Why aren't we, as Americans, dropping the usual partisan divide, all agree that we need to know what Russia did in the last election and, most urgently, prepare our country for their next moves?
I worry that our political divisions continue to make us vulnerable to actual, sometimes lethal, threats. I have seen far too many divisions on the threats posed by Islam radicalism that follow the partisan divide. I get that we may look at solutions differently, what I don't understand though, is that we cannot agree on the nature of the threats. I fear it is the same thing happening with Russia's attack on our democracy, which in my view, is greater than any threat we have seen so far. If you rightly fear about Islam radicalism, bear in mind that it's a threat to our lives, not to our way of life. Russia, with its post-cold-war resurgence is overtly trying to attack and continuously weaken the fabric of our western democracies. Imagine if they indeed can, one day, penetrate our voting information systems? We have no idea if they can, and we need to prepare for it. While we bicker internally, Russia is still attacking the US. Last week we learned that Marco Rubio's office is currently being targeted. But the Kremlin is also deploying its nefarious will against European democracies, with a keen eye on France's upcoming presidential election. Frankly, I'm less interested in implicating Trump's campaign (although if there's proof of collusion, it needs to be dealt with) than in making sure that we are ready to wage this existential cyber warfare. We all need to realize that Russia is not doing this in a vacuum, there's a larger context at play in the world. Indeed, the middle class declines in western democracies coupled with the increase of terrorism has given rise to a right wing populism that is a direct threat to our liberal democracies based on the rule of law. Countries like China and Turkey are two other countries pushing for a 3rd way of governing, i.e. an authoritarian nationalist government with cronyism based on some level of capitalism. It's ironic though that the Republicans are now the ones minimizing that threat whereas they have always positioned themselves as hawks on national security and as guardians of our constitution. As for the Democrats, they are only outraged at bad jokes, seeing sexism and racism in all of them. They also seem to have a bigger interest in impeaching Trump than in addressing Russia's onslaught on our democratic foundations. The sad thing is that the left has been mostly intellectually absent in the western world for the last 40 years. The reason why the current populism wave is coming from the right, is in my opinion, the left's inability to articulate, first, a coherent analysis of what happened to the structure of our societies as they underwent economic change and, second, a realistic agenda that could protect a middle class squeezed by technological changes and automation.
But all this is of no interest to our politicians. They are mostly interested in keeping power and, because of us, the ideological electors, our representatives will once again fail us, but this time with dire global consequences.
