One of the more interesting aspects of the nauseating impeachment trial in the Senate was the repeated vilification of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. To hate Russia has become dogma on both sides of the political aisle, in part because no politician has really wanted to confront the lesson of the 2016 election, which was that most Americans think that the federal government is basically incompetent and staffed by career politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell who should return back home and get real jobs. Worse still, it is useless, and much like the one trick pony the only thing it can do is steal money from the taxpayers and waste it on various types of self-gratification that only politicians can appreciate. That means that the United States is engaged is fighting multiple wars against make-believe enemies while the country\u2019s infrastructure rots and a host of officially certified grievance groups control the public space. It sure doesn\u2019t look like Kansas anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n The fact that opinion polls in Europe suggest that many Europeans would rather have Vladimir Putin than their own hopelessly corrupt leaders is suggestive. One can buy a whole range of favorable t-shirts featuring Vladimir Putin on Ebay<\/em>, also suggesting that most Americans find the official Russophobia narrative both mysterious and faintly amusing. They may not really be into the expressed desire of the huddled masses in D.C. to go to war to bring true U.S. style democracy to the un-enlightened.<\/span><\/p>\n One also must wonder if the Democrats are reading the tea leaves correctly. If they think that a slogan like \u201cHonest Joe Biden will keep us safe from Moscow\u201d will be a winner in 2020 they might again be missing the bigger picture. Since the focus on Trump\u2019s decidedly erratic behavior will inevitably die down after the impeachment trial is completed, the Democrats will have to come up with something compelling if they really want to win the presidency and it sure won\u2019t be the largely fictionalized Russian threat.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, someone should tell Congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, to shut up as he is becoming an international embarrassment. His \u201cclosing arguments\u201d speeches last week were respectively two-and-a-half hours and ninety minutes long and were inevitably praised by the mainstream media as \u201cmagisterial,\u201d \u201cpowerful,\u201d and \u201cimpressive.\u201d The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s resident Zionist extremist Jennifer Rubin\u00a0labeled it<\/a><\/strong><\/span> \u201ca grand slam\u201d while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin\u00a0called it<\/a><\/strong><\/span> \u201cdazzling.\u201d Gail Collins of the New York Times<\/em>\u00a0dubbed it<\/a><\/strong><\/span> \u201ca great job\u201d and added that Schiff is now \u201ca rock star.\u201d Daily Beast<\/em> enthused that\u00a0the remarks \u201cwill go down in history<\/a>\u201d<\/strong><\/span> and progressive activist Ryan Knight called it \u201ca closing statement for the ages.\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Hollywood was also on board with actress Debra Messing<\/a><\/strong><\/span> tweeting \u201cI am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Actually, a better adjective would have been \u201cscary\u201d and not merely due to its elaboration of the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Trump, much of which was undeniably true even if not necessarily impeachable. It was scary because it was a warmongers speech, full of allusions to Russia, to Moscow\u2019s \u201cinterference\u201d in 2016, and to the ridiculous proposition<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that if Trump were to be defeated in 2020 he might not concede and Russia could even intervene militarily in the United States in support of its puppet. Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to \u201cassure the integrity\u201d of the 2020 election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that \u201cThe president\u2019s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame<\/strong><\/span><\/a> excuses for going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was essential for U.S. national security. He said \u201cAs one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don\u2019t have to fight Russia here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u201cLiberals used to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power.\u201d Aaron Mate at The Nation<\/em> added that<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u201cFor all the talk about Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering w\/ hysterics like this? Let\u2019s assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Over at Antiwar<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span> Daniel Lazare explains how the Wednesday speech was \u201ca fear-mongering, sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia for no good reason, but sends a chilling message to [Democratic Party] dissidents at home that if they deviate from Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they\u2019ll be driven from the fold.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The orthodoxy that Lazare was writing about includes the established Nancy Pelosi\/Chuck Schumer narrative that Russia invaded \u201cpoor innocent Ukraine\u201d in 2014, that it interfered in the 2016 election to defeat Hillary Clinton, and that it is currently trying to smear Joe Biden. One might add to that the growing consensus that Russia can and will interfere again in 2020 to help Trump. Absent from the narrative is the part how the U.S. intervened in Ukraine first to remove its government and the fact that there is something very unsavory about Joe Biden\u2019s son taking a high-paying sinecure board position from a notably corrupt Ukrainian oligarch while his father was Vice President and allegedly directing U.S. assistance to a Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.<\/span><\/p>\n On Wednesday, Schiff maintained that<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u201cRussia is not a threat \u2026 to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto<\/em> proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again.\u201d Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the \u201cUnited States\u201d for \u201cRussia\u201d and \u201cKremlin\u201d and changes \u201cUkraine\u201d to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much more credible.<\/span><\/p>\n The compulsion on the part of the Democrats to bring down Trump to avoid having to deal with their own failings has brought about a shift in their established foreign policy, placing the neocons and their friends back in charge. For Schiff, who has enthusiastically supported every failed American military effort since 9\/11, today\u2019s Russia is the Soviet Union reborn, and don\u2019t you forget it pardner! Newsweek<\/em> is meanwhile reporting that the U.S. military is reading the tea leaves and is gearing up<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to fight the Russians. Per Schiff, Trump must be stopped as he is part of a grand Russian conspiracy to overthrow everything the United States stands for. If the Kremlin is not stopped now, it\u2019s first major step, per Schiff, will be to \u201cremake the map of Europe by dint of military force.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering nothing but another helping of George W. Bush\/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.<\/span><\/p>\n