In 1956, (NINETEEN FIFTY-SIX!) Ian Fleming wrote

[PCIntern]

what came to be one of the most essential James Bond novels, From Russia With Love. If you have read the book, or even seen the movie, you are aware that the plot revolves around a Russian conspiracy to destroy the morale and reputation of the British Secret Service.

The architect of this enterprise is a Russian grandmaster chess player named Kronsteen, who conceives of an intricate plan to ensnare James Bond and his superiors in a scandal, utilizing many players. The Book is massively entertaining, and interestingly, for those who enveloped in James Bond trivia, ended in such a way that Fleming could kill off James Bond, so he would not have to write another book with him as a character. Of course, he resurrected him in his next book, Dr No, and the rest is history as they say.

The point of this post is that the Russians have been conceiving of these ways to infiltrate and destroy America since 1945 if not before, and these idiot traitorous Republicans became willing dupes of the billionaires who took over Russia after the fall of communism. I know that it’s anathema to quote Richard Nixon, but if nothing else he was schooled and brilliant in foreign policy, political science, and history, and when the Berlin Wall fell, and everything began to happen rapidly, he warned that there were issues involving the Russians that had been repressed for literally hundreds of years, which would rise to the top, and threaten us in a different fashion than we were familiar with. (Yes, I ended the sentence with a preposition. So arrest me)

He was absolutely correct: we are being attacked via our mainstream channels rather than by ground forces or nuclear weapons. They have infiltrated our government to the highest levels, and it will only take one serious mistake to allow this group to overcome what’s left of American democracy. We almost made that mistake in 2016.

Americans need to be made aware that these people are brilliant and resourceful , and they are doggedly persistent. Yes, I know this particular strike may not have worked, but we have no idea what else is in the works and I do remember what one intelligence officer said to me many years ago, that if I knew one percent of what was going on in this world, I would be afraid to leave my home. Yes, it’s true that he was a right winger, but he was the counterpart to some in the Kremlin, who understand how this all really works. We are in fact, but pawns in the descendent-of-Kronsteen’s chessboard but need to make noise loudly and quickly. Otherwise we shall become a colony of the Russian oligarchs. It can happen overnight.

[madaboutharry]

1. It is evident that there are politicians in Washington

who are being paid and schooled by the Russians. They are traitors. Some have been publicly called out. One former congressperson, previously called out by Hillary during a debate, is apparently on Trump’s VP short list.

Many Americans are oblivious to the danger.

[Evolve Dammit]

49. Willfully ignorant for sure

[Lonestarblue]

2. Nikita Khrushchev stated that Russia would destroy the US from within.

He neglected to warn us that it would be done via the Republican Party. People forget that Russia was Hitler’s ally in WWII until Germany made the mistake of invading USSR territory. Modern-day Russia, especially under Putin, is not our ally.

As for ending a sentence with a preposition, I like the tongue-in-cheek riposte attributed to several Brits, one of whom may have been Winston Churchill, that it is something up with which I will not put.

[OldBaldy1701E]

5. To my knowledge, it was Churchill's quote. (n/t)

[STING2]

22. Invade USA from within

It was Nikita , He said we do not have to invade the USA we will destroy you from within.

[Danascot]

3. Well said!

This by a wider audience should be seen.

[PCIntern]

8. 😁

[SouthernDem4ever]

4. The sad thing is our govt is for sale on many levels

Making matters worse, the repug SCOTUS made sure dark money from all sources is mostly untraceable allowing multitudes of bad actors to bribe so-called lawmakers to do their bidding.

[yardwork]

29. Citizens United created the treason highway.

It was inevitable that greedy politicians would take foreign money after that Supreme Court decision. It's by far the worse SC decision in modern times. I imagine some were bribed to vote for it.

[elleng]

45. Sure did.

[Bucky]

6. Actually, lots of countries do this: China, Israel, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran

Russia just happens to be a big country with a lot of resources who are more or less geographically and geopolitically predestined to be in competition with the US, which is geopolitically destined to be the most powerful country on the Earth.

So it's nothing peculiar or unique to the Russian moral character, except the fact that, being surrounded by potential enemies, they are historically inclined to be an authoritarian state with a strong intelligence service.

[PCIntern]

10. Yes but not in 1956 and prior

And not with the effectiveness of the Russians.

[PatSeg]

17. Yes, Russians have been doing

this sort of thing for a very long time. They are very experienced and have perfected it. It is practically in their DNA.

[Liberal In Texas]

30. True. In '56 they had the power of an authoritarian dictatorship.

I think the money the ruskie oligarchs now have (and Putin is one of them) actually eclipses what they were able to do in the 50s. They still use the methods of the KGB but now have the power of the internet to influence the West as they were never able to do before.

[yardwork]

33. The moral character of humans worldwide is about the same.

The fact is that Russia is currently ruled (yes, I used that word deliberately) by a sociopath who has the money and power needed to topple democracies via social media and bribes.

