A widening chasm... Is there a "left" vs. "right"? And the Russian mob.

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics." - Erma Bombeck, author (1927-1996). *

To be clear, we already have two holidays celebrating veterans and those who have fallen or sacrificed for nation and freedom. And remembering yet-again certainly has a place on America's Independence Day. Alas, Donald Trump’s shamelessly self-centered hijacking of the DC July 4 commemoration had a political purpose. Republicans are seeing arterial loss of support among members of the U.S. military officer corps - the 3rd best-educated clade in America and deeply concerned over the GOP's all-out war on all fact professions, including science but also the Intelligence Community and FBI and the rest of the slagged "deep state." 

This loony display - rained-upon by the heavens - did not shore up support from the officer corps, who saw it as a waste and distraction - like some spandex-wearing 'Space Force.' But the officer corps are not main audience for all this lobotomized bluster. That is Red America, and (I believe) the enlisted personnel and noncoms who come disproportionately from southern states.

If we see a widening gulf between commissioned and non-commissioned personnel, a dangerous situation may arise that we haven't seen since Vietnam. A factor that goes unmentioned even in recent "new US civil war" novels like Tears of Abraham and Our War.

== “Left” and “right” as obsolete concepts ==

Robert Reich brilliantly questions the continuing usefulness to the Left-versus-Right axis that is not longer meaningful in older ways:

“A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” sought stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.” Reich avows that both sides used to have some validity. 

Indeed, I’ve long held that infrastructure, R&D and especially the uplifting of poor children are all defensible as ways to enhance competitive market enterprise. History has proved this correct.

What has not proved correct is the interpretation of “free market” that took over the U.S. right since the 1980s, raging against any regulation erected to prevent cheating or to provide a flat-fair-open-competitive playing field. Especially, the cult called “Supply Side” has been utterly disproved, as oligarchy-demanded tax cuts fed asset bubbles and slowed money velocity, while sending wealth disparity skyrocketing and actually reducing investment in research or productive capital.

Reich is a better communicator than I am, with a bigger platform, so he goes to the heart of why oligarchy-owned media keep pushing a “left-vs-right” narrative.  

“I suspect it’s because the emerging oligarchy feels safer if Americans are split along the old political battle lines. That way, Americans won’t notice they’re being shafted. In reality, the biggest divide in America today runs between oligarchy and democracy…. So long as the oligarchy divides Americans – split off people of color from working-class whites, stoke racial resentments, describe human beings as illegal aliens, launch wars on crime and immigrants, stoke fears of communists and socialists – it doesn’t have to worry that a majority will stop them from looting the nation. Divide-and-conquer allows the oligarchy free rein. It makes the rest of us puppets, fighting each other on a made-up stage.”

Wow. A bit more “lefty” than I would put it. But totally correct and we’re agreed this calls for real militancy. In fact, it’s a pity no one will put this in historical context. Like how the American Revolution wasn’t against “government” but against a royal/feudal oligarchy that monopolized trade and rigged markets... the kind of oligarchy that’s always been the worst enemy of true enterprise. (Try actually reading the Declaration of Independence.)

Reich concludes that: “The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.” 

 And yes, that “join together” part means resisting the siren calls of sanctimonious splitting that are already pouring from Moscow provocateurs, urging our “left" to wage war against moderate or enterprise-oriented democrats and independents and even the “deep state” public servants we’ll desperately need.

About that! Note that while pundits pay top attention to the "leftward swing" of many deep blue districts, where AOC types are primarying old line democrats (and welcome to do so), little is paid to the ones who made the real difference in 2018, ex-military officers who ran in red and purple districts, taking ground and putting Rep. Nadler in a position to issue subpoenas. That is the trend terrifying Koch-Murdoch-Mercer-Putin and the oligarch crowd.

They are counting on our own fringe nutjobs to burn flags and spit on soldiers and veterans, partly egged-on by memes generated in a special basement of the Kremlin. We certainly can rip defeat from the jaws of victory; we've done it before. And that was what this July 4 stunt was all about.

== The future ==

An interesting Australian documentary about the year 2040, on how we can solve our climate problems and make a better world. And a film review.

Oleg Kalugin – now 84 - was Vladimir Putin's boss at the KGB and said Putin's background is essential to understanding today's Russia. Putin brought back some of the worst sides of the Soviet regime. As a former KGB guy, his psychology is based on the old traditions of the Soviet system."

== Russian Influence ==

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” 

Here’s another gem from this amazing and important article: “The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin’s shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.” from Craig Unger's article in The Atlantic: Trump's Russian Laundromat.

“After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin’s power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Co. who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s.”

Among the nuggets in this article exposing relentless Trump ties to the Russian mob (2 years old but devastating): “In 2015, the Trump Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years.” Oh, but it gets far more spectacular.

Seriously, this is an important article. Then there’s Craig Unger’s whole book: “House Of Trump,House Of Putin: The Untold Story Of Donald Trump And The Russian Mafia.”

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*Preserving the only continent without (much) in the way of borders and standing armies was the maybe #3 or 4 reason the Union had to win the 1860s phase of our ongoing Civil War. For most of US history, citizens never saw soldiers and moved vast distances without checkpoints. Ponder how that would have changed if the Confederacy won. Followed by another war between nations in the 1880s. And another in 1914. But now we're in the territory of science fiction....