From the December 3 edition of the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign.
A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, the N.R.A. member said he wanted the advice of Mr. Dearborn and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, then a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump and Mr. Dearborn’s longtime boss, about how to proceed in connecting the two leaders.
Russia, he wrote, was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and would attempt to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make “ ‘first contact.’ ” …The emailed outreach from the conservative operative to Mr. Dearborn came far earlier, around the same time that Russians were trying to make other connections to the Trump campaign. Another contact came through an American advocate for Christian and veterans causes, and together, the outreach shows how, as Mr. Trump closed in on the nomination, Russians were using three foundational pillars of the Republican Party — guns, veterans and Christian conservatives — to try to make contact with his unorthodox campaign.
https://flic.kr/p/bwJxPa
I’ve never understood the ridiculous intransigence of the NRA. It’s always seemed like pure lunacy to oppose responsible gun control when just about every other nation in the world has imposed regulations on things like automatic weapons without those restrictions resulting in the complete disarming of the citizenry. How could we continue to believe only America knows the way – straight ahead, as always – when everyone else is in the turning lane? How could our supposed leaders refuse to act even as American children were being gunned down by maniacs armed with military-grade equipment when they only need to restrict the sale of those specific weapons, not every gun in the country?
Why would the National Rifle Association choose insanity as it’s platform and the continued murder of innocent civilians as its agenda?
Doesn’t really make a bit of sense. Not until you realize the acronym actually stands for the National Russian Association.
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Imagine for just a moment that you are the despotic leader of an adversarial nation that has just been defeated in a Cold War without a single shot being fired. Now include in your backstory that your most extensive experience on the world stage was as a Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB. Include that you have ruthlessly murdered your political opponents within your own country, and, free from internal opposition, you find yourself facing the continuing menace of the beast that just kicked your ass. The beast’s weapons are just as good or better than yours. And a fire-fight would undoubtedly result in your demise. So how do you fight back against the bragging, bombastic bull-shitters who are crowing to the world about that ass-kicking?
I’ll pause a moment as you develop your plan before I present mine.
"Capitalism: Comments On An Immoral And Illogical Society"
The first thing which would be apparent to me, as an outside observer of the American system, would be that the people who voted for Ronald Reagan can be easily persuaded to do just about anything. If they are willing to believe in the modern American version of Christianity and its economic cousin, trickle-down, they’ll believe whatever crap you serve them as long as it promises a happy ending. So, you target the less well-educated population with your propaganda.
And where do you find them? In evangelical churches and right-wing groups like the National Russian Association.
All the destructive, indefensible actions of the American right in the last two decades seem completely reasonable if they are viewed as the actions of an adversarial nation seeking to destroy America from the inside and preying on the least intelligent citizens to do it.
We are living in Putin’s America. And every member of the Republican Party who learns of the Russian connections to the NRA and evangelical churches and doesn’t leave the Party is a co-conspirator in the destruction of American democracy.
I would like very much to say the problems will be addressed in the next election. But we aren’t even certain we can hold a fair election.
The campaign to take back our nation begins with the understanding we’ve lost it. Despite what CNN and MSNBC might seem to think, the system isn’t going to save us. The system put us here, in the first place. It happened because the Republican minority (which includes less than three of every ten voters) has rigged that system with gerrymandered districts and disinformation dispersed through veritable state-controlled media. It has happened because they have terrorized the populace to enhance their authority. It has happened because we have permitted people calling themselves “conservatives” to run up the largest deficit in the history of the planet so that our financial vulnerability might well destroy us…
…Just the way it destroyed the Soviet Union.
It simply wouldn’t make sense for Americans concerned about the well-being of America to act in this manner. It would make perfect sense if the modern American Republican Party had become a front for the KGB.
Kind of ironic, when you think about it…that our nation’s self-styled greatest patriots would be sucked in by a shirtless KGB thug with moobs. Guess it doesn’t take a lot of work for one Fascist to convince other Fascists they have a common agenda.
[Featured image manipulated by @JonMarkDraws using images by Jared Howland and Clker-Free-Vector-Images / Pixabay |CC BY 0.0|]