Fiona Hill Op Ed

[MissMillie]

The Capitol attack was the culmination of four years of "conspiracies and lies that Trump and his allies had fed to his supporters on social media platforms, in speeches, and on television," Hill said.

The "Big Lie," or the false notion that the election was stolen from Trump, was "built on the backs of the thousands of little lies that Trump uttered nearly every time he spoke and that were then nurtured within the dense ecosystem of Trumpist media outlets," Hill added.

This was yet another way that the US came resemble Russia under Trump, Hill wrote, in the sense that Putin has "long solidified his grip on power by manipulating the Russian media, fueling nationalist grievances, and peddling conspiracy theories."

*snip*

Putin sits at the apex of a personalized and semi-privatized kleptocratic system that straddles the Russian state and its institutions and population. He has embedded loyalists in every important Russian institution, enterprise, and industry. If Putin wants to retain the presidency until 2036—by which time he will be 84 years old and will have become the longest-serving modern Russian ruler—he will have to maintain this level of control or even increase it, since any slippage might be perceived as weakness. To do so, Putin has to deter or defeat any opponents, foreign or domestic, who have the capacity to undermine his regime. His hope is that leaders in the United States will get so bogged down with problems at home that they will cease criticizing his personalization of power and will eschew any efforts to transform Russia similar to those the U.S. government carried out in the 1990s.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-09-27/kremlins-strange-victory?fbclid=IwAR1sMav0DBu99PK-jvMGTPnHeyeKr3pj5KO-nxDQu-Mw1sKYhZaE49RDVu4

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It's a long read, but a good read

[dweller]

1. Link pls ?

n/t


✌🏻

[dhol82]

2. Op ed link

https://news.yahoo.com/fiona-hill-said-trumps-deadly-202613670.html

[Kid Berwyn]

4. That is a most important read.

Thank you, dhol82!

[dweller]

6. Check Ms Millie's link

Is longer

✌🏻

[Kid Berwyn]

7. TY, yes. Foreign Affairs

…Trump took at face value rumors that Putin was the richest man in the world and told close associates that he admired Putin for his presumed wealth and for the way he ran Russia as if it were his own private company. As Trump freely admitted, he wanted to do the same thing. He saw the United States as an extension of his other private enterprises: the Trump Organization, but with the world’s largest military at its disposal. This was a troubling perspective for a U.S. president, and indeed, over the course of his time in office, Trump came to more closely resemble Putin in political practice than he resembled any of his American predecessors…

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-09-27/kremlins-strange-victory?fbclid=IwAR1sMav0DBu99PK-jvMGTPnHeyeKr3pj5KO-nxDQu-Mw1sKYhZaE49RDVu4

[MissMillie]

3. sorry about that... added the link(n/t)

[dweller]

5. Ty

Great op ed


✌🏻

[JHB]

8. I'm inclined to say the culmination of 60 years. It hasn't just been Trump

Conservatives -- even the kind who get described as "reasonable" and "principled" today -- have been leaning on the "Democrats win by cheating and corruption, and will do anything to win so we must be prepared to do likewise" horn since the 1960 presidential election when Nixon list Illinois by a small margin.

To this very day, it gets trotted out as an example of a "stolen" election, and I've never seen anyone push back on it when some conservative or libertarian trots it out as if were "the sky is blue".

Whatever may have gone on in Mayor Daley's Chicago, there may be Cook County and Illinois state politicians who could claim to have had their election stolen. You know who is not among their ranks? Richard M. Nixon.

If Illinois has gone Republican, Kennedy still would have won the EC (and popular) vote. That's why Nixon was convinced to not follow through with asking for investigations: it wouldn't have changed the election and wouldn't stay confined to Chicago. A statewide investigation stood to upset the apple carts of downstate Republican political machines that pulled the same sort of (alleged) tricks.

Undermining faith in elections and embedding an "ends justify the means" mentality began generations ago.

[erronis]

9. Please, everybody - remove the tracking info from your links before posting. The F-A link is:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-09-27/kremlins-strange-victory

Sometimes it's hard to tell what is extraneous tracking info. Generally everything after the first "?" can be removed. Especially if the contents of these parameters look like gibberish or have "FB" stuff inside.

[yonder]

10. +1. Thank you.

[Champp]

11. Thank you, Ms. Hill

[erronis]

12. Great and important post. I hope Fiona Hill is remembered as a champion of democracy.

She withstood some incredible sniping from the repuglicons but stood her ground.

I would trust her with almost any aspect of US foreign policy and security.

[Hekate]

13. KnR