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Louis Proyect wrote
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/watergate-john-dean-why-trump-will-survive-russia-scandal-2-700723/
Catching up on my inbox, fwiw this is my comment in Rolling Stone:
While I don't disagree with what John Dean says here, this whole Russia
Gate business is in any comprehensive view an exercise in denial/avoidance.
Interference in other nations' internal affairs is SOP presently and
historically.
We can easily list more than 100 incidents of direct and indirect
interference by the US in foreign elections or with foreign regimes,
really the same thing. This has been in covert or overt, with virtual
impunity it is thought, and devastating to the affected people and their
country. In fact, what capitalist regime would not be doing this, given
the capability?
Second, it's hard to quite figure out how the so-called interference
really affected the outcome, if at all. Yes, it could be a threat to
voters' rights, but my god stack that alongside of our government's
savage conduct globally and internally, which we as a deluded people
tolerate or ignore, to our seeming benefit.
Third, we are in an era of cyber warfare and generalized surveillance,
without as yet effective defenses. So everyone able to spy in this
manner is doing so, at their own peril if they do not.
Fourth, much or most of this is driven by transnational corporations,
financial, industrial and other commercial, whose life-or-death drive
for profitable expansion and therefore increased market share chases all
over the globe in a constant vicious cycle of indirect and direct
violence. Why would we think the hegemonic nations, following US's lead,
are acting/have acted against regimes like Iran, Iraq, Libya, China,
Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba, on occasion countries like Brazil or
Argentina or Mexico? Because, in one way or another, by either
arrogating their own labor and material resources to their own state
interests and/or national corporate interests, these subaltern entities
in the international pecking order are interfering in the free flow of
capital investment and access to material and labor resources by
dominant capital and their captive state headquarters, without regard to
borders or sovereignty. On that note, every so-called developed economy,
without exception, has initially acted to protect its own infant
industry, until such time as it might or might not reach the tier of
hegemonic players. By any means feasible.
This is obviously true in the case of Russia and their material
resources, including their claim on a substantial portion of Arctic and
other territory with rich, vast, untapped oil and other mineral
resources. Russia is a nation that has had more or less effective
deterrence against that kind of intrusion for many years, since they
became a major nuclear state. This threat is most often sooner or later
countered, by boycott, financial impedance, diplomatic measures or
frequently extreme violence, through elimination of a palpable threat or
as a perceived threat to the path of capital dominance or unimpeded
convenience, or in setting an example for others who would stand in the
way.
So I say, let's come off it on this Russia scandal. It's not going to
bring Trump and "trumpism" down, even weaken them, or affect the course
of events in any significant way. This is garbage, this is an inexorably
conflicted system of capital accumulation, and this hand-wringing over
the so-called Russian scandal deflects from attention to real, onerous
threats, such as imminent climate destruction and increasing global
inequality and poverty.
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