cyber

What’s the Proper Word For That?


Reading time – 3:02; Viewing time – 4:40  .  .  .

Some folks find the sport of curling exciting to watch. On the other hand, the subtlety and beauty of the game are pretty well lost on me. That gives credence to what Sly Stone told us in his song Everyday People, declaring,

 

Or as Henry David Thoreau so elegantly explained it:

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Yet as different as we Americans are, there are some things on which there is universal agreement and we are in lock-step about them. Alarmingly, we’re very late in getting serious about one of them. Here are the facts:

    • The Russians hacked Clinton, DNC and Podesta emails and used them to attack our 2016 election for the sole benefit of candidate Donald Trump. And Trump welcomed the help.
    • The Russians sent its troll farm into our social media, infesting it with false and distorted propaganda. They reached 126 million Americans. That’s almost as many of us as turned out for the 2016 election. They did it to ensure the election of Donald Trump. And Trump welcomed the help.
    • The Russians attempted to hack into the voting machines of all 50 states and lifted complete voter registration databases from at least two of them. Trump was good with that, too.

All of that happened and Trump still refuses to take action against the Russians either to penalize them for what they’ve done or to prevent them from further manipulation of our democracy.

What’s the proper word for that?

We Americans are in complete agreement that it isn’t okay for foreign powers to attack us. We think that one part of patriotism is to be dedicated to protecting and defending the Constitution and our nation. The oath of office that every federal employee takes requires them to do that protecting and defending. That includes our legislators and the President, yet that isn’t what is happening.

The President overtly declares – falsely – that there was no Russian meddling in our 2016 election. His absurd assertion flies in the face of the Special Counsel investigation findings and all 17 agencies of our intelligence community, which declare unequivocally that not only did the Russians cyber-invade, but that Trump willfully accepted illegal help from them. And Trump has invited yet more attacks by the Russians for his 2020 campaign.

What’s the proper word for that?

That is compounded by the “Grim Reaper” – his own label – Mitch McConnell, or “Moscow Mitch,” as Joe Scarborough has called him. There are bills ready for a vote in the Senate that would create action to protect and defend our country, but McConnell refuses to allow any such legislation to come to the floor of the Senate for a vote. *

Millions of Americans have put their lives on the line to protect and defend what Trump and McConnell are giving away.

Those men whom we trusted with so much power to do the right things for our nation are easing the path for a hostile foreign power to attack our nation and crush our democracy. What they’re doing is a little like the sweepers in a curling match making a path of least resistance. Only, in curling, it’s just a game. In our democracy, it’s our entire way of life that’s at risk and these men are refusing to protect our country.

They are violating their oath of office and our trust. They are co-conspirators in the willful disarming of the United States as an enemy attacks.

And arguably, Trump and McConnell are al Qaeda’s best friends, too, because they are aiding in the destruction of the core of western democracy, exactly what Osama bin Laden attempted to do.

What’s the proper word for that?

Please pass this along to both your Trump supporting friends, as well as your “I could never vote for a Democrat” friends so they can double-check how they are being double-crossed.


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Ed. Note: I don’t want money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. So,

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all to be better informed.

Thanks!

NOTES:

  1. Writings quoted or linked to my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
  2. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling or punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
  3. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Irony


Reading time – 3:41; Viewing time – 4:53  .  .  .

Chiang Kai-shek was the leader of the Republic of China during the Second World War and was our ally in fighting the Japanese. In the Chinese civil war following WWII Mao Zedong’s army won and Chiang and his army retreated from mainland China to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan. Throughout the period we remained an ally of Chiang and saw Mao as our enemy, both because the enemy of our friend is our enemy, and because Mao’s Chinese were godless Communists bent on world domination like their Soviet neighbors.

When Stalin died in 1953 Nikita Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. We didn’t like him or the Soviet Union and they were a far greater threat than was China because of their military might and their belligerence. Indeed, Khrushchev was famous for criticizing our capitalism, saying that the Soviet Union would sell us the rope used to hang us. He also said, “We will bury you.”

We saw the Chinese and the Soviets as godless Commies and nobody railed more or louder against them than our Republicans. They fashioned themselves as the ones with the heavy starch in their spines, the true defenders of our nation and the foremost opponents of Communism. Republican Richard Nixon made his reputation railing against Communists. But then some odd things happened.

Nixon the Commie hater was in the midst of making the Watergate affair as bad as it could be and off he went to Communist China to sip ceremonial drinks with the very people he had spent decades vilifying. The primo anti-Communist began the process of normalizing relations with Communist China. It was amazing irony.

Ronald Reagan spent decades waving the red, white and blue and vilifying the hammer and sickle and when it was his turn to fight the Cold War he did it by increasing our military spending 43% in peacetime, including development of the B-1 bomber. That forced the Soviet Union to increase their military spending to keep up with us. At last they couldn’t do it any longer and, effectively, we spent them into bankruptcy.

At the same time Reagan established a relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, even as he implored Gorbachev to, “Tear down this wall.” Reagan bankrupted the Soviets, made friends with their leader and won the Cold War without firing a shot. No irony here. Then it came back.

It was left to Republican George H.W. Bush to put the final nail in the Soviet coffin. But a Soviet KGB agent named Vladimir Putin wasn’t at all happy about what had happened and vowed to return Russia to its former self-imagined greatness.

Fast forward to 2015 and Putin’s Russia had figured out how to infiltrate American culture to bend America his way. The U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous and clear about Russian hacking, propaganda, cyber-infiltrating, as well as human infiltration into our elections, our government and our society.

We’re learning of Russian infiltration of the Second Amendment thumping NRA and what is likely to be found to be tens of millions of Russian dollars filtered through the NRA to get Trump elected.

What the Russians have done is very bad and very threatening. What we have done is far worse.

Under this Republican president we have done nothing to stop the Russians. Trump has refrained from everything he might have done to restrain Russia and has lauded praise on Putin whenever he could. And even those aren’t the worst things that have happened.

Our Republican Congress has done nothing to get to the root of the Russian invasion and, indeed, they’ve done everything they could to block congressional investigations into it. This Republican Congress has done absolutely nothing to prevent yet more Russian meddling. They have put no checks on this president and his Russia enabling, nor any requirements for action to stop the hijacking of our democracy.

Get that these are Republicans, the self-described stalwart defenders and protectors of our nation. They’re the chest-puffed strong ones and they’re allowing Khrushchev’s threats to come true.

The irony is stunning. The cowardice in the face of a clear and present danger is appalling.

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Ed. Note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish that goal requires reaching many people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!). No subscriber information is ever shared with anyone, anywhere, any time.
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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