10-03-2017, 11:07 AM
Peter Lemkin Wrote:Cliff Varnell Wrote:All well and good. But the suspicions Trump is deeply tied to Putin are stoked by the continual lying by Trump, Sessions, Flynn, Page and Manafort.
Why does Trump lie about "not calling Russia in 10 years?"
Why did Sessions lie about not meeting any Russian officials when he met the Russian ambassador three times?
Why did Flynn lie about not discussing US sanctions in his many phone calls with said Ambassador?
Carter Page had a meltdown on MSNBC sort-of-not-denying meeting with said Ambassador.
Why did Ambassador Kislyak lie about meeting any Trump operatives during the campaign?
If all these meetings were benign why are these guys acting guilty of something?
While it is not [yet] clear what the ties/meetings/plans were/are all about, I think Trumps ties to Russia are more financial than political. He has has apparently gotten big loans from Russian Oligarchs and does business with them - and not small business either. His friends and their companies do or want to do business with Russia - and not small business either. They know that the concept of 'Russia' is anathema in the US, so have kept their contacts hidden because of that and the fact IMO that they have nothing to do with bilateral relationships of nations, but personal business on both sides. Russia is largely a kleptocracy at the top and Trump wants that in the USA too. While I have no problem with Russian and the USA getting along and not being enemies for no sane reason, I don't like his [Trump's] view of the Presidency as first good for his bottom line and last good for the People of the US and World. Yes, it would be nice to know what the meetings/talks were about, but only by a truly independent investigation - not one controlled by the two parties which have private political axes to grind. I think Trump has done much worse things at this point no matter how one wishes to paint the 'Russia thing'....and that this is a reversion to 'Cold War' thinking - as that 'reflex' is still present in US thinking. Russia has done not nice things, but the US has also done so in spades. Putin and his Oligarch friends are very much like Trump and his Oligarch friends - natural friends I'd say and already known to have done some business deals and planning to do others. In this there is good and bad - the bad being that it is Oligarch to Oligarch and not people to people rapprochement.
I think that is a fair summing up, Pete. However, the MSM drums of war with Russia are beating beaten so hard now with contrived Russian responsibility for anything that suits their agenda that it has turned heads. Americans I have known for decades who hitherto have been insightful and knowledgeable on US elite and Intelligence Community artfulness and deceits are in psychological free fall; they've lost all sense of balance and common sense on the Russia issue. It's sad to see - and completely pointless arguing with them about it. I suspect they would be cheerleaders if the US went to war with Russia.
The only parallel I can think of - and I've scratched my head for months now about this - is the one Jung wrote about Hitler and the German people who in the lead up to WWII were, he argued, in the psychic grip of the god (Archetype) Wotan - who has many attributions but war and frenzy are among them. I sense a similar thing today. For example, Jung wrote in his Wotan essay:
Quote:[T]he gods are without doubt personifications of psychic forces..."(6) And when one is possessed by such a god there is not much one can do about it and in the case of Wotan we're talking about "a fundamental attribute of the German psyche."
We live in perilous times...
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14