Don's Tuesday Column

              THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   1/17/2017

        Obama a Russia hawk? Horse pucky!

Some current news narratives cannot be understood outside of recent, even distant history. Russia-related news must be looked at through the prism of Barack Obama’s actions (or inactions) for the last 8 years. The Soviet Union’s Communist Party has a thinly veiled connection, over nearly a century, to the Progressive side of the Democratic Party.

In 3 days Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as America’s 45^th President; I’m writing a week ahead due to travel plans. The Democrat Left has sought to undermine Trump’s legitimacy and our faith in November’s election. Intelligence agencies cited Russian efforts to undermine faith in our electoral process; Soviet/Russian spy agencies have often worked to destabilize the political affairs of democracies by undermining faith in the electoral processes.

In that sense, I applied the term “useful idiots” (coined by Vladimir Lenin for those in western nations that unknowingly advance Communist Party goals) to those undermining the legitimacy of Trump’s victory. “Puppets” would apply to those knowingly passing on either CIA-sourced “fake news” or scurrilous stories fed to them by foreign agencies.

First, a symbiotic relationship existed for decades between the Communist Party movement in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and the Progressive movement in America. Not all otherwise-sincere American Progressives did so knowingly. However, the socialists and their sympathizers in the West were “fellow travelers” in the sense that they had common goals for state ownership of, for instance, utilities, oil companies, land and commerce.

Progressive/socialist agendas gave us direct self-rule through initiatives and propositions; they had no place in the constitutions of America or any state. They’re used routinely in California and elsewhere, with mixed and often disastrous results (capping property taxes, good; releasing violent criminals and drug dealers, bad). Progressives were enamored, as if through “rose colored glasses,” with the ideology of “direct rule” and public ownership of “the means of production.” Witness their fascination with “universal (socialist) health care.”

The Soviet (or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR) Communist Party, their only legal political party, exported—by any available or necessary means—its monolithic state ownership and control over every aspect of life, to other nations out of ideological fanaticism. Such fanaticism found a home in the socialist, progressive left in America. Since a Marxist, socialist system required the supplanting or destruction of America’s economic and political freedom, Communism was condemned as illegal—or un-American, if you will.

Devoted to the Soviet Communist Party, American socialists/communists revealed their hypocrisy during WWII. They advocated loudly for America to stay out of the war while Germany and the USSR had a nonaggression treaty; they shamelessly demanded America enter the war after Germany invaded the USSR. After the war, they worked their way into institutions (e.g. movies and the State Department) from which they could exert influence and control, and propagandize for Communist Party goals.

Republicans fought to expose communist infiltration, a commendable and necessary effort in spite of excesses by Sen. Joe McCarthy; Democrats opposed those efforts and vilified Republicans. Some Democrats and most Progressives shared Soviet Communist (i.e. anti-American) goals including efforts to undermine America in Viet Nam and support communists in other places like Nicaragua.

When Barack Obama was emerging into his own political and community-organizing phase, American communists and socialists began to formulate their long-term agenda. That meant removing the “socialist” label, taking over the Democratic Party, and using that political machine to pursue the same collectivist goals of undermining America’s free-market economic system. That agenda continues piecemeal today (i.e. health care).

Barack Obama was schooled in that quasi-socialist agenda in meetings and seminars while he was at Columbia University, having earlier bonded with Marxist Frank Marshal Davis in Hawaii. The proof that it took hold came when Obama became involved (as a “useful idiot” or knowing puppet) in the anti-nuclear movement opposing President Reagan’s decision to counter Soviet aggression and threats against Europe with missile placements. A clearer evil/good binary choice could not have been found than the Soviet military threat to Europe against American efforts to protect the free world; Obama took the side of the evil Soviets.

“The FBI, CIA and NSA are now on record for the fact that the Soviet and Russian governments have carried out propaganda and false front campaigns for decades, trying to influence American politics. The nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, in which Barack Obama participated, is a great example of a Soviet front operation. This is something conservatives have been saying for a long time…” To Russian and Chinese cyber warfare and illegally accessed computer info, emails, etc. of the White House, the State Dept, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, many corporations and entities, “Obama has been typically supine, failing to respond to these attacks on the U.S. Only when he thought political hay could be made did Obama belatedly swing into action.” (Powerlineblog.com)

Obama’s record on Russia: “Russia invades Crimea—oh well; Russia shoots down airliner—mistakes happen; John Podesta falls for phishing scam—Restart the Cold War!” (Dave Burge, aka Iowahawkblog). Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said that Obama’s recent sanctions against Russia marked Obama as a latecomer to efforts to take a harder line on Russia and Putin. He said “I wish they hadn’t gone to such extents to undermine (earlier legislative efforts by Congress) to get tough on Russia.” Now we’re told Obama’s the Russia hawk? Horse pucky!