© Alex Wong/GettyPresident Donald Trump raises a fist after his inauguration as former President Barack Obama applauds on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2017, in Washington, D.C.
The Obama administration's hubris and ambition to 'transform America' has sparked an angry Republican response in the form of Donald Trump's rise to power. Such a sharp-tongued politician could never have been elected by the American people if it had not been for Obama's cool provocations. Now, in the wake of the Democrats' failed coup, the temperature in American politics is at boiling point, accelerating the decay of American political culture; one of the greatest achievements of mankind and once rightfully a beacon for most across the globe. Once Americans took pride in the atmosphere after presidential elections, when the defeated candidate telephoned the victor to concede the contest and congratulate the opponent. Those days are gone. Our A Team-B Team politics and their radicalization mean that Americans will now be facing a 'color revolution' potential with each presidential election.
In 2010 President Obama signaled just how much he was willing to divide Americans on the basis of communalist politics. He commented in an interview: "If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies, and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us' — if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election — then I think it's going to be harder. And that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd". For the first time in American history, an American president had labeled his political opponents, the Republican Party, his "enemies" — ones that needed to 'punished.' (In this context, recall the hullabaloo over Republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin for pictures of targets on a map of congressional districts that should be contested by her party posted on her website!) The nearly universally pro-Democratic 'media' issued not a syllable of criticism. Moreover, Obama had done this to an audience including many foreigners. Many viewers of Latino, Spanish-language Univision television to which he gave the interview are citizens of Latin American countries and/or U.S. illegal aliens. In this way, Obama raised the temperature of not just or overall Democratic-Republican politics but America's already tense interethnic relations.
What is still worse is that when Obama explained away his divisive and offensive comment, he stated that he "probably" should have used the word 'opponents' — 'probably'!? This was not simply a non-apology apology, it was a subtle, cool-minded, very smooth reiteration of his initial attack. And so it continued for six more tension-filled years. If Democrats wonder why Republicans were willing to support an often equally divisive if rather loud-mouthed verbal bull in a China shop such as Trump, they need look no further.
Now we have evidence that the FBI, instructed or silently supported by President Obama, engaged in a witch hunt against Gen. Michael Flynn, planning and executing a way to set up Flynn on immaterial perjury charges. Flynn, as former NSA chief, knew where many of the 'dead bodies' of the Russiagate fabrication lay and could find the rest. Therefore, he had to be removed. We also have definitive proof that all of the Democratic principles who claimed that the DNC server had been hacked by the Russians were either lying in their sworn testimony or in public. They would be unlikely to risk lying in sworn testimony and tell the truth in public; hence we know they were telling the truth in their sworn testimony. What did they say in said testimony? They, including chief 'Russiagate' propagandist, Congressman and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Crowdstrike President for Services and former FBI chief for investigations Shawn Henry, said they had no concrete evidence that the data was ever removed from the server, no less who or when it occurred. In public, they had been telling the American people for years that they had incontrovertible evidence the Russians had exfiltrated the data and given it to Wikileaks. If President Obama was behind or at anyway involved in this crime - what did he know and when did he know it? - and he likely was, then he committed an impeachable offense for which he is no longer at risk and a crime, for which he is susceptible to prosecution.
More importantly, however, is the fate of the country and its political culture which the former president drove into the ground. Neither his appointees nor the president himself were interested in upholding the U.S. constitution or American law. Obama had repeatedly denigrated the U.S. constitution as a document of 'negative rights.' President Obama and his subordinates were 'activists', as Obama Attorney General Eric Holder once proudly declared; activists for Democrats against Republicans, women against men, non-whites against whites, and homosexuals against heterosexuals. Activists for one communalist group or another are fine for politics but not for policy and most certainly not for law enforcement. Thus, along with replacing our traditionally political culture of comity and compromise with one of conflict and confrontation, Obama undermined America's legal culture. Just as politics was made a contest between enemies rather than fellow Americans, American law enforcement and the courts (FISA court) have become weapons in a partisan battle.
The questions now? If and when the Democrats ever take the White House and a strong congressional backup, will they further escalate? Will Republicans violate the rule of law in pursuing the crimes committed in promoting the Russiagate-Ukrainegate hoaxes of the DNC hack, Trump collusion, the Trump dossier, and supposedly 'massive' troll tampering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election by former Obama administration and DNC officials? Who should be pursued - Obama, Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarret, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Robert Mueller, Loretta Lynch, Denis McDonough, Sally Yates, Mary McCord, Peter Strzok, Eric Ciaramella, Alexandra Chalupa, others? Should the stability of the shaking republic be preserved by prosecuting the lesser of these figures? What price should journalists like Isikoff and David Ignatius and media outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times that promoted the hoax pay and how can the American public rather than the government exact that price without jeopardizing comity and democracy? What steps will the perpetrators now turned potential indictees undertake to protect themselves? Will they seek to further destabilize the country, using George Soros' street protests and Antifa mobs? Will ultra-rightists rise up? These are all tough questions, and upon their answers rests the survival of our great but suffering American experiment.
About the Author - Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, canalyt.com and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, cetisresearch.org. Dr. Hahn is the author of the forthcoming book: The Russian Dilemma: Aspiration, Trepidation, and the West in the Making of Russia's Security Culture (McFarland, 2021). Previously, he has authored four well-received books: Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the "New Cold War" (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia's Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia's Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.
Dr. Hahn also has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, and the Hoover Institution.
Reader Comments
Well, yeah. We ain't supposed to hang anybody without a trial. This Amerka, afer all.
The greater danger is doing nothing - where is the deterrent if plotters can expect to get rewarded (MSM jobs, book deals etc.) even if their coup attempt is rumbled