They have a method for using directional pushes in the American political climate. They have ways of using Democrats to get rich, and ways of using Republicans to get rich.
There are two competing rhetorics, those of compassion versus security, those of progress versus freedom.
In reality, of course, both words are abused. In the name of security and freedom we enacted the Patriot Act, which allows government snooping of a scale and scope that would have astounded Orwell. He merely envisioned cameras everywhere. With smart phones, and particularly with the many apps people use, considerable behavioral data becomes possible: psychology profiles, spending profiles, friend networks, movement patterns. They can even know how well you sleep and if you snore, if your phone is in the room with you, which for most people it is.
In the name of compassion and progress we enacted Obamacare. We fought and lost the war on Poverty, which may as well have been named the war on the nuclear family, or on two parent families.
We swing this way, then that way. Everybody gets to feel like their people are in charge from time to time. And the same people get richer and richer no matter who sits in the White House.
Trump, I hope, is not a part of this. This is why, I think, we are seeing this highly irrational behavior relative to Russia. Perhaps somebody is thinking that if we can provoke patriotic sentiments that command and control of the Republican base at least will become easy again. Push our buttons and wait for Pavlovian reactions.
But I don’t think this is what is going to happen. Most of us don’t give a flying fuck what John McCain and Lindsay Graham think. They are either imbeciles or traitors. Solid thinkers, and honest patriots, not so much. We have no interest in war with Russia, and the very, very thin thread from which Obama seems to be trying to weave a casus belli rests on the hacking of John Podesta’s emails, which seems not to have even been the Russians.
We can only hope that these demons run out of ideas, and are cornered by the logic of the situation, and their inability to fool all of us all the time any more.