Collusion Illusion: Start of WWIII?

Wasn’t That Just Diplomacy?

I may be wrong, and yet it gnaws at me so much that I have put all work aside early this morning in order to give the rampant thoughts running through my mind room to ventilate.

Russia/China: I am no political professional. Both are Communist, both have a history of poor human rights for their citizens, and are known for causing trouble for neighboring countries. Both have made it clear they would like to compete with the U.S. as the top economic power of the world.

Yet, when President Trump was in office, it seems, according to one party and their media, that our president was in cahoots with Russia in order to fix the election, and that he was therefore compromised and controlled by the puppet strings of Putin’s wishes. Did we have collusion or not?

The Definition of diplomacy, according to Merriam-Webster:

1: the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations

2: skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility.

Hmmm?

I’m no expert, but I would say that accusing the president of a foreign nation of having unjust power and influence over our president, if he did not, would arouse much hostility for the foreign president, or both presidents for that matter.

Trump had former and present-day business ties with Russia, that was certain. Yet, looking at things now, it seems more or less, that the entire issue of his collusion with Putin was a pure political hoax meant to turn favorable sentiment towards him into distrust of his goals and leadership.

It may have been all a political comeuppance, if you will.

So, instead of allowing Trump’s favorable ties with Russian business and government to turn into the potential for positive relations between the U.S. and Russia, wherein Putin would possibly be given a platform for working with America on Russia’s position in world affairs, we kept Putin in the role as the evil no-do-gooder, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Certainly, he may be just as we had painted him. Yet, diplomacy had worked in the past with other Russian presidents.

At a time when we had the opportunity to establish communication with Putin on issues which really mattered, we accused our president of being tied and obliged to the Russian leader, causing Trump then to back away from, and even avoid, dealing with Putin on any level. Trump simply could not afford to look too much like a fan of Putin’s.

According to the BBC News (since here in America, you can find articles which prove definitively that collusion did exist, and that it most certainly, did not):

“A Russian analyst who worked on a dossier that made unsubstantiated claims linking Donald Trump to the Kremlin has been arrested in the US. The Department of Justice charged Igor Danchenko, 43, with lying to the FBI. He was detained as part of an inquiry into the origins of baseless claims that Mr. Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.”

This went on for years ….

I am angry now, of course. I want to know, did collusion truly exist? What evidence is there now? If it can’t be proven, and it seems then it was just a political quagmire, then those responsible for the misinformation need to be held at least partly accountable for creating the current situation, since instead of the U.S. being able to establish solid diplomatic ties with Putin all those years during such an important time, we isolated and used the Russian leader, and colored him as purely evil with no redeeming qualities.

According to ABC News, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee at its annual hearing on worldwide threats:

“We assess Putin feels aggrieved. The West has not given proper deference and perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose,” Haines said.

I am not an intelligence expert, but this seems to me to indicate that at some time in the recent past, Putin was concerned over how the West perceived him. Would that not have been the time to try assisting him in improving his status with the West? People on the fence can easily be pushed one way or the other.

I am sure, by this time, he has decided he does not care at all how the West perceives him. We have all had experience with bullies, and don’t we know there is an opportunity to teach a bully a lesson with kindness instead of what they are accustomed to: scorn, derision, hatred?

Bullies can be turned around with kindness at times rather than with pure discipline.

On its own website, StopBullying.gov, an official website of the United States government, there are pages which advocate treating bullies with kindness as opposed to discipline:

“Unfortunately, many schools respond to negative behaviors such as bullying with punishment, which is thought to reduce or eliminate such behaviors. After years of research on “zero-tolerance” to end bullying and violence, we know that these punishment-based approaches do not work. Given this knowledge, it makes better sense to focus on teaching and modeling pro-social behavior, like teaching kindness.”

Is it shocking we do not follow our own advice? Do bullying leaders behave differently than other bullies, in general? I don’t know… but my gut says not really. Bullies are bullies because they crave what the nice person has.

And why is China not being accused of colluding with our current president, when, in fact, we do know for certain that his own son had direct ties to their government in both legal and; however you want to define it, questionable, or possibly even outright illicit business dealings?

From an October, 2021 Politico article by Ben Schreckinger:

“During the presidential campaign, liberals had plenty of reason to tune out the Hunter Biden story. For one, it was being pushed by Donald Trump, whose administration was awash in ethics scandals of its own, and who failed to make a convincing case that Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company influenced his father’s actions as vice president. And it was unclear what to make of the alleged leak of material from Hunter Biden’s laptop, especially after social media companies moved to restrict access to the story and a bevy of former U.S. intelligence officials dismissed it as likely ‘Russian disinformation.’”

The article went on to suggest:

“The White House responded that the identities of the buyers would be kept secret, both from the painter and the public, while leaving it to the art dealer to weed out any suspicious patrons. Many ethics experts expressed sharp disapproval of the arrangement, including a former head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, who described the sums of money involved as ‘absolutely appalling.’”

Is this just diplomacy, then? If it is, great — but why on one side it is okay, but on the other, it is collusion?

If you are Democrat or Republican, Independent, apolitical, or somewhere in between — something’s wrong here, and it is probably too late for any of us to stand up and notice, let alone do something about.

But like I said, it was on my mind, and perhaps decades from now, this article will be floating in pixels somewhere in outer space and the aliens who find it while trying to figure out what happened to earth, will understand that not all humans were so easily duped.

Let’s face it: it seems glaringly apparent that most of our leaders are guilty of greed, plain and simple. Instead of worrying about diplomacy and doing what was and is right for all of us, they seem complicit and purely tied down to their own greed for money, connections, sway over all of us, and their own power. That’s collusion, and it is a recipe for disaster, plain and simple.

We have to do better here in America. If not our leaders, then our citizens … it seems our leaders like for us to be divided, since they do nothing to persuade us to get along with the other side, nor do they do so themselves. But truth is truth, and truth cannot be divided. My recommendation is for each citizen of the United States to do a little research in order to learn the truth at all costs — for the world’s sake if not our own!

Putin, is, of course, wrong. I am not excusing him. I believe; however, that instead of the United States the world trusted and respected as a leader in world affairs as it once was, we have compromised ourselves right out of world leadership … at a time when nobody else can take our place, and it was needed the most.

And now, we are all paying the price. And now, diplomacy is too late.

No telling how bad things might get. Thanks, all of you collusion illusion conspirators — I won’t name you by name, but the entire world knows who you are!

More importantly, they know why you did what you did when you did it.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed, please share and applaud (up to 50 times!). Maybe Putin will see this article if shared enough, and will realize his failings multiply our own — that citizens of our country do realize how bad we have gotten: but most importantly, that two wrongs never make a right.

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Finally, here are one of my other political commentaries, and two of my short stories:

Peace I leave you!