Masters of Deceit

In the late 1950s, notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover published a book that sold in the millions called Masters of Deceit.  It purported to describe the nefarious activities of the Soviet Union in the US by way of the American Communist Party.

Most of what Hoover described was specious, a holdover from McCarthyism and the discredited HUAC.  But he did mention Soviet espionage and its favorite techniques, including blackmail and threats of exposure.  He emphasized the insidious and especially the deceptive methods that the Soviets employed.  The Russians would do anything to undermine democracy in America.

The most virulent Red-baiting anticommunists of that and succeeding decades were Republicans.  They went after any Democrat who appeared too liberal, who was too insistent on racial equality (which Hoover linked to communist subversion), and anyone pointing out the insanity of the nuclear balance of terror as "soft on Communism."

Today it appears the Russians are Republicans' best friends.  There is a picture emerging of Russian money being laundered through the National Rifle Association and ending up in the Republican campaign for President or even the RNC bank account of the president-elect.  This past week, further evidence emerged of multiple pathways for Russian influence exerted on behalf of a candidate in Republican primaries who successfully became the Republican candidate for President in 2016.

This past week we saw more damning evidence of direct financial motivation for allowing the Russian government to interfere with the US election of 2016, influence or dictate policy proposals in the campaign, and possibly influence or dictate actual policy out of the White House.  This is a piece with the corruption in plain sight that this administration has so far gotten away with.  But its initial effect was to defraud voters and the election process, the basis for constitutional government.

Greed may furnish the dots, but they are connected with lies. The evidence emerges out of systematic lies that continue today.  Today's Masters of Deceit run the White House and, in perhaps different ways, the U.S. Senate.

Meanwhile the Republican party begins to mirror the Russian autocracy.  The first blatant example was the Republican Senate ignoring their constitutional responsibilities to advise and consent on the President's appointment to the Supreme Court in 2011.  They got away with that, so Republicans engage in even bolder efforts to undermine democracy in several states--notably Wisconsin and Michigan--to contravene the results of democratic elections.

Not content with completely blatant efforts to limit voting and cynically deny voting rights to entire segments of the public they can't persuade to vote for them, it's now pretty clear that Republicans in at least one congressional district in North Carolina actually destroyed or changed ballots, or both.  It wasn't the first time--at least the third time in that district.  I'm not convinced it didn't happen in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.

All in all the Republican party is moving quickly towards becoming as close to an American Fascist political party as this country has ever seen.