- Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love
While everyone's been focused on the obvious Russian conspiratorial effort to subvert our nation, the Russians have been busy elsewhere, going after other avenues of attack to corrupt the Republican Party through the various SuperPACs that technically own the GOP.
The biggest spy scandal in years broke out almost a week ago when the FBI arrested one Maria Butina, an unusually well-known "lobbyist" around the Beltway power circles, for failing to register as a foreign agent while operating as a "lobbyist" and other acts of espionage.
It's gotten out there already that Russia had been laundering money through the National Rifle Association in order to pay off trump and other Republican candidates in an effort to get the 2014 sanctions lifted (as well as gaining undue influence over the U.S.). What Butina's arrest did was place a face and name on that corruption, and physically tying the NRA to our nation's biggest foreign threat.
To quote Jay Willis at GQ: The NRA Got Played.
Given how accustomed we've become to linking the Kremlin's election meddling with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, one of the most startling details about the odyssey of Maria Butina, the 29-year-old Russian "gun-rights activist" arrested on espionage charges this week, is that she was working to infiltrate conservative circles well before Trump announced his presidential bid. The fascinating tick-tocks of her work at BuzzFeed News, among others, are peppered with some of the most recognizable names in the GOP: Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, John Bolton, Bobby Jindal, Donald Trumps Sr. and Jr., and multiple presidents of the NRA, who saw Butina as a kindred spirit—and, thus, as someone whose motives they had no reason to question...
Butina ingratiated herself into every tier of Far Right social activity: She sucked up to Evangelicals, libertarians and tax-cutters, media conspiracy nuts, and above all the "Let's Shoot Everybody" enthusiasts eager to sell their wares to a promising Russian market.
She flirted publicly with a lot of men in conservative leadership roles, and allegedly forced herself - just read the disdain she expressed about her live-in "boyfriend" Paul Erickson (himself a questionable figure in GOP circles) - into relationships using sex as a weapon.
Okay, back to Willis:
Again, in retrospect, the warning signs were there for anyone who cared to look. As BuzzFeed News notes, in an autocracy with strict gun laws, the very idea of a strong grassroots analogue to the NRA is kind of absurd. But what Butina and her colleagues deduced is that the American right's blind, dogmatic devotion to protecting the Second Amendment would allow them to set aside any nagging misgivings about joining forces with her, if such misgivings even occurred to them in the first place. Put differently: A hostile foreign government scrutinized every aspect of American life and concluded that guns were the perfect access point for them to slip in undetected...
When you look at the National Rifle Association, about what motivates that organization - the profiteering via increased gun sales - you'll notice that the NRA relies on fearmongering of the worst kind to ensure a solid base of customers. That in order to do all that, ever since the 1970s that group turned away from Gun Safety and more towards a White Nationalist organization. When viewed from that angle, a merger between a blatantly jingoistic / faux-patriotic NRA and a corrupt foreign regime like Russia makes more sense.
One of the most disturbing trends of the last five years has been the growth of Far Right Nationalist/Populist (actually Fascist) groups across every Western democracy (and in democracies across the globe). Where Russia was once home to Soviet Communism, in the collapse of communism by the 1990s that nation - weakened by the humiliating collapse of the USSR - has redesigned itself into the exact - yet equally immoral - opposite of Nationalist Fascism. And having turned themselves into a Far Right nation, Russia is back to manipulating other nations... only this time using Fascism as the link.
In order to retain power as a permanently placed dictator, Putin allied himself to one of the few powerful organizations in post-Soviet Russia: the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, a harshly Far Right sect of Christianity. Doing so made Russia a cornerstone of the Far Right factions of Christianity, which itself feeds into the racist Nationalism of Far Right political groups like the UKIP in England, France's National Front, and nowadays the NRA here in the USA. There is growing evidence of financial ties and Russian interference in Western European elections, all geared towards one thing: putting Nationalist/Isolationist-minded and Putin-friendly governments in control of enough nations to break NATO and send the world back to 19th Century geopolitics (and all the horrors THAT entailed)
Owning the NRA gets Putin ownership of the GOP. Having trump in the White House is one thing, and arguably a temporary disaster waiting to fall apart. Ownership of the Republican Party is more long-term, and more devastating to our nation's well-being.
So now here's ANOTHER reason why Congressional Republicans won't lift a damn finger to stop trump. At first it was due to fear of their rabid Far Right voting base. And now it's ALSO due to fear of their deep-pocket paymasters.
How does it feel, Comrade Mitch, how does it feel to sell out your nation? And how does it feel, you sons-of-bitches, to sell yourselves out so cheaply?
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