SINCE his election back in 2016, US President Donald Trump had to deal with accusations of Russian collusion. According to this narrative, Trump was elected because he had ties to Putin, who helped him win the US Presidency, so as to undermine US democracy.
However, the facts never really supported any of these claims. The investigation into the matter revealed that the only things certain Russians did to influence the 2016 US elections was to purchase a few Facebook ads and set up a few meetings with the Trump team.
There was nothing there, and the whole debacle ended over a week ago when Robert Mueller – the US official in charge of the investigation – revealed that there was no collusion. This conclusion left many media and political figures in the US in tears, and their credibility – at least among Independents and Trump supporters – in tatters.
Now, the accusations against Trump and his purported collusion with foreign powers is nothing new. Accusations of corruption and evil acts is part and parcel of politics. Disagree with someone politically? Attack his or her character. It’s politics as usual.
What makes the Trump-Russia collusion narrative different is that it involved an outside power – a nuclear armed power that is opposed to the Pax Americana ideology. Having no means to remove Trump through normal channels, the Washington establishment decided to bring in an external foe to discredit him, which is strange because they could have easily attacked Trump from other angles. There was something visceral about the whole thing, mainly because it was so convoluted.
And the reason why the Trump-Russia collusion story was so convoluted is because the US establishment see Trump as an existential threat; a symbol of something more dangerous to come. And when people face existential threats, they begin to frame their situation in a mythical or semi-mythical narrative of good VS evil.
The Russia collusion narrative happened because very powerful people and millions of anti-Trump types wanted it to be real, and now that reality has told them ‘no,’ the whole thing has turned into farce, with certain US media figures descending into fits of hysteria. This failure has intensified the instinctive anxiety in American society that, after Trump, politics will never be the same.
When a country’s political system becomes so dysfunctional that it has to resort to brining in external enemies using flimsy evidence, it shows that something is wrong. It proves that there is pressure underneath the surface, and that the only way to control that pressure is to bring in outside forces, so as to absorb or mitigate the incoming cataclysm from within. (jdr456@gmail.com/PN)
