Why Did Russia Want To Influence Our Election?
Imagine walking into Walmart and seeing empty shelves.
There’s no bread, no meat, no vegetables. Freezer compartments are just empty boxes, shelves merely metal bones, shadows in the dim lights of a store with no customers and nothing to sell to them if they had been there. Down the street there is a bakery making loaves of bread. That’s all, just loaves of plain, white bread. There is a 4-hour line waiting to buy one loaf.
That is what 50 American teenagers saw when my 14-year-old step-daughter and I went to Moscow in the summer of 1990 to join 50 Russian teenagers in a combined accelerated learning camp. Shock is too tame a word for what we felt.
We were in the country we considered our major competitor, our military equal, the “other” world power who held the nuclear codes that could obliterate us. The image we had been handed hardly matched what we saw: a country crumbling, literally, ugly concrete buildings melting from neglect. Systems that didn’t work. People who couldn’t marry because there was no housing to be had. Three generations living in tiny apartments.
These scenes flash through my mind as the story of President-elect Donald Trump’s relationship with Putin and other Russian leaders flashes across the headlines. The fear that Russia might have influenced the outcome of this election strikes deeper than just voter manipulation. After seeing the U.S.S.R that existed at the beginning of the collapse, all of us visiting in 1990 understood at a much deeper level, the beauty of our democracy, our economy, our freedom from war on our shores, our ability to transfer power peacefully.
Our hosts were gracious and generous beyond compare. One night we had a party and about twenty of us gathered in a small living room where someone had a guitar and there was a lot of singing and laughing. It was the first time in that generation’s history that members of the Communist party were able to talk about their experiences. They were eager to talk to us and we were eager to listen to their experiences.
I remember asking a teacher, a Communist Party member, if they hated us. We were taught to hate and fear the Russians and I wondered if they felt the same about us. She was surprised and said, “Oh no. We loved the Americans. After the war, they brought us winter coats. We love Americans.” I still get choked up remembering the emotion in her words and how happy she was to have us there and how hard they tried to treat us as well as possible when there was almost no food to be had in their country.
One of the lessons I learned in that visit was the importance of generosity. Everyone we met had a small present for us, a token of friendship. We were told to bring little things that we could give to them. This exchange became a lovely ritual that seemed to open our hearts a little wider. At the party in that tiny living room, the hostess passed around a tin of tiny candies and one orange separated into segments. We took each with gratitude. It was everything she had. It was everything we needed.
That was a happy, optimistic time. We thought Russia was on the brink of something new, would become a prosperous democracy. We didn’t realize that some people were only focused on grabbing more than their share of the pie, regardless of the cost. We were too naive to realize that leaders with greedy intent pat people on the back while robbing their pockets.
One of the most powerful moments of that trip happened when our plane lifted off. We sang a lot at camp and one of the popular songs was a tribute to the equality of everyone. The refrain was something like, “Black is so beautiful … Red is so beautiful …” and so on. Not long after we were in the air, one of the kids started singing, “Capitalism is so beautiful …,” and everyone joined in.
That was a simpler time. Democracy isn’t perfect. Capitalism isn’t perfect. The changes of the modern times have fallen harder on some than others. I have been disappointed by a lot of elections, but I always felt capable of accepting the elected president as “my president.” Even George Bush who took us into a devastating war seemed sane if not particularly smart.
Today, though, with Donald Trump’s connections to Russia, I have to wonder. How much did Russia affect the outcome? Did they manipulate the system for Trump? If so, why him? What are they after? What is he after?
When the U.S.S.R. finally collapsed, there was a massive grab for power and a feeding frenzy snapping up public assets. One of the many examples: the state energy company that controlled a third of the world’s gas reserves, was sold for $230 million. Obviously, the people doing the grabbing got rich.
On the other end of the spectrum, devastation, especially in villages which were suddenly cut off from supplies. Stores closed, health services stopped, there were no libraries, no cars, no gas, no television reception. As Legal Allen says in sott.net, there was, “absolutely nothing to do other than to drink yourself into oblivion, making bad home-made vodka from your decaying surplus grain.”
What we, as Americans, have to remember is that there is no guarantee that we will always have this democracy, this peace, this prosperous economy, this American dream. Other great civilizations have crumbled. Before our very eyes, on nightly news, we have seen Syria collapse. Partly from climate change as a severe, years-long drought drove millions of people into the cities, partly from outside influence, including Russia, partly from an unstable government. It could happen here.
James S. Henry (4) offers clues but no answers about Trump’s network of Russian connections in The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections. David Cay Johnston (5), Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of Donald Trump, states, “But what Henry does show should prompt every American to rise up in defense of their country to demand a thorough, out-in-the-open congressional investigation with no holds barred.”
Russia’s interest in us and in Trump is worrisome. We need answers about what his ties to them are. Shouldn’t everyone want those answers? Shouldn’t Trump want us to have those answers if his motives are clean? Could a congressional investigation be objective enough and trusted enough to make such an investigation and have us accept the results?
Notes:
- Economic Collapse of USSR Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255693/Last-pictures-life-iron-curtain-collapse-USSR.html#ixzz4Vhq5qZbO
- https://www.sott.net/article/147683-Survival-in-Times-of-Uncertainty-Growing-Up-in-Russia-in-the-1990s
- http://www.the-american-interest.com/byline/james-s-henry/
- James S. Henry — American economist, lawyer, and investigative journalist. He is an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and an INSPIRE Fellow at its Institute for Global Leadership.[1] Henry has written extensively on the problems of tax justice and development finance.[2] Henry is a senior adviser at the Tax Justice Network.[3]
- David Cay Boyle Johnston is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.
