David Jay Morris for BuzzFlash: Putin Wants to Seize Control of Ukraine, Trump Wants to Do the Same to the US With His Help
February 2, 2022
By David Jay Morris
Say what you will about Vladimir Putin, he sure knows how to rattle his sabre.
Tanks, troops, planes, artillery, even large supplies of bandages and blood.
Everything a modern dictator needs for an all-out blitzkrieg has been massed on the borders of Ukraine.
Ready to go.
For their part, the Ukrainian authorities have mainly been talking down the situation – making the point that the invasion Russia started years ago has never really stopped.
What else is new?
Let’s not start a panic here…
Seen from the U.S. and Europe, however, the situation looks much more dire.
According to White House National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne, in a recent phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, "President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February."
“He has said this publicly and we have been warning about this for months," Horne added.
The normally dour and softspoken Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told reporters that the way the Russian forces are massed at the Ukrainian border now, "just feels different" and is, "larger in scale and scope" than anything seen in recent memory.
"I think you'd have to go back quite a while into the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude," he added.
Not to be outdone, embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson put it this way. “The grim reality” is that the Russian force “massing on Ukraine’s border…is a clear and present danger, perhaps the biggest demonstration of hostility to Ukraine in our lifetimes”.
Yikes!
Closer to home meanwhile, Putin fanboy and wannabe autocrat Donald Trump and his acolytes are putting in place the forces needed for another type of blitzkrieg. One aimed directly at American democracy.
Act two in the disgraced ex-president’s all-out assault on the U.S. Constitution:
A relentless, ongoing coup attempt using not tanks and artillery (although guns and the threat of violence are very much a part of the mix) so much as a local and state level takeover of the voting, and vote-counting, system.
Local election workers are being cowed into submission or resignation.
Calls to get out in the street if the dear leader should face direct legal liability for any of his misdeeds – be they election subversion or real estate fraud and financial chicanery.
Rules being rewritten to allow partisan majorities in state legislatures to throw out any vote counts they don’t like.
Recommendations are being made that T-cult members bring their firearms to polling places and that radicalized 5th column poll workers should unplug voting machines if they see something “suspicious” (like too many black people voting, perhaps…)
In short, Ukraine is in real danger, and so is the U.S.
The question no one seems to be asking, however, is what, if any, relationship is there between the two situations.
Has Vladimir Putin looked on in amazement at the fact that Donald Trump is still walking free (and hasn’t even been publically charged with a crime yet) after working full-time on a coup d’état for some 15 months…and counting?
Has this led him to believe that, for all it’s experience, the Biden administration simply doesn’t have what it takes to stand up to, and overcome, people like him…and Trump?
Has he recognized the astounding level of damage his intervention on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election has had on his two greatest enemies – the United States of America and the democratic system it has championed throughout the world – and determined that the time is right for another roll of the dice?
Is he just looking for some minor advantage over Ukraine or to remove the possibility it will ever become a part of NATO, or could his end game be infinitely more insidious?
Is he thinking that the U.S. is already on the brink of collapse and one more good shove from him could push us over the edge?
At best, everything is so messed up we wouldn’t be able to effectively oppose him on anything.
At worst, American democracy replaced by a permanent Trumpian autocracy.
Would Russian tanks storming across Ukraine be enough of a distraction, he might be wondering, to keep the U.S. from getting its own house in order before it’s too late?
If not, might the Chinese jump on the bandwagon once the Olympics are over and decide the time is right to deal with the pesky and non-compliant democratic government on Taiwan?
While all this is playing out overseas, what sort of mischief might be occurring back in the good ol’ US of A?
We know that people like Tucker Carlson are already giving loads of love to Mr. Putin and that Trumpism is the gift that keeps on giving to authoritarians throughout the world, but what might the right-wing democracy-hater crowd get in return?
How much support are the Big Lie insurrection effort and its co-conspirator crazies in the anti-vax suicide cult already getting from Russian intelligence?
As Trump’s coup attempt continues to evolve and pick up steam, how much further help could he expect from Putin and his cronies?
If past is prologue, the likely answer is lots.
If Putin thinks he has the chance for a kill shot – an opportunity to destroy American democracy, unravel NATO and eliminate `the main worldwide threat to his style of authoritarian kleptocracy - do you really think he wouldn’t take it?
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