Let us, for the moment, forget about whether there is anything to the so-called ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theories. Let us leave aside whether there is any proof that President Donald Trump or his hangers-on knowingly collaborated with Russian operatives to alter the outcome of the 2016 election. Let us forego the question of whether or not said Russian interference consisted of anything more than manipulating a relatively small number of social media accounts. Let us ignore for now whether this is a treason blacker than any in American history, dating back some thirty-plus years all the way to the Soviet era and involving a Donald Trump who was then largely just an ineffectual and obnoxious real estate developer who was the butt of jokes even in his home town. Let us dismiss as not relevant to our purposes today whether America has been equally guilty of interfering in other countries’ elections; whether every wealthy politician in America of either party could be found to have equally shady ties to Russian plutocrats; whether the interests of the Russian plutocracy are significantly inimical to those of the American plutocracy, and whether they should be treated as such; and whether this entire enterprise, in tenor and tone, is reminiscent to the point of being indistinguishable from accusations made by Republicans against Democrats.
Let us choose to believe that it’s all true. Let us say that every accusation against Donald Trump involving Vladimir Putin is true (even the ones that are contradictory, or homophobic, or based on the idea that the Soviet Union somehow still exists). Let us say that we have somehow arrived at a point in America’s intellectual history that the likes of Louise Mensch, Eric Garland, and Seth Abramson are not just worth listening to, but are right. Let us say that every screeching meme, every bad Photoshop of Trump and Putin kissing, every accusation of treason is not just McCarthyism for our time, but is in fact a damningly true indictment of the worst presidential administration in history. Let us give washed-up chess champion Garry Kasparov the benefit of the doubt and say that Trump holding a press conference with Putin, and not a history of slavery and imperialist warfare, was the darkest moment in American presidential history. Let us give ourselves permission to believe that our current administration is not just the culmination of three decades of Republican extremism and Democratic weakness, but rather an unprecedented state of affairs is, as another American prophet once said, “a conspiracy so immense, an infamy so black, as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man.”
The question then becomes: what are we going to do about it?
Liberal democrats have been hissing accusations of Russian collusion since the morning of November 9th, 2016. For all the work the Reds must have put into this quarter-century-long conspiracy, it seems to have yielded few practical results; other than the Oval Office being occupied by a complete buffoon whose brain is falling out his ears, almost every policy put forth by the Trump administration is essentially the same as would have been put forth by any other Republican president. Nearly two years into his presidency and there are no T-14 Armatas rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, nor has PAO Gazprom nationalized Texas’ natural gas reserves and funneled the profits into Putin’s bank accounts. One suspects that we may reach the end of Trump’s stint in office with Russian control of the U.S. government no more visible than Obama’s FEMA death camps. And yet we have devoted substantially more resources, effort, and publicity to burrowing down on these links than we ever did to punishing the actual and provable efforts of bankers, financiers, and corporate executives in wrecking the global economy in 2008. So, with all this accepted, what’s our next move to be?
IMPEACHMENT. The people still pushing for this are marks. Smarks amongst the neoliberal elite know better, aware as they are that so long as the Democrats wield no power in any branch of government, impeachment is a practical impossibility. They may keep hope alive for the base, but they know as well as anyone that this is a dead end.
IMPRISONMENT. While this remains the most popular option — probably because it is so vague — it’s extremely unlikely to actually happen. For all the focus on Robert Mueller’s FBI and on Gina Haspel’s CIA, these are not institutions that have traditionally shown any interest in taking down the president (or, at least, not the president of America, which, given their gross histories, is probably for the best. Mueller is a gutless authoritarian and Haspel is a creature of politics, and neither is likely to rock the boat any more than any other party functionary when it comes to putting people of their own class in prison, not when there are still appointments to be made and favors to be repaid. Even if it were clear how a criminal proceeding against Trump would be distinct from impeachment, it’s just as unlikely to occur.
BIPARTISANSHIP. There are still a lot of people who think, because some prominent Republican will occasionally become so repelled by Trump’s asinine behavior and unwillingness to embrace the civility myth that they utter a mild “How dare you sir” in his direction, that they will somehow align themselves with the Democrats and ‘do something’ about him. I would like to suggest very politely that these people have not been paying very much attention to how how our political system works.
CONTINUAL OUTRAGE. Likewise, there are a lot of people who are still counting Trump’s every public gaffe and misstatement in the apparent hope that if they simply by-your-logic him to death, he will eventually access his shame nodule and stomp away from the White House. This probably won’t happen, although it is closest to the most likely scenario, which is that he will get bored and quit or just stroke out in the middle of a burnt-steak-and-ketchup meal and die. This is likely our best hope given that they are also too respectable to suggest assassinating him.
INVASION. America being America, this is everyone’s favorite option. The neoliberal mainstream is stocked with people who are either Cold War nostalgists or too young to remember how deeply shitty and awful the Cold War was, and since they have nothing to lose from any possible armed conflict with Russia short of global nuclear war, their preference is to make loud noises about getting tough with the bad man who somehow figured out a way to make America racist. Since they likely realize at some level that America does not have jurisdiction over Russia, they also know this won’t really solve anything and will result in zero consequences for the people they actually seem to believe are behind Russiagate. Just like when rich people commit crimes here, they know that no Russian beyond the level of a conniving low-level dipshit running a server farm will ever appear before an American court. So why not follow the tried-and-true script of carrying on a low-level conflict of meaningless diplomatic expulsions and being on the lookout for a proxy war where they can kill a bunch of unfortunately aligned people who don’t matter?
The fact is, though, probably none of these will happen at all, and the Democrats will simply carry on with the “We’re not the GOP” script that lost them the election in the first place, this time enhanced with special Russian seasonings that will win them exactly no new voters. If the Russians are guilty of one thing, it is that they, unlike their detractors, truly understand power. Until we do, they will win even when they don’t play.