A Internacional

__ dementesim . . Do rio que tudo arrasta se diz que é violento Mas ninguém diz violentas as margens que o comprimem. . _____ . Quem luta pelo comunismo Deve saber lutar e não lutar, Dizer a verdade e não dizer a verdade, Prestar serviços e recusar serviços, Ter fé e não ter fé, Expor-se ao perigo e evitá-lo, Ser reconhecido e não ser reconhecido. Quem luta pelo comunismo . . Só tem uma verdade: A de lutar pelo comunismo. . . Bertold Brecht

sábado, janeiro 21, 2017

Trump e os discursos da vitória e tomada de posse


Read President Trump's full, blistering inaugural speech, attacking Washington, promising 'America first'

Rachel Cao | @rachelyicao



President Donald Trump just delivered a searing inaugural address, attacking Washington and promising a new hope for Americans who want to dream big

A transcript of Trump's first speech as president follows.
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President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Donald Trump promises 'America First' policies in inauguration speech 

President Donald Trump just delivered a searing inaugural address, attacking Washington and promising a new hope for Americans who want to dream big.

A transcript of Trump's first speech as president follows.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans and people of the world, thank you.
We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people.
Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.
Every four years we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.
And we are grateful to President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition.
They have been magnificent.
Thank you.
Today's ceremony, however, has a very special meaning because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.
For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have bore the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
That all changes starting right here and right now, because this moment is your moment.
It belongs to you.
It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.
This is your day.
This is your celebration.
And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.
January 20th, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families and good jobs for themselves.
These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists.
Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.
An education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.
And the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
We are one nation, and their pain is our pain.
Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny.
The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.
For many decades we've enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.
We've defended other nations' borders while refusing to defend our own. And we've spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.
We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.
One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind.
The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world. But that is the past, and now we are looking only to the future.
We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.
From this day forward, it's going to be only America first, America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our product, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.
Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never ever let you down.
America will start winning again, winning like never before.
We will bring back our jobs.
We will bring back our borders.
We will bring back our wealth, and we will bring back our dreams.
We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation.
We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.
We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.
We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.
We will shine for everyone to follow.
We will re-enforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.
At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.
The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.
Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.
The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.
Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.
We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.
A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. It's time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.
We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms and we all salute the same great American flag.
And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator.
So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.
Together we will make America strong again, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America proud again, we will make America safe again.
And, yes, together we will make America great again.
Thank you.
God bless you.

And God bless America."

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/20/transcript-of-president-trumps-inauguration-speech.html

***
O discurso de vitória de Trump na íntegra

9 de Novembro de 2016,


Obrigado. Peço desculpa por vos fazer esperar. Situação complicada. Obrigado.

Acabei de receber a chamada da Secretária Clinton. Deu-nos os parabéns. É sobre nós. Sobre a nossa vitória. E eu dei-lhe os parabéns e à sua família pela campanha muito renhida.

Ela lutou muito, trabalhou muito ao longo de muitos anos e temos uma grande dívida para com ela e para com o serviço que prestou ao nosso país. Digo-o com sinceridade.

Agora chegou o momento para os EUA sararem as feridas que nos dividem, para nos juntarmos e para que os republicanos, democratas e independentes deste país se juntarem como um povo unido. Chegou a altura.

Prometo a todos os cidadãos deste país que serei o Presidente de todos os norte-americanos e isso é muito importante para mim. Para todos os que não me escolheram apoiar no passado (e houve alguns) peço a vossa orientação e ajuda para que possamos trabalhar em conjunto e unificar o nosso grande país. Como disse desde o início, a nossa campanha não foi uma campanha, mas antes um grande e incrível movimento de trabalhadores que amam este país e que aspiram por um melhor futuro para si e para as suas famílias.

É um movimento composto por norte-americanos de todas as raças, religiões, classes e crenças que querem e esperam que o nosso governo esteja ao serviço do povo e ao serviço do povo estará.

Trabalhando em conjunto vamos dar início à urgente tarefa de reconstruir o nosso país e de renovar o sonho americano. Passei toda a minha vida no mundo empresarial, observando o potencial por explorar em projectos e pessoas em todo o mundo. É o que quero fazer pelo nosso país agora. Grande potencial. Fiquei a conhecer tanto o nosso país. Vai ser especial. Grande potencial. Todos os americanos vão ter a oportunidade de concretizar o seu potencial. Os homens e as mulheres esquecidos do nosso país não serão mais esquecidos.

