https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/russianism-democrat-scapegoating-over-trump-victory-and-presidency/
Trump’s critics need a scapegoat to explain why they haven’t managed to vanquish him.
Russianism is a psychological malady in which furor at Donald Trump’s election victory and presidency — and the ensuing depression resulting from the inability to abort it — finds release through fixation on Russia.
‘Extremely vigorous in our outreach’
The recent orthodox progressive and Democratic view of Russia — until the appearance of Donald Trump — was largely what it had been throughout the Cold War: one of empathy for Russia and understanding of its dilemmas, and shame over supposed right-wing American paranoia over a bogus “Russian bear.”
Obama’s 2009 reset was birthed as a correction to George W. Bush’s modest sanctions against the Putin government for going into Ossetia. What then followed during the Obama administration was the embarrassing red reset-button rhetoric that was usually couched in anti-Bush-administration snark.
Or, as Hillary Clinton put it:
We believe that there are a lot of challenges and threats that we have inherited that we have to address. But there are also opportunities, and we are being extremely vigorous in our outreach. Because we’re testing waters, we’re determining what is possible. We’re turning new pages and resetting buttons.
Then we witnessed a “turning new pages” effort by the Obama administration to downplay Russian aggression and emphasize its own new creative outreach to Putin. They thought the Russian strongman would be charmed by humanitarian sanctimoniousness and the hope-and-change charisma of Barack Obama. Instead, Putin, true to character, saw weakness accompanied by pious sermonizing. That is always a fatal combination when dealing with a brute. And so, Putin proceeded to gather up his easy pickings.
What variously ensued was the inadvertent hot-mic offer of quid pro quo collusion with Putin by President Obama when he was up for reelection. Obama more than fulfilled this promise when, in early 2013 — after Putin’s 2012 hiatus in aggression — he cancelled the final phase of missile defense based in Eastern Europe. There was the iconic but cheap attack on candidate Mitt Romney for supposedly being obsessed with Russia as a geopolitical enemy. The Obama administration showed indifference to the absorption of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. There was also not much anger over prior Russian cyberattacks on the United States. In October 2016, Obama offered a haughty, flat-out dismissal of the notion that Russia could change the way people vote in any election:
There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, there’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that it will happen this time.
