Its stated intent was to sow discord among American voters. American voters don't need any help with that. In fact, we're better at sowing discord among ourselves than Russia will ever hope to be.
Let's face it, the overwhelming majority of Americans are going to vote straight party-line, and seek out "news" sources that align with their pre-conceived notions, whether those sources originate from Fox News headquarters in Manhattan or from the Kremlin.
I vote based on how the candidates' positions align with my own, after careful research of all the source documents I can find - and they're not hard to find if you put forth the effort - not based on anything I see on TV or read on the internet (I gave up on newspapers long ago - they're yesterday's news, literally).
As such, I am far more concerned about Russia hacking my bank than hacking the DNC or the RNC (especially since I'm a member of neither party).
I will say that the left should absolutely love the fact that Russia attempted to meddle in our election, though. Why?
Because it gives them a convenient scapegoat every time they lose an election. Sore Loser Syndrome just found its BFF.
No comments:
Post a Comment