Vamos resolver os problemas do nosso interior, reconstruir as nossas estradas, pontes, túneis, aeroportos, escolas e hospitais. Vamos reconstruir as nossas infra-estruturas que se tornarão ímpares e vamos colocar milhões de americanos na reconstrução. Vamos também, por fim, apoiar os nossos grandes veteranos que têm sido tão leais. E tive a oportunidade de conhecer tantos ao longo deste percurso de 18 meses. O tempo que passei com eles durante esta campanha foi uma das minhas maiores honras. Os nossos veteranos são pessoais incríveis.

Vamos dar início a um projecto de crescimento e renovação nacionais. Vou capacitar os talentos criativos dos americanos e teremos os melhores e os mais inteligentes para impulsionar o seu grande talento para o benefício de todos. Vai acontecer.

Temos um grande plano económico. Vamos duplicar o nosso crescimento e ter a economia mais forte do mundo. Ao mesmo tempo vamos trabalhar com todos os países que estejam dispostos a trabalhar connosco. Vamos estabelecer grandes relações. Esperamos estabelecer grandes, grandes relações. Nenhum sonho é demasiado grande. Nenhum desafio é demasiado desafiante. Nada que queiramos para o nosso futuro está para além do nosso alcance.

A América só se vai contentar com o melhor. Queremos recuperar o destino do nosso país. Temos de recuperar o destino do nosso país. E sonhar de forma ousada e desafiante. Temos de o fazer. Vamos sonhar feitos grandiosos e especiais para o nosso país.

Quero dizer ao mundo que vamos colocar sempre os interesses da América em primeiro lugar. Mas que vamos trabalhar com todos de forma justa.

Todos os povos e todas as nações. Vamos procurar estabelecer elos de ligação em detrimento da hostilidade; parcerias em detrimento de conflitos. E agora gostaria de agradecer a algumas das pessoas que realmente me ajudaram a alcançar uma noite realmente histórica.

Em primeiro lugar, quero agradecer aos meus pais, que sei que têm os olhos postos em mim neste momento. Grandes pessoas. Aprendi tantos com eles. Foram maravilhosos em todos os aspectos, foram verdadeiramente grandes pais. Também quero agradecer às minhas irmãs: Marianne e Elizabeth que estão connosco esta noite. Onde estão? Elas estão por aqui? São muito tímidas. E ao meu irmão Robert. O meu grande amigo. Onde está o Robert? Robert? Deviam estar aqui hoje. São fantásticos. E ao meu falecido irmão Fred. Um homem fantástico. Uma família fantástica. Sou muito sortudo.

Irmãos, irmãs e pais fantásticos. À Melania, ao Don, à Ivanka e ao Eric e à Tiffany e ao Barron, amo-vos e agradeço-vos. Em especial por estarem comigo em todos os momentos. Foi complicado.

Foi complicado. As lutas políticas são feias e é complicado. Portanto quero agradecer muito à minha família. Excepcional. Obrigado a todos. Lara, fizeste um trabalho inacreditável. Inacreditável. Vanessa, obrigado. Muito obrigado. Que grupo fantástico.

Apoiaram-me tanto e digo-vos que temos connosco um grande grupo de pessoas. Disseram-me muitas vezes que tínhamos uma equipa pequena. Mas não é assim tão pequena. Vejam todas as pessoas que temos. Olhem para todas estas pessoas.

E Kellyanne, Chris, Rudy, Steve e David. Temos do nosso lado pessoas muito talentosas e foram extremamente especiais.

Quero agradecer em especial ao nosso antigo mayor, Rudy Giuliani. É incrível, inacreditável, viajou connosco e acompanhou-nos em todas as reuniões. Rudy nunca muda. Onde é que está o Rudy? Aqui está ele.

Meus senhores, o Governador Chris Christie. Foi inacreditável. Obrigado, Chris. O primeiro homem, o primeiro Senador, o primeiro mayor. Ele é altamente respeitado em Washington porque não há ninguém mais inteligente do que ele. Ele foi um osso duro de roer. Quem vem aí? É o mayor? É Rudy?

