Russia has always been a favorite target of the US. Even immediately after the Russian Revolution of 1917 the US and other Western European ‘democracies’ sent troops to fight with the White Army against the Red Army. Even though Russia is not a communist country anymore, US aggression has been non-stop. It has expanded NATO to the very borders of Russia. And as much of a racist, xenophobic, right winger Tucker Carlson of Fox News is, he was right when he said that Russia is not planning on invading Belgium. It only wants to protect its borders. Democrats and other ‘liberals’ would tar and feather him if they had the chance.
The entirety of Russiagate was a fabrication of the Clinton campaign and the DNC to explain why it lost to Trump in 2016 and with the full backing of much of the media. It doesn’t matter that they anointed the only person possible who could lose to him. They needed a scapegoat. Russia has always been in the US’s crosshairs. The problem for the US is that Russia has decent, economic relations with Western Europe, especially with regards to its vast gas resources.
China, on the other hand, is still a mystery to the US. We have had a love/hate relationship with them since their revolution in 1949. Started out with the Republican campaign against Truman with ‘Who Lost China’ to the Republican embrace of China by Richard Nixon, and decades thereafter of Wall Street meets Communism! China is now the US’s number 1 trading partner, seconded by Canada. It will very soon surpass the US as the world economic leader and the US nearly sees this as an existential threat.
The reasons for the rapid growth of the Chinese economy is not mysterious. While the US spends literally trillions of dollars on war and empire building, China spends its money on high speed rail systems connecting all parts of China. It goes into countries and provides economic aid and opportunities, without conditions based on human rights, something the US pretends to honor abroad.
American foreign policy and democracy are not linked, as much as the political class would like us to believe. Wall Street sets the agenda. The US will engage economically with anyone in the world, regardless of their human rights records. It may use the patina of democracy as a basis but in reality, it is inconsequential. It will as happily trade with Denmark as it would with Saudi Arabia. It will supply arms to ISIS by one branch of the US intelligence apparatus yet fight it with another. It will rail against communism, and even fight a genocidal war against such a country, like Vietnam, but when the dust settles, it welcomes it as a trading partner.
Democracy, as elusive as it is, is imperiled in America. Never really having it the way it’s described in our civics books (meant for elementary school minded citizens), what we do have now is quickly evaporating. Republican statehouses, and soon at the federal level, are seeing voting rights extremely curtailed. But let’s be clear about something. The Democratic Party, fighting to reverse Republican attacks on voting, such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, is ONLY concerned with protecting the Democratic Party, not democracy. No where does it promote anti-capitalist parties from forming without the hindrances set by them and the Republicans throughout the states.
What happened on January 6, 2021 was likely the Fort Sumter moment of our next civil war. Then-President Trump attempted to derail the one aspect of American democracy believed to be sacred- free and fair elections. The attempted coup is on-going. Hitler’s beerhall putsch did not bring the Nazis to power but set the stage for it. January 6 was the precursor. Republicans are pushing elections for Secretaries of State to control who can vote, and who counts the vote. Although falsely attributed to Stalin, the idea of it not matters who votes but who counts the vote is relevant.
Like Hitler had his Sturmabteilung (SA), Trump has his Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and many other white supremacist militias at his calling. We will see how powerful he remains after the 2022 elections. If the Republicans take either or both houses, nothing will stop them from making ‘democracy’ in America the open mockery it always has been.