The hysteria over how US President Donald Trump acted and talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki summit has generated debate in the deeply divided American public. The US mainstream media, which many now realize as expressing the views of the giant corporations and supported by the two major political parties, Republican and Democratic, acted in concert to counter what they see as the “overwhelming” Russian attacks on the American democratic values.
According to the Washington Post, “Ahead of the meeting, staffers provided Trump with some 100 pages of briefing materials aimed at laying out a tough posture towards Putin, but the president ignored most of it. Trump’s remarks were “very much counter to the plan,” the staffer said. “Everyone around Trump was urging him to take a firm stance with Mr Putin…”
For saying something “out of the box” on what the corporate media wants him to say, a barrage epithet against him were hurled never before heard by what they often refer to as highly independent-minded American public. According to Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, “Trump’s failure to hold Moscow accountable for election interference and seemingly absolving them “will be seen by Russia as a sign of weakness and create far more problems than it solves.”
Republican senator, Jeff Flake, tweeted: “I never thought I would see the day when our president would stand on the stage with the Russian president and place the blame on the United States for Russian aggression. This is shameful.” US speaker Paul Ryan said “Russia is a menacing government that does not share our interests and it does not share our values, adding that “Russia meddled in our election” On the other hand, Senator John McCain termed the stand of President Trump at the press conference as ‘embarrassing.’ One Congressman even called his statement “treasonous.”
Others assessed the summit positively and considered the Trump-Putin summit as a sign that the geo-political relations of the two countries still have room for improvement. Somehow they say, the American public gave their positive account of the summit. Curiously enough, that perception of the performance of President Trump was condemned as most outrageous and embarrassing. It was summed up by the US corporate media as a “debacle.”
Indeed it was a fiasco, if one might call it. Trump refused to be packaged by the deep state as they would want him to appear. One must take note that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein announced the indictment of 12 Russian military officers for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee three days before the summit. According to New York Times, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, intended to jolt tension to the already freighted atmosphere surrounding Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin. The indictment was meant to undermine Trump’s design to reach a rapprochement with Russia.
They expected Trump to fumble, and from there, hoped to steer the American public to endorse the mainstream media’s prejudgment of him as a weakling hiding behind the façade of a straight-talking bully.
The indictment of the 12 Russians was a cheap propaganda ploy. They knew the alleged Russian hackers could not be tried without Russia getting some kind of reciprocal legal accommodation to examine the case. Rather, it was intended to put pressure on Trump to talk tough on a range of issues that drifted apart US-Russian relations.
The issue of meddling in the US election, the annexation of Ukraine and the pyrrhic adventurism to play proxy for Israel and Saudi Arabia which are known to cuddle terrorist organizations are issues which the US cannot claim free from the stain of intervention. As said, Trump refused to sing the song that was prepared for him. That, however, was interpreted as appearing soft to what the West would saw as the new Kremlin autocrat. They threw all wild speculations that he is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin.
To this ridiculous allegation, Putin simply give them a rhetorical answer if they truly believe Russia is capable of influencing the US election.
The issues raised against Russia have been lingering on after the US violated the understanding not to advance Nato’S defense perimeter beyond the border that existed during the Cold War. But to the US, the implosion of the Soviet Union did not really end the Cold War, but was merely substituted by a new paradigm of competition grooved within that system.
There is no doubt that Russia, as well as its strategically, China, has accepted capitalism and injected their own modification of maintaining in that system the same formula that could bring about progress and prosperity. The new competition has generated inner fear that sooner the US would be overtaken by these two countries as the leading economic powerhouse.
Even if Trump subscribes to the same ideology of free enterprise, the deep state could sense his version is inimical to the interest in what President Eisenhower would say as the “military industrial complex.” As one would quip, the giant corporations and the mainstream media come from the same genus that for Trump to initiate a rapprochement could imperil their substituted Cold War.
After Russia recovered from the trauma of near economic collapse, Nato’s move to encircle the Russian Federation was effectively thwarted. The US cannot accept of what remains of Ukraine. It tries to gloss over the fact that the unrest in Ukraine is the result of US interference that saw the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
Maybe Russia would have forsaken Crimea had it not for the agitation of McCain, Nuland and other neoliberal zealots to alienate its blood brother and possibly threaten its border. Now that Russia reasserted to bring back a part the Motherland that accorded it strategic access to the warm waters of the Black Sea on Mediterranean, the deep state insists that Trump raise the issue of the annexation. As Putin would flatly put it, imposing tougher sanctions will never work against a big and economically powerful Russia.
Those who survived in the real world of business competition like Trump, his election is the defining moment for the American public; that they have had enough in brokering foreign wars. Many may disagree with him on the issue of tariff protectionism as his way to make American great, but he knows as a frontline man in business that the economy must first be energized to make America great again. It has to lessen its financial burden of sustaining a losing wars overseas that divert the income, resources, entrepreneurial competitiveness of the American people only in favor of the military-industrial complex that gives life to the political plasma of this ogre called “deep state.”
Restoring the competitiveness of the US is to the deep state a nightmare. The failed expectation of the people has amplified their frustration, and Trump maybe is their accidental or lateral disciple who could help free them from the trance of the deep state. The only drawback is he opted to take the hard route by initiating a trade war.
