Super Bowl Horror: Trump Equates United States with Russia. A Plea To His Followers: Open Your Minds and Hearts.

edvard-munch-the-scream-1893Do you remember this that happened about two years ago in February 2017: Boris Nemtsov, a leading opponent and former deputy prime minister was gunned down in Moscow just a few hours after a radio interview in which he denounced Vladimir Putin’s “mad, aggressive” policies, and the day before he was to help lead a rally protesting Russia’s actions in the Ukraine crisis and the economic crisis at home.” He was murdered crossing over a bridge in which the Kremlin can be viewed in the background.

Did you know of Vladimir Kara-Murza?  He worked closely with Nemtsov. Born in Moscow he is a green card holder who lives in America with his wife and three children. Although still a young man he believed it his life’s mission to bring freedom to Russia. On May 26, 2015, he suddenly fell ill in Moscow. He had been poisoned, suffered organ failure, and fell into a coma. He was eventually brought to America by his wife where he recovered slowly after many months convalescing.

A documentary film was made of the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Against the advice of his close friends Kara-Murza went back to Russia to help publicize the documentary. On February 2 three days ago while in Moscow he again fell ill. Right now he is in a coma and on life support.

Both times he fell suddenly ill he was active and in good health. He said he was poisoned because of his political activities: “Frankly there is no other possible reason. I don’t have any money dealings. I don’t have any personal enemies. I didn’t steal anybody’s wife.” Keep in mind he loves his country of Russia but he lives in the United States for his own safety.

Senator Rubio stated Vladimir Putin does not deserve any benefit of the doubt here, given how commonplace political assassinations and poisonings have become under his regime,” Senator Ben Cardin said this: “appears to be part of an alarming trend where Russian political opposition are targeted for their work.”

Writing those words safety of America sort of brought a chill to me because while doing it I recognized that President Trump sees no difference between America and Putin’s Russia. Yes, Russia with all its evils and deprivation of rights to its people where one person has a term in office that will never end,  a country that none seek to go to gain freedom, a country that had a national policy to cheat in the Olympics; a country that invades its neighbors and takes their land, a county which is a menace to world peace and which seeks to destroy American democracy.

I wondered when I heard what Trump said in his Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly “can this possibly be the feeling of people who voted for him. Do his supporters feel as he does that there is a moral equivalency between our countries.” This is stunning:

Bill O’Reilly:  Do you respect Putin?

President Trump:  I do respect him, but —

O’Reilly: Do you? Why?

Trump:  Well I respect a lot of people but that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with him. He’s a leader of his country. I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not. And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world that’s a good thing. Will I get along with him? I have no idea.

O’Reilly: But he’s a killer though. Putin’s a killer.

Trump:  There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think – our country’s so innocent?

But that is not the worse of it. No not by a long shot. Unfortunately some feel that his followers will continue to support him. I urge you to read Nick Cohen’s article in the Guardian.  He starts: “Compulsive liars shouldn’t frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars’ enablers. Their votes give the demagogue his power. Their trust turns the charlatan into the president. Their credulity ensures that the propaganda of half-calculating and half-mad fanatics has the power to change the world.”

He ends by saying: The alternative, and not only in America, is to go back to the despised and patronised working-class followers of the right. You should try to win them over in elections rather than march with the already converted at rallies. You should cordon off the true racists and fascists and listen to and argue with the rest with a modicum of respect. If that can happen, then perhaps the world will learn that the best way to end the power of compulsive liars is to break the compulsion of their followers to believe.

I never thought I would say this but there is a chance America’s experiment with democracy could fail.

15 Comments

  1. Dear Matt, Feeling rushed allowed “has” to be written “had.”

  2. Dear Matt, Trump is right. America had a lot of killers. For example, look what happened to Stippo Rakes. Maybe Russia is better in that aspect. If the killer is arrested in Russia, he/she faces justice (punishment). But Stippo’s killer (William Camuti) has never faced justice.

