A few years ago, I wrote a thesis on American political fundamentals, but today I had an interesting revelation that’s motivated me to expand on it: It seems the Cold War, in fact, never ended.
You’ll see shortly why I was naive to think that it could have.
Currently, America is highly polarized – increasingly so. We really should be asking ourselves why? Who or what is responsible? There have clearly been many, many attempts at explaining this issue, all with various levels of thoughtful rationality applied to them. Certainly, there are forces beyond just the Cold War that have contributed to the polarization of America – sudden unregulated technological advances in information sharing, ingrained tribalism and elitism, confirmation bias, educational deprivation, etc. No reasonable person is arguing that this isn’t a complex issue – it’s overwhelmingly chaotic. But what I am arguing today, is who is primarily directing that chaos for nefarious effect.
I’d argue that “who” is the Russian government.
It’s fairly common knowledge that Russia lost the Cold War due to a fundamental weakness exposed when their core ideology confronted reality – that socialist ideals will ultimately fail when scarcity is present due to the more primitive aspects of our human nature. Those founding ideals of the USSR were simply unrealistic and thus unsustainable. They lost.
But they didn’t end. With much strife, the USSR evolved into the Russia we know today. Currently, they’re an authoritarian regime suffering under the iron-fist of mass-murderer Vladimir Putin.
It’s common knowledge that Putin started in the KGB during the Cold War, which is essentially a cross between America’s CIA and Nazi Germany’s gestapo. Broadly speaking, these “intelligence” organizations are directly responsible for some of the most evil acts in history. Their primary operators, which Putin evidently was, are usually sociopaths by necessity. And now one is in control of Russia, entirely. Anyone who has defied Putin has been assassinated by him.
We should consider whether this man, who clearly salivates over power, has a remotely friendly attitude toward the western world. A world, we should acknowledge, that has both directly and indirectly destroyed his country’s status as a superpower.
I think not.
Putin, and the Russian government by extension, hates America. They absolutely want to see America toppled. But they’re also not stupid. America is extremely powerful not just militarily, but its wealth is also vast, its global alliances are strong, and geographically it’s virtually impregnable by conventional means. And, as everyone knows, nuclear war has no winners.
So what’s a hungry despot to do? Well, this…
If you can’t beat an opponent by conventional means, you use unconventional ones. Starting in the Cold War and continually escalating during Putin’s regime, Russia has actively been using the following strategies to gradually weaken American society (what Bezmenov refers to as “ideological subversion”), and it’s working.
- Use America’s most coveted value, freedom of speech, against it to groom American children from within America’s own borders to be anti-intellectual, religious, anti-science, apathetic, and sympathetic to authoritarianism.
- Steer these groomed children into positions of political power both in terms of government and media influence, where they can direct policy and weaken institutions from within.
- Bombard information mediums (recently, social media) with disinformation and alarmist rhetoric to further divide and foment tribalism in the population.
- Continue the above process while continually setting off powder-kegs in the form of economic recessions, social violence, overt bigotry, and anything that will further resentment or increase tribalism amongst citizens.
If we simply open our eyes and observe, this has very obviously happened in America:
- Politicians are increasingly extreme and unhinged, exhibiting the characteristics of the groomed children mentioned above.
- Religions have gained disproportionate power within government.
- The public is highly apathetic, with almost half of the country neglecting to vote.
- Large media entities, notably FOX news, now openly support Russia.
- Russia was confirmed by US intelligence agencies to have interfered with the 2016 and 2020 US elections.
- Russia was confirmed to be weaponizing social media algorithms (which use confirmation bias to create “echo chambers”) to disincentivize the citizens from getting vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are many more examples, but I think this gets the point across – the Russian government is the enemy of the United States.
Their vehicle of choice appears to be the Republican Party, politically. I suspect they chose the Republican Party due to the party’s greater organizational unity, relatively speaking and particularly recently under Trump; the Democrats are known historically to be quite factious, which presents a more difficult target to manipulate. The fundamental ideals of conservatism also fall more closely to authoritarianism on the political spectrum than liberalism and thus make the party easier to infiltrate. More evidence supporting this idea comes from the fact that Russia hacked the DNC servers, not the RNC. Also, Republican Party leadership is now openly using friendly rhetoric towards Russia, despite their broadly documented and unprovoked war crimes in Ukraine.
All that said, again, I do think the issue of American political polarization is very complex, but it’s quite clear Russia has had a hand in making it much worse. I’m morbidly curious to see how America will deal with a new threat like this – perhaps it won’t. But then again, the pendulum swings.