I seriously don't think Trump, especially a large swath of government Republicans are outright compromised by the Russians. Sorry. Don't see it. Sorta don't want to see it really.
Or to flip it around I think we need to reevaluate what we believe to be compromised to begin with. This is a new era than that of 50 years ago. First off people in politics generally have money. People with money generally no longer have all their financial interests in any single country. People who come into power in the government who didn't already have money, well they get money then and then they too begin to have global interests. Shit, as an ordinary citizen I'd like to have my dealings diversified if I had the money beyond what little international funds I have in my 401k. Finding a politician whom you couldn't say "follow the money" to as an insult implying they're bought by foreign interests is a hard task these days, finding a politician who neither s/he nor their inner circle has foreign interests, I'd be willing to bet that's near impossible. And unfortunately, in a way, it's going to just get increasingly harder and harder. I say "in a way" because I think it's generally this flow of money internationally that's staved off a lot of the strife we'd have likely seen had the countries of the world stay more closed. On the flip side, this is the prologue to those bleak futuristic settings where the worlds run by international mega-corporations rather than governments.
For sure you're not going to find many CEOs turned politicians that aren't seemingly influenced by global powers, by nature anyone in the political sphere's going to have lots of "questionable" contact with foreigners. This is our new normal.
And so while I think many of the same criticisms and claims of being compromised could be thrown at Hillary or many other politicians just as easily as Trump the key difference with him is that he's obviously not playing the game right. To not really divesting himself, to blatantly using the office to increase his own business to threatening investigations directed at him. You can say what you want about things like the Clinton Foundation, but two things matter, in my opinion, more than simply taking foreign money. Intent and the desire, or at least the public appearance of that desire as I can never truly know what's in another person's heart, to stay above board. Trump fails at both of that. So Clinton takes some money from some shitty countries for her charity, so her family's enriched themselves after being in office, this is true. She's not a monk, but how many people wouldn't take care of themselves as well? You can point to actual things her foundation has done. Contrast that to Trump who even before taking office was by and large a fucking conman, whether it be his "university" or his shitty charity you could tell he wasn't making money while trying to do something but just doing shit to make himself money. And again compare that to Clinton's general openness regarding her foundation, who they deal with, where the money goes, the fact that Obama and her party did let investigations into her run their courses, many fucking times over, and again look at Trump who doesn't want to tolerate investigations, doesn't want to release financial statements of his charity nor his own tax returns.
I always got annoyed with conservatives in my area calling Hillary crooked and yet supporting Donald Trump. I don't know how to quantify "crooked" anymore. Every politician will surely stand to gain financially from holding office. The Clintons did and will continue to do so until they die. Trump's doing the same thing and if he weren't so fucking bad at being President he'd probably increase his wealth immeasurably, who knows now at this point though lol. They've both taken foreign money. Just using the same metric of crookedness they apply to Hillary Trump's in a whole different league of crookedness. So clearly the real issue's not being crooked but either one of judgement or just basic teamsport bullshit. Since Trump always came off as a con artist I assume the real issue was always just partisan bullshit.
But this is why I'm wary of these generalizations that a whole political party's bought by a foreign power. Honestly I think Israel's bought more people than Russia ever could and no-one's clamoring to throw those American traitors in Congress in jail for selling out to that foreign power. And for awhile having financial ties to Russia'd not even be a thing, really, until they invaded Ukraine most people'd not give two shits. Turkey's one of our closest allies and not really until Erdogan going half dictator would anyone care about them paying people. It's weird how the wind's changed so fast.
Most importantly though, I don't know where we go from here. I'm definitely ok with politicians having never worked for a foreign power nor taken money from one, or business entities with close ties but I'm thinking more realistically we're going to have to generally accept some ties from this point on unless we're seriously expecting all candidates from this point on to be everyday Joe the Plumbers with no political experience nor international dealings. And while that does have a certain charm to it I'm not entirely sure it's better than what we have now.
But back to Trump, I think again his biggest sin will be the obviousness of it all more than what he's actually done. Clearly even if he had fully divested himself of everything he'd still truly stand to gain financially from being President, the idea that you could make all those connections, start with a large sum of money(since he'd have sold all his dealings and companies or transferred them to some other kind of holdings) even if he couldn't profit immediately as President day one out of office you know he'd be making bigger bank than ever if he weren't a total moron. Ethics are hard. I don't know that we posses a truly failsafe method of keeping government employees from not benefiting from their position but the one constant among most of them is that they at least try to put on an air of respectability regarding themselves and their position and it's that modicum of dignity towards their office or profession that we can somewhat properly judge. I don't know if Flynn, Trump or anyone was truly "influenced" by any of their dealings with others, they could 100% be simple business deals that at the end of the day mean nothing. I have no idea if Flynn has any care in the world what happens to Turkey or Russia with Trump. They may not be able to care less once they've cashed the checks. That's sorta how this new era of capitalism's supposed to work. Even you or I can jump to different companies and not be considered industrial espionage agents from the start, it's expected that our era with that company's over and now we're with the new one. But these people, whether they've truly colluded are not are acting guilty as fuck. They certainly don't carry themselves or represent their positions or office with any sort of dignity and worst of all they clearly don't believe the general public at large even has a right to know what they've done or are doing now. I believe that's the biggest wrong doing they could do.
Even if Trump's innocent I don't believe his actions should be allowed to stand, I don't think the President should be able to project an air of being above the law, whether he's broken it or not, because that drags down the entire Presidency. I do not believe the President can be allowed to seemingly pressure existing investigations into himself or his allies, whether those investigations have any merit or not because that undermines the strength of our check's and balances. For these alone I think Trump should be impeached and that's without even taking into consideration whether he's actually guilty of collusion with a foreign power to influence the election or not.
For the GOP as a whole, unfortunately I think they're just putting party over country. I don't think they're mostly bought by anyone but what it does show is you don't have to fucking buy them all anyways, just the fucking front runners, the party'll circle the wagons to protect anyone with a R in front of their name regardless of what they've done.
