December 11, 2018
Another shoe dropped yesterday when accused Russian spy, Maria Butina agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. At the same time,her boyfriend, Republican operative, Paul Erickson, received a target letter from federal prosecutors, based on their belief that Erickson was a Russian agent (Source: “Accused Russian spy Maria Butina cooperating with federal prosecutors as part of a plea deal,” by Sara Murray and Katelyn Polantz, CNN.com, 12/11/18).
By now, we know that Butina’s efforts to infiltrate conservative political circles centered around the NRA. To boost their bona fides with American conservatives, Butina and her handler, director of the Russian Central Bank, Aleksandr Torshin, founded the group, “Right to Bear Arms,” which is particularly ironic, given Russia’s fairly strict regulation of gun ownership, (Source: “How Maria Butina, accused Russian spy, worked her way into top US circles,” by Jon Swaine and Lois Beckett, TheGuardian.com, 7/17/18). The Russian plan was to manipulate Americans’ gun fetish in order to influence American politics at the highest level.
Yet, as diverting as our real time Robert Ludlum spy thriller may be, it should force us to examine just what it reveals about how broken our country is. When one of our two principal political parties elevates a racist grifter; when the major constituencies of that party — evangelicals and gun rights extremists– find common cause with a hostile foreign power, we need to ask ourselves why? If we care to look, we’ll find that what attracts the modern day Republican Party to Putin’s Russia is its status as a white supremacist oligarchy that criminalizes political opposition, (Source: “Putin, Trump and the New Cold War Between Liberalism and White Supremacy,” by David Adkins, WashingtonMonthly.com, 7/12/18).
The chilling truth is that white supremacy is more than just a challenge that Black Americans have to face, it is a national security threat. If we have any hope of preserving democracy, we must interrogate how we got here. It is not enough to decry the draconian sentence of 51 years meted out by the Tennessee Supreme Court to Cyntoia Brown, a 16 year old trafficked by a pimp named “Cut Throat”, when she committed her crime. You also have to ask yourself why so many find it acceptable that only 10% of the students at New York City’s specialized high schools are Black and Brown students, when they are 70% of the city’s students systemwide, and why any plans to change it are met with virulent opposition from affluent white New Yorkers (Source: “Few black and Hispanic students receive admissions offers to New York City’s top high schools–again,” by Christina Veiga, Chalkbeat.org, 3/7/18)?
It is not enough to be horrified by the brutal child separation policies inflicted on Latina refugees at the border, if you are not equally outraged,and motivated to act, by the treatment of young Black mother Jazmine Headley by vicious New York police officers summoned by the callous functionaries of the HRA to arrest her for sitting on the floor, (Source: “‘Appalling’ Video Shows the Police Yanking 1-year-old From His Mother’s Arms,” by Ashley Southall, The New York Times, 12/9/18). The ugly truth is that those who tacitly approve the ongoing segregation of New York City schools, or are indifferent to the dehumanizing treatment of Black New Yorkers receive from those paid to protect them, are no better than the “ignorant” Trump supporters that they are so quick to deride. If we hope to save this country, it’s time for some folks to look in the mirror.
“Right to Bear Arms,” doubly ironic given the old meme of Soviet Union symbol as the bear.