John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY STEPHEN F. COHEN IN THE UNZ REVIEW
“How Impeachment Is Escalating the New US-Russian Cold War”
“Putin wants stability and partners.”
A truer statement could not be made.
What is remarkable is that so many prominent Americans could say the opposite.
Of course, if a powerful country is guided by blindness, the risks are clear and they are enormous.
Yet relatively few in America seem to care.
I depart from Cohen’s view that the leadership of Trump – combined with that of Putin – could make a difference. Despite a few early encouraging words about Russia, I just do not see where Trump has provided any leadership.
Putin is a remarkable statesman, but he is in no position to overcome an American establishment hell-bent on opposing every reasonable effort. That’s part of why so much of his attention has been turned toward Asia and the larger world.
Trump’s early encouraging words about Russia only provided a target for America’s Russo-phobia mania, a condition always present in gigantic, self-perpetuating, and scarcely-scrutinized bureaucracies like CIA and the FBI, but something also seized upon since the election by the Democratic Party both to explain its loss and to intimidate future voters.
Induced chaos is nothing new as a means used to gain power. The CIA uses it in virtually all of its coups abroad. So, it should come as no surprise that there are forces, privileged establishment interests, ready to employ the same approach inside the United States, so comfortable have they grown with it.
The trouble is that Trump is simply not a real leader. He is a bully towards opponents and towards the entire world in matters of trade and military policy, but that is not leadership. He himself represents just another form of chaos.
That is the United States’ real problem. It has no leadership, in either party or in the major “organs” of the state, only a pretty ugly class of people – corrupt, privileged, arrogant – who influence the direction of events and feel entitled to tell others how to run their affairs.
The situation very much reflects America’s general relative decline, much resembling that of a decayed once-great merchant family, as a new order in world affairs prepares to make its debut.
I tend to doubt the impeachment will succeed, despite my views that what Trump did very much is inappropriate and that impeachment in America is largely a political act.
But if that proves to be the case, it is no great mercy for the county or the world. It means four more years of a poor leader making great bellowing claims about nothing.
The Democrats, too, are bereft of real leadership in the candidates for the nomination. Some of them are almost ridiculous, much like figures in current popular culture, and none of those with any chance opposes imperial wars and hostility towards Russia.
However, the Democrats, in holding up the indictment (the articles of impeachment), are very much looking for added elements, as those likely to come from scrutiny of Trump’s financial and tax records, should access to them be gained. He is an unscrupulous man, and I have little doubt those records could provide rich veins of impeachment material.
They are likely also looking to other potential high-level insider witnesses to Trump’s shady methods, potential witnesses whom Trump dismissed at various points.
Well, even were the impeachment to succeed, the only gain would be an end to Trump’s glaring, half-lunatic faces and ugly-kid complaining and bellowing. There are no meaningful likely alternatives in the Democratic Party.
On Putin, readers may enjoy:
CHUCKMAN'S WORDS ON WORDPRESS: COMMENTS FROM THE WORLD'S PRESS 
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