And of course leaving Syria and getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, leaving the Paris climate accords, threatening to leave NATO, love affair with Kim, and the lack of support for Ukraine all benefit Putin.
The U.S. never left Syria, but should never have been there in the first place. I'm anything but a Trump supporter, but the U.S. support for NATO expansion via the addition of Ukraine is what pushed Russia to invade in 2022. Read John Mearsheimer.
7] However, on 19 December, President Trump unilaterally ordered the withdrawal of the 2,000–2,500 US ground troops in Syria at the time, which was to be completed in 2019.[168][169][170] With proliferating concerns over a potential power vacuum, the US announced on 22 February 2019 that instead of a total withdrawal, a contingency force of around 400 US troops would remain garrisoned in Syria indefinitely, and that their withdrawal would be gradual and conditions-based, returning to a policy of open-ended American military presence in the country.[171][172]
It is the so called “ good men “ like Gen McMaster that enabled the rise and the power of trump.
Men whose storied career gave them the patina of wisdom, ethics, and strong morals, as well as deep love of democracy, who in fact, are enamored or afraid of a single man, who place him above the constitution, who remain silent or explain away the failings or even criminality of said man. Becoming public apologists if not not sycophants, they breathe life into his desires, while sucking the life out of our democracy.
McMaster may have a chest full of metals, but within that chest lies a man of moral turpitude, void of the true meaning of valor. While in the clutch of trump and after his firing, he had many moments to protect his country one more time, yet failed. He may never have feared bullets or personal harm while he served bravely, but once in the clutches of a diapered Don, he bowed low and switched his allegiance to a single man.
The danger to America are the many McMasters among us.
“One especially lucrative example came in Florida that year. A Russian oligarch paid Trump $95 million for a Palm Beach mansion – a mansion Trump had bought for $41 million just four years earlier.”
The interesting part is Trump bought the property a year before the housing bubble at a record price, and sold it to the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, in 2008, when all real estate prices fell almost by half. This was the most expensive property ever sold in Florida at the time, and it just happened to be when real estate prices were collapsing. Coincidence? I think not!…:)
This says more about McMaster than it does about Trump? We have generals that can't see what's in front of them or worse, the military has conditioned them to not see what's in front of them. A lifelong military career makes you blind to basic street level economy? Pathetic either way.
Trump know how to use his words with the Russins through communication. The Dems (and some Reps) don't use words at all; they use the MIC and foreverwars. There is a different choice:
'... Trump has no discernible beliefs or scruples. He approaches life as a series of transactions, guided exclusively by the interests of his bank account, his ego, or both.'
Trump worships authoritarians of all stripes, even runts like Kim Jong Un. And he's "transactional" with everyone. Nothing new here. But Putin's another level of mysterious. The real connection is a deeper Christian medievalism and antipathy to Western secularism.
See my "Sowing The Seeds of Love: The Real Conspiracy Theory" (available upon request)
Michael F. Sparks
PH.D. University of Chicago
Author of Paradise Joe’s: A Cultural Sociology of a Christian College Community—
An Exploration into the Meaning and Significance of American Evangelicalism (2021) & The Dusk of Everything: The Origins, Meaning, and Significance of the American Evangelical Rebellion of the Last Half-Century (2024)
Abstract: "Why have Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Tucker Carlson, and their MAGA Republican Party accomplices become the willing dupes and apologists for Vladimir Putin? And how do Ginni Thomas & Mark Meadows fit into the mix? Could they possibly share apprehensions of clear and present dangers posed by the secular humanistic, increasingly progressive social democratic West? Elsewhere I’ve explored the likelihood at great length. A large part concerns how this crowd embraces and advances medieval Christian conceptions of traditional forms of social, cultural, and political life. Their respective world views (patterns of ideas) and ethoses (patterns of conduct) are at risk, and they’re fighting back. The MAGA insurrection has been grounded in a surprisingly widespread, largely evangelical-based cultural and theological rebellion nearly a half-century in the making, whereas MRGA (Make Russia Great Again) is more philosophically (Ivan Ilyin) and religiously ("spirit-driven fascism")--"Euroasianism"--concentrated among a much smaller group of apparatchiks beholden to Vladimir Putin, as well as among the public at large. Both share deeply-embedded cultural ideologies that serve, by the author’s definition, as extraordinarily-accelerated sources of meaning and motivation for the promotion and defense of a particular worldview and ethos, particularly in their respective nationalistic expressions. Hence the various weaponizations and ultimate revanchism. A full appreciation of the ideological symmetry in play here requires a good deal of historical and cultural contextual investigation and interpretation. A brief introduction follows."