Suba ao palco, por favor. É um verdadeiro amigo mas deixem-me dizer-vos que o conheci como adversário. Porque foi uma das pessoas que iria fazer frente aos Democratas, o Dr. Ben Carson. Onde está o Ben? Já agora, Mike Huckabee anda por aí e ele é fantástico. Ao Mike e à sua Sarah, muito obrigado. O General Mike Flynn. Onde está o Mike? E o General Kellogg. Mais de 200 generais e almirantes apoiaram-nos na campanha e são pessoas especiais. 22 condecorados de guerra. E uma pessoa muito especial com a qual, acreditem em mim, diziam que eu não me dava. Nunca me dei mal com ele. Trata-se de uma estrela sem igual. Ele é, conseguem adivinhar? Reince. Vejam todas estas pessoas. Reince é uma estrela. Mas eu disse que não te podiam de chamar de estrela, excepto se ganhássemos. Tal como o Secretariat [cavalo de corrida norte-americano famoso por ganhar o título Triple Crown] que se não tivesse ganhado não teria o busto nas pistas de Belmont.

Reince é uma verdadeira estrela e trabalha arduamente. Reince, chega aqui. Chega aqui, Reince.

Oh, minha nossa. Chegou o momento de fazermos isto como deve ser. Vem aqui e diz qualquer coisa.

[Reince Priebus: Meus senhores e minhas senhoras, o próximo presidente dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump. Obrigado. Foi uma honra. Deus vos abençoe.]

Uma pessoa extraordinária. A nossa parceria com o Comité Nacional Republicano foi muito importante para o nosso sucesso e para o que alcançámos, pelo que tenho de dizer que tive a oportunidade de conhecer pessoas incríveis.

Os Serviços Secretos são fortes, inteligentes, astutos e que ninguém os queira enganar. E protegem-me quando eu quero cumprimentar a audiência. São fantásticos e por isso quero agradecer aos Serviços Secretos.

E à Polícia de Nova Iorque que está aqui hoje. São uma força fantástica e infelizmente subvalorizada. Mas nós valorizamo-la.

Portanto foi um evento histórico mas para ser realmente histórico temos de fazer um excelente trabalho e prometo-vos que não vos vou desiludir. Vamos fazer um excelente trabalho. Aguardo com expectativa por ser o vosso presidente e, se Deus quiser, no final de dois ou três anos, ou quatro anos, ou talvez até oito anos, muitos de vós vão ter a oportunidade de dizer que trabalharam arduamente para nós. Vão dizer que tiveram muito orgulho de o fazer e eu vou-vos agradecer.

E agora só posso dizer que apesar de a campanha ter terminado, o nosso trabalho está só agora a começar. Vamos começar a trabalhar de imediato para o povo americano e vamos estar a desempenhar uma função que, se Deus quiser, vos fará orgulhosos do vosso presidente. Muito orgulhosos. Mais uma vez, a honra é minha.

É uma noite extraordinária. Foram dois anos extraordinários e eu amo este país. Obrigado.


Muito obrigado. Muito obrigado, Mike Pence.



Tradução de Susana Valdez e Francisco Ferreira

https://www.publico.pt/2016/11/09/mundo/noticia/o-discurso-de-vitoria-de-trump-na-integra-1750507

quarta-feira, janeiro 18, 2017

THE SECRET SOURCE OF PUTIN’S EVIL

The Brothers Karamazov
THE SECRET SOURCE OF PUTIN’S EVIL
It’s not the K.G.B., or the Cold War. It’s decidedly more Pushkin-esque, or Peter the Great, than that.
BY PETER SAVODNIK
JANUARY 10, 2017 5:00 AM

By Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images.

Henry Kissinger recently compared Vladimir Putin to “a character out of Dostoevsky,” which apparently delighted the Russian president. That’s not entirely surprising. No Russian writer encapsulates the many incongruous feelings and forces—cultural, spiritual, metaphysical—still coursing through the post-Soviet moment better than Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Technically, our current chapter of Russian history began on Christmas Day, 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev declared the Soviet Union dead. But, in reality, it didn’t come into focus until 1999, with the outbreak of the second Chechen war and Putin’s rise to power, and, really, it didn’t acquire any momentum or self-awareness until October 2003, when Yukos oil chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint on a tarmac at an airport in Novosibirsk. That was when Putin signaled that the old Boris Yeltsin configuration—the weakened head of state enveloped by a swarm of self-seeking boyars, or oligarchs—was over and that the once dormant, fractured, fractious state was reasserting its authority and imposing a new order: a new telos. Since then, the question that’s animated all discussion of Russia outside Russia has been: Where is Putin leading his country? What does he want?