The fact that many of us were conditioned to reject fear and criticism of Russia as being misplaced hysteria makes it easier for Putin. He's not a communist. He's a dictator who wants to dominate the world. It's his mental illness, his character, and the fact is that he is in a position to exert a lot of harm.

[soldierant]

46. I would say that the moral character of humans worldwide

is, like pretty much anything else, ona bell curve - distributed in such a way that the bell curve is the same just about everywhere. Everywhere you can find humans with remarkably high morals and humans with remarkaly low morals as well as the rest in between.

[JHB]

7. The Russian billionaires had an opening because the GOP was already taken over...

...by American billionaires. The propaganda apparatus and techniques were already in place, thanks to the Conservative Movement and its funders.

The Russians simply cloned a second set of controls.

[rubbersole]

15. Yes. 👆👆👆

The uber-wealthy and their sexually repressed world view are hell bent on taking women back to the 17th century. And it's working. The Kochs probably couldn't get prom dates because girls laughed at their pathetic asses...

[Farmer-Rick]

25. Interesting theory

I always thought of it as dictator Putin taking poor Russians' wealth away and corrupting America's GOP. But you're right the GOP was already corrupted by American oligarchs.

When money rules it doesn't matter whose money, or how stinking awful they are.

[yardwork]

34. I think it's true that the GOP and Putin had parallel goals.

Our countries are more similar than we like to believe. Greedy people seized control while decent people were busy living our lives. Rot set in.

[JHB]

41. They did, once Putin came to power and benefitted from the same things. But the takeover of the GOP began when...

...he was still just a guy in the KGB, maybe even when he was still just a kid.

[Liberal In Texas]

9. Allowing the rise of the oligarchs was also a mistake.

By not keeping the tax rate for the wealthy high enough to keep them from acquiring an amount of disproportionate power we now have countries run by them instead of The People. This includes Russia. Their oligarchs came to be billionaires through different routes than the oligarchs in the US, but the country is still now controlled by rich fascists that include Putin.

The rich are able to crank out the propaganda through hundreds of radio stations, TV on cable and terrestrial (eg: Sinclair) and on social media with Russian troll farms using high tech targeting pretending to be Americans flooding the media with their bots.

The use of large amounts of money not only buys the courts and our legislatures but can influence what we call the Main Stream Media skewing them to be favorable to the idea of strong-man government and right wing religion influence.

[Nittersing]

13. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck. nt

[redqueen]

14. Exactly right

The concentration of media ownership is a huge part of the problem too

[PTL_Mancuso]

26. Billionaires have Fealty to ONE Thing -- The Golden Calf

Where they happen to be plopped down at a given time is of no import beside how the local armed forces there can be used to protect their pile of gold. They will happily screw over (i.e. kill, maim, destroy) any felLOW (accent on LOW) citizens or those of any other country in the world to get what they need, which is only ever MORE.

Humanity doesn't take a back seat in oligarchical thinking. Humanity has been unceremoniously tossed out of the vehicle and left bleeding on the road.

[Farmer-Rick]

27. Well said

Capitalism was never about all people are created equal. It was always about the one with the most loot rules.

[niyad]

11. KNR

[FalloutShelter]

12. This quote comes to mind.

Fleming, Ian | “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

[Wicked Blue]

16. K&R!

[Chainfire]

18. Politicians are expensive.

Candidates have little choice but to make promises, implied or expressed, to serve the needs of the people who control the money. House members have to raise over $2,000 per day to stay in office, for Senators it is close to $15,000. Biden raised $40,000,000 in Jan. It is all about the money and the people who provide it.

[Bucky]

19. TBH, I get the impression buying Trump came pretty cheap

A couple of hookers, a meaningless construction contract here or there, and wallah, you own a billionaire! The real art of the deal was getting him into the White House.

[FakeNoose]

24. The Russians kept buying Chump's condos and overpaying for them

Many of them were oligarchs, or operatives for the oligarchs, and they started doing this in the 1990s. Every time he put up another "Trump Tower," the Russians were standing in line to buy in. I don't think Putin had much power then, but Chump was hooked.

Once the Russians got a foothold in Chump's condo business, they slowly turned him into an asset. This was long before he contemplated running for office.

[Farmer-Rick]

31. I think ugly little Putin took control

Over the oligarchs in Russia in 2000.

At least according to this article it was: "How Putin Conquered Russia's Oligarchy"

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-conquered-russias-oligarchy

There's a part 1 to it. But the interesting part is part 2. It's a good read.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

20. Don't forget our home-grown billionaires who despise democracy

There is a symbiotic relationship between the GOP and anti-democratic billionaires. Captured media provides the messages that shape voters' perceptions; Republicans in office provide the deregulation, rubber-stamping for mergers, and tax cuts for the filthy rich; libertarian and christofascist billionaires provide the funding for campaigns, propaganda, research for voter 'triggers', institutes for grooming, and test cases for courts.