  3. Bill:

    You forgot all about the Iran/Hezbollah 1983 Beirut hat-trick: US Embassy, French paras, and, US Marine barracks, bombings. The Iranians, also, managed to assassinate one of their dissidents living in Maryland. MOIS/Vevak is far more dangerous than the Sunni extremist groups, even, DAESH. They have the entire Iranian state apparatus backing their plays. None of the Sunnis outfits have that kind of support.

    • Khalid, I didn’t forget. I mentioned Hezbollah. I remember the Marine barracks. A friend’s cousin was killed there. His name and that of 8 other Massachusetts men killed in Beirut are on Memorial in Boston’s North End waterfront park.
      So, let’s say, Shia have killed a couple of hundred Americans. Sunnis killed 3,000 and wounded 6,000 on 9/11. Sunnis were behind all other terrorists attacks in America (Boston, Bernardino, Orlando etc) and Europe that I know of. Sunnis gave us Al Qaeda and ISIS. The terrorist horrors perpetrated by Sunnis worldwide dwarf others acts of terror. Sunnis killed 95% of American soldiers in Iraq and 100% of American soldiers in Afghanistan.
      Yes, Iran has supplied some IEDs that killed Americans. But, as I’ve said, 95% were killed by Sunnis in An Bar Province.
      As for State-backing of terrorists, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait (the Oil Sheiks) have funded and armed Al Qaeda and ISIS for years.

  4. Here’s another gripe:
    We’re always told Iran is the greatest “state-sponsor” of terrorism, and it’s true Iran sponsored Hezbollah and Hamas.
    But Iran is a Shia country. And Iran and Hezbollah have boots on the ground in Syria fighting ISIS.
    The Sunnis have given us ISIS, Al-Quaeda, Al Nustra, et al, the greatest terrorist entities in the world.
    The 9/11 attackers were Sunnis not Shia.
    All the people killed in America by terrorists and all the people killed in Europe by terrorists were killed by Sunni terrorists.
    The Shia are helping us defeat ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Al Nustra in Iraq and Syria!

  5. War is hell.
    It’s not America’s job to be the world’s policeman, nor to make the world safe for democracy.

    Any idea of the number of human beings killed by the US since WWII? The number of wars we’ve instigated? I remember Madeline Albright responding that is was “worth it” that 600,000 Iraqi children had died due to US-sponsored UN sanctions and Brezinski boasting that arming the Mujahadeen “lured” Russia into a war resulting in a million deaths.

    Our own war in Vietnam? How did that work out?

    How about our 2002 invasion of Iraq? Which is still going on!

    “The Iraq Body Count project (IBC project), incorporating subsequent reports, has reported that by the end of the major combat phase up to April 30, 2003, 7,419 civilians had been killed, primarily by U.S. air-and-ground forces.[19][89]
    It shows a total range of at least 155,923 – 174,355 documented civilian deaths from violence in Iraq as of March 20, 2016.[19][92].”
    Experts consider the IBC an underestimate.

    There’s a site that estimates 20 million deaths are attributable to US interventions since WWII – – – it is an exaggeration – – – and some interventions, ex. Korea, were justified.
    But the site gives you an inkling of . . . . the fact . . . . that . . . . War is hell!

    Study each arena and ask yourself whether non-interventionism would have been the better policy; even when the intervention was justifiable, did the killing have to be so widespread and ruthless?

    Sad to say, but since 2000, Bush and Obama have probably killed more civilians than Putin . . . way more!

  6. Journalists murdered by FBI Death Squads

    Reporter Danny Casolero investigating October Surprise
    ” ” Dorothy Kilgaren. JFK assassination
    ” ” Gary Webb and Mike Ruppert. CIA dealing drugs
    ” ” Steven Greer’s friends in making of
    doc Sirius
    Aaron Russo filmaker

  7. 07/14/1978 UN Ambassador Andrew Young had to take back a milder moral equivalence remark than Trump’s to avoid impeachment.

    “Ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young amended his statements on political prisoners in U.S. jails yesterday while the House of Representatives tabled a move to impeach him for his original, controversial statement on the matter to a French newspaper.

