I Think I Found The Problem

It's "Russia, Russia, Russia"

And it ain’t no hoax.

I’m thumbing through Vanity Fair, as I am wont to do, and I come across an article with this paragraph in it:

Forget Robert Mueller III’s inquiry into the links between Kremlin figures and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The complex, intertwined relationship between Russian billions and modern Britain goes far beyond high-priced real estate. Successive Conservative prime ministers, from David Cameron to Theresa May to Boris Johnson, have been obliged to respond to repeated geopolitical provocations, including Crimea’s 2014 annexation and the 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy living in Salisbury. But at the same time, each has sought to avoid the kind of overt criticism that might impair their valuable relationships with a small coterie of wealthy political donors of Russian origin. February’s invasion of Ukraine made that already precarious tightrope nigh impossible to walk, however, and in the months since, government ministers have lined up to promote their anti-Putin bona fides with weapons shipments to Ukraine, yacht impoundings, property seizures, and bank freezes. The U.K.’s transport secretary—who famously fell victim to his own department’s COVID-related travel policies while on a family vacation—recently arrived at a London dock, news crew in tow, to publicize the detention of a superyacht called Phi. He said the vessel—with an “infinite” wine cellar and freshwater pool—had been “mired in all sorts of layers of almost deliberate, we think in fact deliberate attempts to hide its true ownership.” The Conservative government’s recent crackdown masks an insidious malaise, with a number of Russian chickens coming home to roost. As a Belgrave Square protester told reporters before police arrested him, “The same money that funds the Russia war machine funds the Conservative Party.”

Well, let’s not forget Mueller but we can set him aside for a moment, and think about the implications.

It was much easier for Russia to infiltrate the British government than it ever will be for them to infiltrate the American government, at least directly: you can buy lordships in Britain (the article points out that there is but a handful of actual hereditary Lords left in the UK). That means you an sit in the House of Lords and vote up or down on policies and programs that directly impact Russian policy.

Indeed, the oligarchy operating out of Moscow at Putin’s behest has its grimy little fingers deep in the pockets of the Conservative party, right up to Boris Johnson’s ill-fitting suit jackets.

But it gets worse:

On their hunt for a new apartment there, a “young punk” of a real estate broker provoked his [Roman Borisovich, an early supporter of Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which means he’s on Putin’s radar as a troublemaker] ire during a tour of a penthouse duplex next to Dormition Cathedral, seat of the U.K.’s Russian Orthodox diocese. “He was trying to endear himself by saying that his firm deals with Russians all the time,” Borisovich recalls of the broker, who told him they had recently sold a $32 million property to one of Russia’s regional governors. “That’s when I looked at him: ‘Would you be saying the same if this was a Mexican drug dealer? Would you be telling people with the same sort of pride that you’ve done it?’ ” The broker went quiet as Borisovich railed about how local officials in Russia were not paid nearly enough—at least not by honest means—to buy an apartment in Knightsbridge, where the most recent data puts average real estate transactions around $4 million. Since that encounter he has lobbied for transparency. Corruption, Borisovich says, is “the cement, and this is the concrete of the foundation” of Russia’s current government. “There is nothing else that holds it together.”

This would be like Kathy Hochul or Ron DeSantis buying a villa on Lake Como in Italy, in other words.

So if Putin is doing it in England, and he’s doing it in Hungary, and Brazil, and it’s happening in Nicaragua and Hong Kong, what does all that tell you?

Moreover, what does it tell you about Trump and America (enter Mueller)?

It suggersts to me that we are in the middle of a giant chess game of global domination, only this time, it’s not the USA sitting in the chair.

We’re pieces on the board, and probably not much more valuable than any pawn.

We know Russia has directly interfered in the past two Presidential elections — Trump’s own National Intelligence Council verified that — and likely, her involvement in American politics goes back much further than that¹.

There’s also the matter of the tens of millions of dollars funneled to the Trump campaign via the NRA and the appearance of Maria Butina, who seemed to acquire some rather deep tendrils directly into the cabinet before and during the Trump administration, with Alexander Torshin as her handler.

Pardon me, that’s *British Lord* Alexander Torshin. They’ll give a Lordship to anyone!²

Indeed, she appears in the January 6 Select Committee investigation as, what else, the girlfriend of one of the main conspirators.³

You may remember that Butina pled guilty to serving as a Russian spy, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and deported upon her release from prison, where she….get this…was elected to the Russian Duma, their version of the House of Representatives!

It’s not much of a stretch to figure out Putin’s game in all of this: cripple democracy while positioning his chess pieces for global domination against the only opponent worthy of playing the game still: China.

And he’s had at least a twenty year headstart — that’s just as President/Prime Minister. Remember he was also the head of the KGB/FSB prior to his first election — while America has struggled to get her shoes on: he’s spent that time watching, calculating, finding the perfect idiot to spearhead his destruction efforts here.

Donald Trump. You know, That Fucking Guy.

1. I’d argue that it goes as far back as the Bush pére and raising the specter of Clinton’s dalliances but I have no proof of that.

2. Including me. I have two. (Full disclosure)

3. I would not be shocked if Maria Butina turned out to be on the pee tape, is what I’m saying.