The banality of corruption
Masha Gessen says no, it’s not that Putin is a mastermind of fiendish cunning, it’s that he’s a crook just as Trump is a crook. That’s all. It’s not fancy.
(I kind of knew that, maybe via Masha Gessen. I read or heard someone who would know say that we wildly exaggerate the talents of Putin, that he’s just a very typical and mediocre hack who got lucky.)
We [people who write about Russia] cringed at the characterization of the Russian online influence campaign as “sophisticated” and “vast”: Russian reporting on the matter—the best available—convincingly portrayed the troll operation as small-time and ridiculous. It was, it seems, fraudulent in every way imaginable: it perpetrated fraud on American social networks, creating fake accounts and events and spreading falsehoods, but it was also fraudulent in its relationship to whoever was funding it, because surely crudely designed pictures depicting Hillary Clinton as Satancould not deliver anyone’s money’s worth.
What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power. Instead, it is an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate. What unites Yanukovych, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Stone, Wikileaks’s Julian Assange, the Russian troll factory, the Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and his partners in crime, the “Professor” (whose academic credentials are in doubt), and the “Female Russian National” (who appears to have fraudulently presented herself as Putin’s niece) is that they are all crooks and frauds. This is not a moral assessment, or an attempt to downplay their importance. It is an attempt to stop talking in terms of states and geopolitics and begin looking at Mafias and profits.
And the thing is…it doesn’t take sophistication or genius-evil to ruin everything. Hacks can do it. Nasty little shits with stupid mustaches can do it. Puffy big shits with stupid hair can do it. Building is difficult; smashing is easy.
The Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar, who created the concept of the “post-Communist mafia state,” has just finished editing a new collection of articles called “Stubborn Structures: Reconceptualizing Post-Communist Regimes” (to be published by C.E.U. Press early this year). In one of his own pieces in the collection, using Russia as an example, Magyar describes the Mafia state as one run by a “patron” and his “court”—put another way, the boss and his clan—who appropriate public resources and the institutions of the state for their private use and profit. When I talked to Magyar on the phone on Monday, he told me that Trump is “like a Mafia boss without a Mafia. Trump cannot transform the United States into a Mafia state, of course, but he still acts like a Mafia boss.” Putin, on the other hand, “is a Mafia boss with a real Mafia, which has turned the whole state into a criminal state.” Still, he said, “the behavior at the top is the same.”
The Putin-Trump connection has done Russia little good, Gessen argues, but it has been great for Putin personally.
A Mafia boss craves respect, loyalty, and perceived power. Trump’s deference to Putin and the widespread public perception of Putin’s influence over Trump have lifted Putin’s stature beyond what I suspect could have been his wildest dreams. As happens in a Mafia state, most of the benefit accrues to the patron personally. But some of the profit goes to the clan. Over the weekend, we learned that the Treasury Department has lifted sanctions on companies that belong to Oleg Deripaska, a member of Putin’s “court” who once lent millions of dollars to Manafort. If a ragtag team employed by or otherwise connected to the Russian Mafia state tried to aid a similar collection of crooks and frauds to elect Trump—as it increasingly looks like they did—then the Deripaska news helps explain their motivations. The story is not that Putin is masterminding a vast and brilliant attack on Western democracy. The story, it appears, is that the Russian Mafia state is cultivating profit-yielding relationships with the aspiring Mafia boss of the U.S. and his band of crooks, subverting democratic institutions in the process.
What a glorious fate.
It’s not like Trump’s a hard target. He communicates his insecurities by communicating through insecure channels He’s an easy-read picture bookwritten with a few small words printed in very large type.
I know that the situation is dire enough,Trump being controlled and manipulated by a thug is a huge problem, but perhaps we can be thankful that Putin is not really brilliant after all? It could be worse if Putin did actually have some subtle, nefarious geopolitical motivation or goal up his sleeve. Right?
But I guess if you’re trapped in a burning building, it makes little difference to you if the arsonist was doing it for the insurance money or just because he likes to watch things burn.
This is a lesson people of every political persuasion ought to take more deeply to heart.
TheDudeDiogenes, I’m afraid they do take it to heart. That’s why they prefer smashing things. It’s easier.
Smashing things is not just easy, it’s also fun, particularly when you can destroy things enjoyed, used or needed by people you don’t like.
That you might also enjoy, use or need it too is unimportant if you can hurt people who don’t look like you, and trigger libs.
Smashing things can also be dangerous if one is too reckless. It’s why sensible people hire demolition experts and the not-so sensible tend to cut corners and either hire cowboys or do it themselves, and that’s how many of them end up in hospital….or morgues.
The path for misinformation was forged by Fox over the last two decades or so. With so much of the population primed to soak up any fantasy information, sophistication is not necessary.
In fact, sophistication is bad. It means you are a coastal elite.
Holms, I was just reading that Trump’s main enablers seem to have fallen out of love with him. Only the Fox and Friends segment seems to have any love left at all. Poor Donnie.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/31/fox-news-trump-fox-and-friends-border-wall
If y’all aren’t following Sarah Kendzior’s Gaslit Nation, then you should. The same group of corrupt players goes back to Reagan/Bush I and the fall of the USSR. They keep doing what they’ve been doing because they’ve never faced any consequences for it.