The American Left, for the better part of two years, has been intent upon making the Russia investigation the focal point of American politics, despite indications that the average American could care less about the matter. For the current leadership of the Democratic Party, Russia represents the greatest threat and enemy in modern American history, and despite a complete lack of evidence of any collusion between the Trump administration and the Russian government, they are convinced that Putin and Trump constitute the new Axis of Evil.
Thus, they have abandoned their ideology and failed to see their own rampant hypocrisy. Allow me to explain.
Libertarians, generally, have favorably viewed the Democratic Party when it comes to a foreign policy that seeks to avoid military confrontation and avoid unnecessary wars. We have, of course, seen the disastrous effects of the Iraq War and the “intervention in Libya.” Now, the Democrats want us to believe that Russia is an enormous threat, and any contact between Trump and Russia is treasonous.
This is beyond laughable. Trump can and should do all that he can to avoid ratcheting up tensions between Russia and the European Union/United States. The bonds that unite Europe and the United States are strong, and Donald Trump is not trying to dissolve them; even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.
It is amusing that Democrats are quick to label Trump as reckless for seeking to lessen tensions with Russia and build a good relationship with the nation. Being anti-war used to be a Democratic rallying cry. Now, it seems, that thrilled to see an expensive and futile military buildup along the Russia/Eastern Europe border. Heaven forbid!
The last thing that the United States should be doing right now is paying for an expensive arms race escalation in Eastern Europe. Yes, NATO and Europe are our allies. No, we should not be funding their defense from non-existent Russian territorial designs and agressions.
Russia has absolutely no interest in attacking or controlling territory of non-Russian speakers. Putin can and should be criticized for his annexation of Crimea and his support for Russian speaking separatist paramilitaries in Ukraine, but these actions do not signify that Russia poses a threat to Eastern Europe, much less the United States.
Trump’s meeting with Putin was in no way, shape, or form, treasonous.
While we are on the subject of treason, let us once again remember what the Russian government allegedly did: through email hacking, they conclusively proved that Hillary Clinton infiltrated the supposedly neutral DNC, and used it as her own personal campaign vehicle, in order to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Somehow, this was a story that the mainstream American media was unable to unearth.
The level of corruption even involved Clinton acolyte Donna Brazile stealing campaign questions ahead of time, and feeding them directly to the Clinton campaign, thus giving her candidate an unfair advantage.
Putin should be praised and thanked for revealing this information. Hillary Clinton, far from being viewed as a respected elder statesman and Democratic Party icon, should be viewed as a crook and a cheat. So-called “progressives” in the Democratic Party should be thankful that Putin unearthed this information, and furious that the Democratic Party establishment sabotaged Bernie Sanders’ campaign, while boosting Clinton’s.
Thus far, there is not a shred of evidence that the Trump campaign was involved in hacking the DNC, or encouraging biased news coverage on Russian media outlets Sputnik and RT.
So, fundamentally, the American Left is largely getting it wrong on two points: first and foremost, there is no smoking gun that proves any kind of collusion between the Trump administration and the Russian government.
However, an even more important consideration is this: by ridiculing and lambasting Trump for seeking to defuse US-Russian tensions, they are betraying their fundamental foreign policy principles for political expediency.