A beginning:

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

MacLean describes how the economist developed a grand project to train operatives to staff institutions funded by like-minded tycoons, most significantly Charles Koch, who became interested in his work in the ‘70s and sought the economist’s input in promoting “Austrian economics” in the U.S. and in advising the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Koch, whose mission was to save capitalists like himself from democracy, found the ultimate theoretical tool in the work of the southern economist. The historian writes that Koch preferred Buchanan to Milton Friedman and his “Chicago boys” because, she says, quoting a libertarian insider, they wanted “to make government work more efficiently when the true libertarian should be tearing it out at the root.”

[PTL_Mancuso]

40. Gah! OMG! Hair on Fire! This helps make sense of so much!

Great (albeit distressing) article! Thanks for lifting up the rock that the referred article begins to flip over to reveal what's beneath many seemingly unrelated background activities. I will see if my local library has Nancy MacLean's book:
[link:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980972/|

Buchanan makes Rand look like the tooth fairy and desires nothing less than the complete capitulation of the remaining democratic structures to the desires of the Virginia School, i.e. The Terribly Wealthy.

“Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty.

Not likely we'll ever see this discussed on MSNBC et al.

[TheKentuckian]

48. M$NBC is a corporate media pacifier and flypaper to

to catch Democrats for a bit of coin.

Little else.

[robbob]

21. Who says this strike hasn't worked?

The “Joe Biden is the most corrupt president in history” narrative is ongoing. It will be the “but her emails” of 2024. Being outed as liars and Russian pawns doesn’t faze the GOP; I’ve said it before; they have no shame, they have no morals. Complete hypocrites; I mean the nerve of using “the president is corrupt” after tRump?

I saw a short clip of Jim Jorden the other day; he was being pressed about the outing of their informant as a possible Russian agent. He said (and I’m paraphrasing) that nothing had changed, the information in that document (which came from said Russian asset) was still true. He was one of several GOP-ers they showed clips of. They are basically going with “sure, our star witness is being charged with telling lies about Joe Biden, but what he said is true…”.

It makes my head spin…

[PCIntern]

23. Yep. The final chapter is

Nowhere close to having been written here

[yardwork]

36. Hamas's attack on Israel and simultaneous PR campaign is another strategy.

I'm certain that this whole series of events was planned to hurt Biden's reelection. Unfortunately, a lot of people are falling for it.

[PJMcK]

28. Excellent cautionary tale

Yeah, Fleming tried to kill Bond when Rosa Kleb kicked him with her spiked and poisoned shoe.

But, like Sherlock Holmes, Bond survived.

One of the best Bond novels is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service where Blofeld plans to cripple the British economy by using biological agents to destroy crops and herds. It’s an entirely plausible terroristic plot! Sadly, the film is rather lame.

By the way, there are more novels and stories featuring James Bond by other writers than those written by Fleming.

[PCIntern]

39. Yes, but they're poorly written for the most part

The style is more of a caricature of Fleming: one guy whose name I’ve forgotten thankfully, maybe John Gardner(?) took Fleming’s very occasional use of a brand name and turned the book into a product-placement tome. Embarrassing.

And agreed about the film.

[jaxexpat]

32. We are currently in thrall to international oligarchs.

One can only hope their interests continue to align, on some level, with our own. That said, it's important to remember how little so many care to even pay attention. Makes me wonder if the experiment is salvageable.

[yardwork]

37. I worry about that, too.

Democracy depends on a committed citizenry who are disciplined enough to make informed choices and vote.

If too many people are disengaged, or motivated to vote based on disinformation, we're sunk. Humans tend toward authoritarianism.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

35. If still available, see the series FLEMMING starring Dominic Cooper as Ian Flemming

It ran on NETFLIX a number of years ago that recreated Ian Flemming's work with MI5 during WWII that gave him the inspiration for his prolific James Bond series of books and films that came afterwards. Perfect material for the Cold War that involved much of Europe and the United States until the late 1980's.

[PCIntern]

38. Thank you! I will!

[wiggs]

42. See also movie with young Kevin Costner...'No Way Out'. Russian agent groomed for potus. nt

[PCIntern]

44. Hackman steals the film

Terrific movie!

[IronLionZion]

43. Republicans are useful idiots. The fifth column undermining the US from within

[Hekate]

47. Russia has never been a friend of the US. The alliance with Stalin was strictly to defeat Hitler...

All sides were aware of this. I think it was Churchill himself who said he’d make a (temporary) alliance with Satan if it meant defeating Hitler and the Nazis.

The ideals of the infant Communist state drew some admirers abroad, but said admirers were slow to see the swift betrayal of those ideals.

[Evolve Dammit]

50. Time for the "damn Berettas" (Q).