Good newsletter. Thanks. Well, McMaster is not the first Ph.D. to be proved an idiot. All of us armchair psychologists have figured out Putin's hold on Trump. What I have read is that when McMaster was his advisor he approached each briefing as a professor giving a lecture to one student. It didn't last long. He was tone-deaf with Trump and is probably tone-deaf on a lot of other obvious things.
When Trump walked out of that secret meeting with Putin in Helsinki, he looked as pale as a ghost and beyond shocked. It really looked like Putin can readily manipulate and devastate Trump. Trump looked fearful of him, and quite submissive. It was very interesting to see how readily Trump succumbs to Putin. You definitely don’t want someone like that as president or in a position of authority.
“Later that year, meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump embraced the Russian leader’s denial of 2016 election interference over the verdict from US intelligence agencies.”
Shocker! I used to believe his statement was about supporting his good friend Putin, then I realized that Trump is obsessed with winning and admitting that Russia interfered in the election would cast doubt on his presidential victory.
It’s always about his ego, and he’d gladly sell out this country as long as he looks good in the process. That, and the promise of a real estate deal to build Trump Tower Moscow.
Trump's failure to support Russian sanctions and threat to withhold military aid for dirt on Biden that was approved by bipartisan vote in Congress is what led Putin to think he could keep his hold on Crimea and attack Ukraine.
This article overlooks/ignores the fact that the United States adopted some of its most aggressive policies and damaging sanctions towards Russia during Trump's administration.
Anybody who has read Catherine Belton's excellent book "Putin's People", will know from the end chapters that Russia has ensured full participation on many of Trump's real estate deals before and after he became President in 2016, in making him beholden to Putin and his colleagues.
Trump's Faustian pact with Putin and his Russian government is no secret. The problem is that inadequate investigation of Trump's financial affairs by the media generally plus the conflicts of interest he faces given no divestment of his business empire was required under US law when he was President, will always live him susceptible to such manipulation. And that is before any issues of ego management and compromising videos...!
But why is Trump so enamored with Putin in particular? McMaster and I still don’t have the answer to that question. What does Putin have on Trump that gives Putin such power over him? The evidence of the power is very evident but where does it come from?
And of course leaving Syria and getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, leaving the Paris climate accords, threatening to leave NATO, love affair with Kim, and the lack of support for Ukraine all benefit Putin.
The U.S. never left Syria, but should never have been there in the first place. I'm anything but a Trump supporter, but the U.S. support for NATO expansion via the addition of Ukraine is what pushed Russia to invade in 2022. Read John Mearsheimer.
From Wikipedia
7] However, on 19 December, President Trump unilaterally ordered the withdrawal of the 2,000–2,500 US ground troops in Syria at the time, which was to be completed in 2019.[168][169][170] With proliferating concerns over a potential power vacuum, the US announced on 22 February 2019 that instead of a total withdrawal, a contingency force of around 400 US troops would remain garrisoned in Syria indefinitely, and that their withdrawal would be gradual and conditions-based, returning to a policy of open-ended American military presence in the country.[171][172]
It is the so called “ good men “ like Gen McMaster that enabled the rise and the power of trump.
Men whose storied career gave them the patina of wisdom, ethics, and strong morals, as well as deep love of democracy, who in fact, are enamored or afraid of a single man, who place him above the constitution, who remain silent or explain away the failings or even criminality of said man. Becoming public apologists if not not sycophants, they breathe life into his desires, while sucking the life out of our democracy.
McMaster may have a chest full of metals, but within that chest lies a man of moral turpitude, void of the true meaning of valor. While in the clutch of trump and after his firing, he had many moments to protect his country one more time, yet failed. He may never have feared bullets or personal harm while he served bravely, but once in the clutches of a diapered Don, he bowed low and switched his allegiance to a single man.
The danger to America are the many McMasters among us.
“One especially lucrative example came in Florida that year. A Russian oligarch paid Trump $95 million for a Palm Beach mansion – a mansion Trump had bought for $41 million just four years earlier.”
The interesting part is Trump bought the property a year before the housing bubble at a record price, and sold it to the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, in 2008, when all real estate prices fell almost by half. This was the most expensive property ever sold in Florida at the time, and it just happened to be when real estate prices were collapsing. Coincidence? I think not!…:)
This says more about McMaster than it does about Trump? We have generals that can't see what's in front of them or worse, the military has conditioned them to not see what's in front of them. A lifelong military career makes you blind to basic street level economy? Pathetic either way.
Kompromat, kompromat and kompromat, (his closeness to someone called Epstein in particular). And the Israel lobby.
