THE UNITED STATES IS FALLING

(Sic transit gloria mundi.)

It was around 30 years ago that United States President Ronald Reagan confronted the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union and watched it collapse. But, while the empire and its communist ideology collapsed, the “evil” did not. It merely retreated into the Russian nucleolus of that former empire where it simmered and boiled, becoming ever stronger and more concentrated…

Vladimir Putin gathered the reins of power into his hands through the use of the Russian intelligence services. Regardless of what office he ostensibly held, dating from around 1999 Putin has been the de facto ruler of a resurgent Russia. Aided by the relatively new development of the internet, a massive campaign of agitation, propaganda, and computer “hacking” was undertaken to undermine the western democracies. Since this attack could not be waged in the traditional way from the extreme left, due to the loss of the communist ideology as a tool for subversion, it was now waged from the far right. The chief target of this effort was Russia’s main obstacle to recovering its empire, the United States of America.

Today in the U.S. all those years of Russian effort seem to be bearing fruit. Aided by the Russian intelligence services, a sociopathic American billionaire has been able to advance to the threshold of becoming the next President of the United States. In a perfect storm of synergistic effects, a complacent majority, a weak opposition, and a penetration of the American intelligence services, the possibility is very real that the next President of the United States may be an active ally of the Russian effort to destroy American democracy and reclaim its empire…

However, while a tactical or “short term” success, such a victory has strategic or “long term” consequences that should give even Putin a reason for concern. Putting an unstable individual at the levers of power can have unintended consequences, as the Krupp industrialists found to their dismay when Adolf Hitler proved impossible to control once he was appointed Chancellor of Germany. It may not just be the people of the United States who will suffer grievously from the fall of democracy, but the entire world, including Russia itself. Sic transit gloria mundi.