    In Geneva, Young was summoned to a private luncheon with Secretary State Cyrus R. Vance, who rebuked the outspoken ambassador in terms suggested earlier in a phone call from President Carter.

    After the lunch Young issued a statement saying he had never “equated the status of political freedom in U.S. with that in the Soviet Union. I know of no instance in the U.S. where persons have received penalties for monitoring our government’s position on civil or human rights,” he added.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/07/14/move-to-impeach-young-killed/05bfd6e1-1189-44d1-bc19-dc23d5add93e/?utm_term=.1a36be07d265

  8. We never had a democracy. We have a republic.

    “QUOTATION: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

    “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

    ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.”

    http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

  9. Blogging is not truth
    behaviour is truth

    Behind every MTC Rorscharch Test
    is Matt’s Ukrainian Wife….

    We’re all just walking each other home.
    It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.
    The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

  10. BORG is a fictional construction . . . science fiction.

    Leftists think only they have hearts and minds.

    Look what the Left did to Judge Bork. Not one of his 100 appellate majority decisions were reversed by the Supreme Court and many of his dissents were picked up and affirmed. Historical fact!

    Yet, Ted Kennedy and other rascals on the left, Nattering Nabobs of Negativism, pitilessly pilloried and crucified him; they stoned one of America’s greatest jurists.

    Now, Trump is not a genius like Bork; and Trump does sometimes say and tweet tactless and stupid things. Granted! We all make mistakes. (Obama said he’d visited 57 states and had one to go.) Pretty stupid. (Obama said Republicans would have to get to the back of the bus.) Pretty tactless! But an occasional stupid or tactless comment does not justify the merciless, relentless attacks on the President. The Left ruthlessly excoriates Trump and relentlessly demeans his supporters as “hateful”, “dumb” “racist” “deplorables”, then the Left asks us to be magnanimous.

    The Left condemns Trump for seeking detente with Putin . . . “he’s a killer”. NIxon visited Mao!!!
    Obama visited Russia (twice), Cuba, Vietnam, Turkey etc, etc, etc,
    Obama has met with Putin several times and talked with him many times, as I recall . . . .

    Detente . . . cooperation . . . that’s the way forward . . . not jingoism!

  11. What hearts? What minds? Human compassion (love), and, critical thinking (dialectics) are the first concepts purged on the path to fascist group-think. They are BORG, now. It’s hopeless.

  12. “There is a chance America’s experiment with democracy could fail.” What experiment with democracy are you talking about? On big issues there is no democracy. Never has been.

    In 1916 Wilson campaigned on staying out of the War Europe. In 1917 He brought America in.

    In 1940 FDR said over and over that he would not send our sons to fight in a foreign war. In 1941 he he got the war he plotted. He delivered Eastern Europe to his pal Joe Stalin to generations of tyranny under communism.

    In 1954 Brown versus the Board of Education desegregated schools. Is there anyone who believes that a referendum on the issue would have supported that?

    Roe versus Wade gave America abortion. The people were not consulted.

    Ditto, school busing, affirmative action, miscegenation, sodomy, same sex marriage and on and on and on.

    There is no democracy in the United States. The people are not even consulted. But there has been a breach in the phalanx that surrounds the hostile Oligarchy that run the country roughshod over the people.

    A small window has opened by the election of our newest President, Donald Trump. The response to his election highlights just how ridiculous it is for Democrats and the left in general to shed crocodile tears over the alleged demise of democracy. The left does not believe in democracy and could not abide it if ever it washed ashore.

  13. John King McDonald

    Your moral outrage is curious. What is the difference between political assassination by drone, 20,000 under President Obama, and just as cruel , though more elaborate, murders by poison by a State Security outfit like the FSB. One could argue the latter, being more sophisticated and selective, causes less ” collateral damage.”

    Three or four years ago the FSB had agents inject a target of theirs with a radioactive substance by poking him with a modified umbrella tip on a London bridge. He died a wasting and agonizing death. Our own CIA uses rendition to countries with barbaric torture practices to extract information by torture proxy. You see things in black and white in an opaque, grey, and highly troubled World.