Did Putin Win?

I'm starting to hate cable news. I prefer to get my news via The Gray Lady and her contemporaries but occasionally I can't help but hear the chatter and MSNBC is pandering to an audience that hates The Donald so much that they don't care exactly WHAT he does but that it is him doing it. And I get it. I really do, but Donald Trump is not going to be impeached over his ties with Russia. That is nonsense and considering everything else going on WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR NONSENSE.

That said I will admit that narrative is important. So instead of using it to make cheap digs about a President, I don't like here is why I view it as important.

First off a legitimate fear people have regarding president Trump is that when push comes to shove he will not act in the interest of the American people. That doesn't mean he was bribed, or that he colluded or anything like that. But when he has to make a choice between doing what's right for himself and what's right for everybody else. He'll choose himself (or what gets him the easiest praise). Which is bad.

And one big giant example of that is the Russia stuff. We know we have different national interests than Russia, even beyond old timey cold war stuff, but Trump has business interests in the country.

Is Donald Trump willing to undermine those interests for the sake of the office?

I don't know but it's a more reasonable question. From where I was sitting during the election Trump proved himself to be a narcissistic egotist only running to get high off of the adulation of the masses, rather than to actually you know do stuff.

He didn't think he would have to and doesn't want to sacrifice anything for the office.

And it's reasonable to worry about that especially when the day comes he really has to.

And that's important and all, but you know what REALLY keeps me up at night. Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine the very concept of liberal western democracy across the world so he can claim to his people with a straight face that his brand authoritarianism works just as well if not better.  Most of the other stuff to me at least are hypotheticals about trying to predict what Donald Trump will do in any situation but we KNOW what Putin's been doing. And if he succeeds it's bad news man.

Democracy even in it's most ambiguous forms works because people have faith in it. We believe it, with its collaborative decision making and checks on singular absolute power to be better than the alternative. When we don't have faith in the basic idea of Democracy bad things happen. The moment we start believing that people are not capable of acting on and expressing their interests to form a functional government we have lost our freedom, that which allows us to claim our lives as our lives and no one else's

And hell, Donald Trump's brand of "nothing except what I say matters" authoritarianism worries me more than any specific policy he exposes.  Sure I think his policies are stupid and cause real harm but I have faith in the long arm of the universe on that count if we can hold on to something deeper. But that something deeper is in real danger. Does Donald Trump represent a moment when the American people lost faith in democracy, lost faith in our ability to make collaborative decisions for the sake of all?

Did Putin win?