Trump know how to use his words with the Russins through communication. The Dems (and some Reps) don't use words at all; they use the MIC and foreverwars. There is a different choice:
People. Planet. Peace.
'... Trump has no discernible beliefs or scruples. He approaches life as a series of transactions, guided exclusively by the interests of his bank account, his ego, or both.'
That pretty much sums it up!
Trump worships authoritarians of all stripes, even runts like Kim Jong Un. And he's "transactional" with everyone. Nothing new here. But Putin's another level of mysterious. The real connection is a deeper Christian medievalism and antipathy to Western secularism.
See my "Sowing The Seeds of Love: The Real Conspiracy Theory" (available upon request)
Michael F. Sparks
PH.D. University of Chicago
Author of Paradise Joe’s: A Cultural Sociology of a Christian College Community—
An Exploration into the Meaning and Significance of American Evangelicalism (2021) & The Dusk of Everything: The Origins, Meaning, and Significance of the American Evangelical Rebellion of the Last Half-Century (2024)
mischa139@gmail.com
Abstract: "Why have Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Tucker Carlson, and their MAGA Republican Party accomplices become the willing dupes and apologists for Vladimir Putin? And how do Ginni Thomas & Mark Meadows fit into the mix? Could they possibly share apprehensions of clear and present dangers posed by the secular humanistic, increasingly progressive social democratic West? Elsewhere I’ve explored the likelihood at great length. A large part concerns how this crowd embraces and advances medieval Christian conceptions of traditional forms of social, cultural, and political life. Their respective world views (patterns of ideas) and ethoses (patterns of conduct) are at risk, and they’re fighting back. The MAGA insurrection has been grounded in a surprisingly widespread, largely evangelical-based cultural and theological rebellion nearly a half-century in the making, whereas MRGA (Make Russia Great Again) is more philosophically (Ivan Ilyin) and religiously ("spirit-driven fascism")--"Euroasianism"--concentrated among a much smaller group of apparatchiks beholden to Vladimir Putin, as well as among the public at large. Both share deeply-embedded cultural ideologies that serve, by the author’s definition, as extraordinarily-accelerated sources of meaning and motivation for the promotion and defense of a particular worldview and ethos, particularly in their respective nationalistic expressions. Hence the various weaponizations and ultimate revanchism. A full appreciation of the ideological symmetry in play here requires a good deal of historical and cultural contextual investigation and interpretation. A brief introduction follows."
Good newsletter. Thanks. Well, McMaster is not the first Ph.D. to be proved an idiot. All of us armchair psychologists have figured out Putin's hold on Trump. What I have read is that when McMaster was his advisor he approached each briefing as a professor giving a lecture to one student. It didn't last long. He was tone-deaf with Trump and is probably tone-deaf on a lot of other obvious things.
Thank you for not expecting us to be stupid!
When Trump walked out of that secret meeting with Putin in Helsinki, he looked as pale as a ghost and beyond shocked. It really looked like Putin can readily manipulate and devastate Trump. Trump looked fearful of him, and quite submissive. It was very interesting to see how readily Trump succumbs to Putin. You definitely don’t want someone like that as president or in a position of authority.
“Later that year, meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump embraced the Russian leader’s denial of 2016 election interference over the verdict from US intelligence agencies.”
Shocker! I used to believe his statement was about supporting his good friend Putin, then I realized that Trump is obsessed with winning and admitting that Russia interfered in the election would cast doubt on his presidential victory.
It’s always about his ego, and he’d gladly sell out this country as long as he looks good in the process. That, and the promise of a real estate deal to build Trump Tower Moscow.
The man is completely morally bankrupt!…:)
Trump's failure to support Russian sanctions and threat to withhold military aid for dirt on Biden that was approved by bipartisan vote in Congress is what led Putin to think he could keep his hold on Crimea and attack Ukraine.
This article overlooks/ignores the fact that the United States adopted some of its most aggressive policies and damaging sanctions towards Russia during Trump's administration.
Anybody who has read Catherine Belton's excellent book "Putin's People", will know from the end chapters that Russia has ensured full participation on many of Trump's real estate deals before and after he became President in 2016, in making him beholden to Putin and his colleagues.
Trump's Faustian pact with Putin and his Russian government is no secret. The problem is that inadequate investigation of Trump's financial affairs by the media generally plus the conflicts of interest he faces given no divestment of his business empire was required under US law when he was President, will always live him susceptible to such manipulation. And that is before any issues of ego management and compromising videos...!
But why is Trump so enamored with Putin in particular? McMaster and I still don’t have the answer to that question. What does Putin have on Trump that gives Putin such power over him? The evidence of the power is very evident but where does it come from?