this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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If Russia magically stopped existing before 2016, we'd still have Trump. He's a homegrown phenomenon. There was and still is lot of resentment of establishment politics since the '08 collapse. Almost all the "recovery" from that was concentrated in the top 20% of income earners.
Trump is a crook helping himself and his rich friends, but he presents himself on television as anti-establishment. Gameshow Host President plus the American Public. You really need 80% foreign intervention to do the math on that one?
That's because the campaign to get him, or someone like him, electable started in the 80s.
That's one of the things the West still can't wrap its collective head around - russia doesn't operate like western countries. Its long-term goals are not "how can we bring plumbing and indoor toilets to our citizens in the next 40 years", but rather "how can we sow misinformation and discontent in the West to divide nations and cause them to tumble into chaos".
I'm sure the estate of Tom Clancy is still looking for new ghost writers.
It's always funny how literally ALL ex-Soviet and USSR-satellite states are saying the exact same thing since the 90s, and the entire West goes "lol, don't be dramatic". And then russia does exactly what the West was warned about, and the West goes "huh, who could've seen that coming?"
It's tiring.
So the plot to get Trump elected started in the 80's, under the Soviet Union? Lmao. Yeah, I'm sure they maintained that plot consistently through the entire collapse, through the massive changes in leadership structure and everything.
At a certain point, this shit is just racist. I'm sorry, you can say, "I just hate the government, not the people," but it you hate every government they've ever had, even when it's gone through drastic, fundamental changes, then it's not really about the government anymore, is it? It sounds like you're trying to argue that the Russian people are inherently duplicitous and evil.
Do you have a condition that prevents you from reading entire sentences? That's not what I wrote.
All those ops were done by the KGB. As far as they were concerned, the only changes the collapse brought were a rename to FSB, and one of their officers becoming the dictator. So, yes, the campaigns have continued without issues.
Can't be racist towards a country.
They had TWO governments in the last 40 years.
LOL, that's cute.
I'm sure there are those that aren't, but it's a bit hard to find them these days. Just look at what's happening in Ukraine. I'm also not seeing massive anti-Putin protests organised by those russians who fled to the west.
I mean they can both be true. The collapse of American education and media laid the groundwork for Trump. For him to even come anywhere close to power reveals a stark and horrifying collapse of everything that's supposed to keep us understanding reality and keep the whole train on the rails. But, also, Russia's formidable power at narrative-shaping in Western countries is a factor is the proximate cause of how bad it is. We haven't even really got our heads around the nature of how bad it really is, having the whole top levels of government hollowed out and destroyed like they currently are being. We'll find out the next time there is an actual crisis.
Do you really think Russia has done more to "shape the narrative" than Rupert Murdoch has? I'm sure they've got battalions of soldiers on Facebook or Tweeting tweets or whatever, but that's got to amount to chump change when compared against 24 hour Fox News.
I do think Fox News has more power, but Russia's goal is unapologetically simply to do as much damage as possible. Fox is trying to hand America over to their friends and destroy their opposition and if they do some damage, oh well, but they're trying to still have a working country to hand over to the friends. Russia is simply trying to steer the bus off the cliff.
Intentions have little barring on the effects of actions. The Murdoch media empire may not intend to destabilize english speaking nations, but that's very much what it's doing.
Yeah, pretty much.
"The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” ―Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
I completely disagree with that assessment. What the Republicans want is the complete domination of the American proletariat by the bourgeoisie (i.e, themselves). All the Russians want is to impede the government's ability to project power halfway around the globe. Russia doesn't care about American labor laws, unions, strikes, tax policy, etc, if anything, all things being equal, they'd probably prefer that the workers have more power, as that could be more disruptive to the state.
If you're more preoccupied the with the geopolitical influence of the state than you are with the things I mentioned, then I think your priorities are very out of order. Those are bourgeois concerns, they want to play "The Great Game" because they'll reap the spoils and take the resources of wherever they "bring democracy" to. If their interests are in jeopardy, let them go scramble to look after them, if anything, that's good because they'll be more focused on that than on fucking us over. We should be looking after the interests of our own class.
The American right is, by far, the greatest threat to the American people that exists in the world.
Correct
I don't know about "all," but that's part of what they want yes.
Correct
The guy Russia picked is destroying workers' rights, immigrants' safety, and making the systems of justice in the United States massively worse than the already bad state that they were in. The things you mentioned are my priority, which is why I'm unhappy about Russia helping to fuck them up for reasons of geopolitical influence of the state.
Also the greatest threat to the rest of the world. Which is why it's bad that Russia is friends with them and helping to get it done.
Yeah, all I said was "all else being equal." If one side is more disruptive or more friendly towards Russia, they'd prefer that side regardless of other domestic policies. They are not out friends.
However, the guy they picked is also the guy the right picked, and his most destructive and harmful policies are to appease the right and to advance his own interests and those of his class.
Bush, as far as I'm aware, had no ties to Russia. Acting on his own initiative, he gave tax cuts to the wealthy, he created an illegal system of mass surveillance, he started multiple wars of aggression to send ordinary people to kill and die, he abducted people to black sites to be tortured, he transformed the country and greatly reduced any sense of civil liberty or privacy that we used to have. Perhaps whoever the Republicans nominate after Trump will not have ties to Russia, but either way, they will continue this project of hollowing out our rights and advancing bourgeois interests.
Agreed.