Comments on: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump – Political Friendship.

By: Pelvo White, Jr.

Pelvo White, Jr. — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 11:46:01 +0000

The Greek philosopher Plato said that a democracy degenerates into a dictatorship. Putin’s Russia recently, historically speaking, lost a communist dictatorship, and gained capitalism, and a more open society. Trump is experimenting with changing a liberal pluralistic democracy with its capitalist economic base that fosters an open society into a less liberal political entity. Trump came to power by the will of the voters who claim to be tired of America’s liberal tendencies footing the bills for the poor, infirmed, aged, and social programs in general. Putin came to power in response to his nation’s disenchantment with being able to achieve the ideals of the Communist Manifesto as conceived by Karl Marx, and Friedrick Engels. Putin is learning how to lead an open society, and Trump’s negative actions relative to the news media, and the other two branches of government tends to indicate that he is opposed to many of the long established principles of an open society. Trump tries to severely lessen the amount of information that he, and his administration releases to the public. He attacks some of the mass news media companies, and claim that they are dispensing ” fake news .” The political actions of both Putin, and Trump are testing the elasticity of their political structures. Putin is asking if a closed society can open? Trump is asking if an open society can close?

By: PCL

PCL — Tue, 27 Dec 2016 16:31:07 +0000

This seems like reasonable advice for someone like Trump. It would be naive to assume that Russia or China can be assumed to be either a friend or enemy. Our relationship with Putin has been harmed recently because of the knee-jerk reactions of aging cold warriors within our own establishment like John McCain, and because of the influence, much of it bought and paid-for, of the hidden Saudi-Iraeli alliance that dominated to agenda of the last administration during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. She over-reacted to Russian actions, however aggressive, in its own back yard, even though these mainly involved areas in which Russian minorities were threatened by the local political climate. Then she tried to overthrow Russia’s only allies with “pro-democracy” forces that turned out to be Al Qaeda affiliated Islamists when the dust had settled. Without the baggage of Hillary’s war-mongering, Trump can start with a clean slate. But he should be aiming to head off any trouble before it starts, just because Russia’s hostile reaction to the last administration’s provocations seemed largely justified doesn’t mean that won’t get overly ambitious some where else. A strong US military will be the best deterrent to that, though Trump should keep the phrase “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” in mind. He hasn’t had much experience with the latter and almost none with the former, so it will be a steep learning curve for him.