General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat was Russia's goal??
In interfering with our elections?
Did they just want Trump in office so that they could get the sanctions lifted?
Did they just want to defeat Hillary because Vladimir Putin disliked her immensely.
Or did they want to disrupt our democracy, by sowing discord and division?
Did they understand the cultural and racial divides in this country well enough to utilize them to disrupt our entire political system?
Were they able to use Trump as a useful idiot to further their goals?
Should our nation unite against Putin? Or should we concentrate on getting rid of his puppet?
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Be that fomenting anger and racial division or putting an incompetent shit gibbon behind the wheel of our ship of State.
kentuck
(110,950 posts)Are they that blind?
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,705 posts)NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Repukes hear I get to be in office and theyre fine with it. Greed trumps everything.
LuckyCharms
(17,287 posts)Now, why they want to destroy us... I would like to know the real reason. Someday, we will find out.
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Theyve been our enemy for decades. They couldnt match us step for step during the 80s. They cant afford to outspend us, especially after they lost their foray into the Middle East (see Afghanistan). Now theyve worked for years to destroy us from within.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)That one's huge, huge, huge.
Also, as part of lifting sanctions it might be useful to note that, as now possibly the wealthiest thief on the planet, Putin himself needs protection for his wealth. Large amounts need to not only be investible and available to him outside Russia but to be unreachable by his fellow kleptocrats, who currently support him in power but perhaps not always.
I'm going for "all the above." His malice toward Hillary is undoubtedly real, but his passion for personal wealth and power and restoring the SovUnion borders over much of Eurasia has to be far larger, and to accomplish that he has to get us and NATO out of the way.
Of course we know Rump was used, but compared to Russia and our own wannabe kleptocrats, Rump is nothing, a tool to be used, discarded when no longer useful, and replaced with others.
Kyblue1
(216 posts)Putin knows that he cannot defeat us by external force, so promotes discord within our diverse society. He uses Trump to agitate promote wedge issues such as race, religion, and misguided faux patriotism. Didn't Khrushchev say that the Soviet Union would conquer us from within? How ironic that the Trump supporters are actually aiding and abetting the Russians in destroying our country.
C_U_L8R
(44,897 posts)Grossly incompetent and divisive Trump is fucking up everything he touches.
Mission accomplished.
rzemanfl
(29,540 posts)Iggo
(47,489 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)their eventual victory is assured. If the Russians are working from the outside to destroy this country, the Republicans are working towards the same goal from the inside, a coup, overthrowing our current system of government and replacing it with some imagined Libertarian utopia that is more friendly toward Russia than our traditional european allies.
Look at the inept, unqualified ignoramuses that Trump installed to head every govt agency, does anyone think that happened by chance? Republicans are busily working to destroy the government, and they have hollowed out every department, cutting the career staff and removing the experienced experts, and replacing them with political cronies. Trump has cut huge chunks from the operating budgets of key agencies, strangling even normal government services and making their ability to respond look chaotic; look no farther than Puerto Rico.
The goal is to create public distrust and resentment towards a federal government that has been systematically sabotaged and undermined by both foreign and domestic terrorists. Republicans are also busy cherry picking the parts of the Constitution that best supports their coup, and marginalizing everything else. Free Speech is suddenly not as important as jingoistic patriotism and corporate profits.
When the government finally reaches the point where the public believes that it is incapable of providing even the most basic and routine services, the average citizen will accept anyone who promises to fulfill their self serving aspirations, and Trump is the perfect patsy for that role. At some point the federal government won't be relevant and then our country will be ripe for the picking.