When Americans try to explain anything that they think is bad about modern Russia, they inevitably blame the Soviet Union. Russians like flashy clothes because they didn’t have them for so long, they say. Or Russians don’t smile because, well, if you’d grown up in the Soviet Union, you wouldn’t smile either. And so on. This makes us feel good about ourselves—we were on the right side of history—but it’s also incorrect. The great disruption, the sea change, far presaged the rise or fall of the Soviet Union. It was Peter the Great, in the late-17th and early-18th centuries, “cutting a window,” as Pushkin put it, to Europe. That genuflection to the West—reorganizing the army, imposing new styles and codes of conduct on the aristocracy, liberalizing universities—may have been right, but it was also brutal and bloody, and it spawned a crisis of confidence, and a questioning or ambivalence about what Russia ought to be that has existed ever since.

For the next three centuries, this questioning, very roughly, pitted Slavophiles (those who believed in the inherent goodness of the old Russia) against Westernizers, who wanted to transform the empire into Europe: liberal, less insular, more secular. Russia lacked a clearly defined identity, always veering between its oriental and occidental selves—bifurcated, fragmented, unsure of what it was meant to be. In the late 19th century, in the wake of the 1848 revolutions in France and Austria and the German and Italian principalities, and the publication of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the wandering—the battle—sharpened. A radical consciousness opened up. It had been imported from Europe, but, in Russia, as always, it acquired a new ferocity. What had been a desire for polite and incremental reform morphed into a violent nihilism. Change, whatever had been meant by that, would no longer suffice. Now, the only option was to blow it all up and start over.

“A DOSTOYEVSKEAN VOZHD KNOWS RUSSIA IS GOOD AND THE WEST IS NOT, AND HAS LEARNED THAT THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP THE WEST OUT IS TO OVERCOME IT.”

Dostoevsky, who traveled widely in Europe but was suspicious of it, despised passionately the revolutionaries and their desired revolution. He spent the 1860s and 1870s obsessing over Russia’s looming confrontation with itself. His four most important works (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov) are not simply novels, but rather dystopian warnings about what would happen if Russia did not return to its pre-Petrine origins.

Dostoevsky foresaw Russia destroying itself with the clandestine, or not so clandestine, support of the West. The clearest illustration of this self-destruction comes in The Brothers Karamazov. The novel, the longest whodunit ever written, revolves around the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. One of Karamazov’s three legitimate sons, Mitya, is accused and found guilty of the murder. But the real murderer is Karamazov’s mentally challenged, bastard son, Smerdyakov—and the real murderer behind Smerdyakov (the zakashik, or orderer) is Ivan, the most successful and Westernized of the Karamazov brothers. It is Ivan, full of his newfangled Western ideas, who tears apart his family (and, metaphorically, Russia), and it is the last remaining legitimate Karamazov son, Lyosha, who is left to rebuild it. Not incidentally, Lyosha is the youngest, most religious, and most self-effacing of the Karamazov clan. The way forward is actually the way backward—all the way to the ancient, Russian sobornost, the spiritual community that, in the Slavophile mind, used to bind Russia together. This, all these years later, is Putin’s Russia.

The Soviet perplex, viewed through a Karamazov prism, is not the cause of post-Soviet Russia’s woes but the effect of the same calamity that still bedevils Russia: the identity crisis bequeathed to it by its original Westernizer, Peter. Russia spent the 1990s devouring itself—selling off its biggest oil assets, handing over its elections to the C.I.A., allowing NATO to encroach upon its borders—and, only under Putin, has it retaken possession of itself.

The yawning chasm in this logic, of course, is Vladimir Putin, who bears zero resemblance to the fictional Lyosha. Putin, indeed, betrays few signs of being especially deep. It’s unlikely his agenda stems from a close reading of Russian novels. He’s a mobster, and he views his fellow countrymen the way a mobster views the little people in his neighborhood, with a mix of sympathy and disdain. But Putin is also Russian, and the same angers and longings that permeate the wider Russian psyche are presumably his, too.

Assuming Kissinger is right, it’s unclear which of Dostoevsky’s characters, if any, Putin identifies with. That’s not really the point. The point is that Dostoevsky very clearly delineates right from wrong in a distinctly Manichaean way. Russia, the old Russia, is good, pure—childlike or diminutive, in a way. The West is bad. It’s not simply that it’s a rival civilization, an economic or geopolitical competitor; it’s that the West is impure and, when introduced into the Russian bloodstream, toxic.

