John Webster, a Jacobean playwright, has a line in one of his plays: “For they that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas.”
It is something dictators know well and use to keep their flunkies loyal. America’s Republican Party is likely to learn this lesson as well over the next four months.
Stalin used to circulate lists of people sentenced to be shot to his entourage, demanding that they sign off on it — or object, if they feel like it. Obviously, an objection would have changed nothing since the dictator had already made up his mind that the men and women on the list had to die. But the exercise had a purpose: first, it helped identify those of his cronies who were not blindly loyal to or sufficiently scared of Stalin, and, second, it made them all complicit in his crimes.
In his youth in Georgia, before he discovered Lenin, Stalin had been a criminal gang leader, and gangs are all about complicity in crime as a mark of belonging.
Vladimir Putin resembles Stalin the most of all the leaders who have occupied the Kremlin since Stalin. Consciously or not, he fits the position which Stalin created for himself. It is no accident perhaps that Stalin’s cult is being gradually revived across Putin’s Russia.
Stalin ran a terror machine that involved the entire Soviet society, top to bottom. Everyone in the country was complicit — either as an ideologue, or an executioner, or an ordinary snitch, of which there were millions. This is one reason why Stalinism has been so difficult to eradicate.
Putin runs a kleptocracy that similarly permeates and corrupts the entire Russian society. The point is not that officials at every level are permitted to take bribes and steal from the treasury but that stealing is part of their job description. They’re required to steal if they want to keep their jobs.
There was a telling episode some years ago. Putin took part in a much-publicized charity in the Kremlin to benefit kids with cancer. Many people believed that with such visibility and level of sponsorship at least the money would not be stolen. And yet it was, proving that stealing is the national idea in Putin‘s Russia, as well as a badge of honor.
It has been suggested recently that the reason why Putin tolerates opposition leader Alexey Navalny is precisely because Navalny exposes corruption at the highest level of Putin‘s government. It may sound paradoxical, but it makes sense. It is as if Putin is saying to his cronies: “Everything is known about you. Everyone now knows exactly how much you have stolen and where you keep your assets, both in Russia and abroad. I’m your only hope if you want to avoid expropriation and jail. It is in your own best interests that I stay in power.”
The annexation of Crimea featured another type of complicity. The wild popular approval of the annexation made all of Russia complicit in Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. Most recently, the constitutional amendments which were subject of a misbegotten referendum with blatantly falsified results served the same purpose: to make Russia acquiesce to future crimes that will be committed by the Putin resume, including a likely attack on Ukraine before the end of 2020.
As a second-generation New York City developer, Donald Trump has had close involvement with the construction industry, which is heavily infiltrated by organized crime. He knows full well how gangs operate. He is using this knowledge to keep the Republican Party of the United States blindly loyal to him personally, rather than to the country.
Of course, initially, the Republicans saw this as a devil’s bargain. They would support Trump, ignoring various transgressions and irregularities, in exchange for passing their cherished tasks, such as major tax cuts and the appointment of conservative judges, including Supreme Court justices.
However, Trump’s misdemeanors promptly turned into crimes. Even the timorous conclusions of the Robert Mueller report accused Trump of obstruction of justice, specifically noting that obstruction hindered the investigation of the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russia.
Then there was the quid pro quo with President Volodymyr Zelensky, for which the House of Representatives impeached Trump and for which the Republican Senate refuses to convict him.
There was also the case of paying off porn star Stormy Daniels in violation of campaign finance laws, in which Trump was named an unindicted co-conspirator.
For any of these crimes any American, including the president is the United States, should have gone to jail. The fact that the Republicans kept him out makes them complicit with his crimes.
Since being acquitted by the kangaroo court in the Senate, Trump has known that he has the GOP on the hook. Nothing he would do from then on could be objected to by the Republicans. He has been emboldened, committing a series of further crimes and blatantly misusing his office. He fired inspector generals investigating corruption in government and a New York prosecutor looking into misdeeds by his associates.
He pathetically mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic, causing tens of thousands of unnecessary American deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. He sent American troops against unarmed peaceful protesters. And now it has been revealed that he ignored intelligence reports on Putin’s bounty on American heads and, when confronted by it, responded in his usual treasonous style, giving credence to Putin’s spokesman while attacking U.S. intelligence.
Predictably, his fellow criminals and traitors in the Republican Party have not said boo. But rest assured, GOP, things are going to get a lot worse. Trump is losing badly according to every opinion poll, including ones conducted by friendly news organizations. If he loses, it may mean criminal prosecution and jail. So he’s going to fight dirty and drag the Republican Party through the mud as much as he can, spewing racism, calling on his supporters to rebel openly and on Putin to hack the November election, starting a foreign war, suppressing the vote, claiming massive fraud and turning the U.S. government into a total freak show.
Regardless of what they think of it privately, publicly the Republicans will have to take all this as if it’s completely normal, patriotic actions — in for a penny, in for a pound — and fight for him as their political existence depended on him. Which of course it does.