A Dostoyevskean vozhd, or leader, knows Russia is good and the West is not, and presumably he has learned by this late date that the only way to keep the West out is to overcome it, to expedite its undoing. The more Western leaders, and especially American presidents, talk about resetting relations with Moscow, the more the Dostoevskian president distrusts them. He hates them, and any so-called Russian president who doesn’t is a traitor or a buffoon. (Exhibit A: Gorbachev. Exhibit B: Yeltsin.)

Putin’s goal is not just a little more turf. Russia has a lot of that. His telos—his endgame—is the destabilization, the overcoming, of the whole Western order. This sounds fantastical to Americans because we’re an ahistorical people. That doesn’t mean we’re ignorant of history, although there’s a great deal of that, too. It means the categories with which we apprehend the world are not defined by the past, and we can’t really understand how it could be otherwise.

Russia, like most countries, however, is a decidedly historical country, and it appears to be seeking to rectify a 400-year-old wound. It has discovered, much to its chagrin, that you can’t simply look inward. That was the tsars’ mistake. They thought they could keep the West out. The cost of that mistake was the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin, famine, the Gulag, world war, and, ultimately, a failed state, the decimation of a way of life, the economy, their pensions and pride and sense of place in the world.

“TRUMP, WHO APPEARS UNBOUND BY ANY CODE OF ETHICS OR OVERARCHING THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, OFFERS PUTIN AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY.”

Putin will not make that mistake. When he bombed Aleppo, it likely wasn’t because of ISIS or Bashar al-Assad. It was because he wanted to assert Russia’s hegemony—and undermine America’s. We can presume this because no obvious Russian interests have been served by the country’s meddling in Syria, but many American interests have been thwarted. Also, it fits a pattern: Putin’s Russia creates chaos wherever possible and then seeks to take advantage of that chaos. (Consider, for example, the so-called frozen conflicts in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine.)

When he allegedly hacked into the Democratic National Committee, it wasn’t a personal vendetta, as Hillary Clinton suggested, and when he allegedly helped disseminate fake news about the candidates, it wasn’t because he cared, first and foremost, about the election result. It was because he wanted tens of millions of Americans to doubt the legitimacy of their own election. After all, Putin can’t really be sure Donald Trump will serve Russia’s interests better than Clinton would have. That Trump is so erratic must worry the Kremlin. That his instrument of choice is Twitter must compound those worries. What is beyond debate, however, is that Americans losing faith in their democracy—and the institutions that prop up that democracy, like the media—does serve Russia’s long-term interests.

Trump, who appears unbound by any code of ethics or overarching theory of international affairs, offers Putin an amazing opportunity. He will be the first American president who has said he wants better relations with Moscow and means it unqualifiedly. True, most American presidents say things like that, but there’s always an implied (and obvious) caveat: so long as our improved relations further U.S. interests.

With Trump, however, there are no obvious caveats. Why should there be? The interests we’ve long defended are not his interests. He exists outside any tradition of American government. If better U.S.-Russian relations—which, for Trump, mean better relations between Trump and Putin, however superficial they may be—endanger our Eastern European allies, or prolong the conflict in the Middle East, or, more broadly, counteract the democratic strivings of any number of peoples around the globe, that won’t matter, because those are no longer our interests. Republicans who defend Trump or warn against being duped by our own intelligence agencies may be unaware of how narcissistic and pliable the incoming president is—or they’ve yet to read much Russian literature.

Or they’ve allowed their partisan furies to cloud what should be nakedly transparent to all, which is that Russia is doing what it has been trying to do for a very long time. In previous centuries, they thought their moment had arrived—Peter, Catherine, the Communists, the post-Communists—and they were always wrong. They had imagined they were on the cusp of escaping themselves, and they never did. Now, maybe, they have arrived at a cosmically aligned juncture, choreographed by Putin and his lieutenants, destined by forces outside any human jurisdiction.

FULL SCREEN1/8The Exact Moment Each of Trump’s Enemies Sold Their Souls

Mitt Romney
The O.G. Never Trumper, Romney effectively renounced his past denunciations of the president-elect, whom he had previously called a “con man,” when Trump began publicly courting him for secretary of state. (He did not get the job.)
Photo: Digital Colorization by Ben Park; From Getty Images.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/the-secret-source-of-putins-evil