I’ve been trying to articulate to myself the particular strangeness of this political moment, when U.S. intelligence agencies have released a collective assessment reflecting their belief that the Russian government engaged in cyberattacks to influence the presidential election; this in itself would be an unprecedented, unsettling event. But it’s inseparable from the overall shock and grotesquerie of Donald Trump’s election, and his sordid reaction to the news of Russian interference.
Part of the strangeness is that it comes after an election that has been alternately bitter, surreal, frightening, and heartbreaking, in which one of the two major parties' candidates was a cartoonish, reality show figure whose most extensive political involvement before running for president was his racist demand that President Obama produce his birth certificate, because African-American man. In his authoritarian appeals, blatant racism, and horrific misogyny, Donald Trump was indeed a nightmare figure for many of us; the conjured id of a nativist backlash, vindictive and harboring a latent violence. The warning signs of his victory were always there; he kept coming back from things that would have ended the candidacy of a mere mortal. This includes the Russian cyberattack allegations; these were already known and pretty well established during the campaign, and the fact that we are still grappling with them is part of the surrealness I am feeling now. It is like the 2016 campaign never ended.
I’m guessing that most Americans have arrived at the following conclusion: whether or not the Russians interfered with our election process (and it seems a near-certainty they did), and however they feel about this fact, there seems to be no absolute way of knowing whether or not it was this interference that caused Donald Trump to win, rather than the half dozen or more other major contenders for explaining his victory. In a depressing way, the intelligence community's confirmation of Russian intervention to assist Trump, without any evident repercussions possible for Trump himself, seems like yet more evidence of the man’s tragic unstoppability.
Partly this illustrates the Democrats’ adherence to the rule of law versus the feral gang that the Republican Party has increasingly become. For a partly fun, partly frightening exercise, imagine if the positions were reversed, and it turned out that Hillary Clinton had received extensive Russian support in her election. Is there any doubt as to how the Republican Party would have responded? Is there any doubt that they would deny that president’s legitimacy, with or without a thorough investigation of the extent of the Russian meddling? The Republicans are playing by a different set of rules than the Democrats, one that I don’t want the Democrats to replicate, but which allows the Republicans to gain advantage after advantage without political cost.
But back to reality, or rather, the air of unreality, of the Russian factor. I would argue that Donald Trump’s consistent dismissal of the fact of the attacks, up to yesterday’s acknowledgment that perhaps something happened, but that it absolutely did not affect the election results, has been a fact as outrageous for our country as the actual Russian interference. His rejection out of hand of the facts that the intelligence community has given him is so obviously self-serving, I have trouble believing anyone could not see it. Of course he doesn’t want to find out that he may owe his presidency to the Russians! What president would? But this self-serving action is absolutely un-presidential. Even before Trump is actually inaugurated, we’ve received confirmation that he puts his own needs ahead of the country, in the most blatant, self-serving way possible.
Part of what is dizzying is that Donald Trump is in fact acting exactly like a president would in some alternative reality where he really was, not just the preferred candidate of the Russians, but their actual agent. He denies the Russians interfered as much as he can, he praises Vladimir Putin, he proclaims a desire to work closely with the Russians. I’m not saying he is a Russian agent, or that it’s a bad thing to want better relations with Russia - in fact, I think the U.S. failed massively after the end of the Cold War to effectively turn Russian in a more democratic direction, and has played with fire by pressing deeply into Russia's sphere of influence - but these elements must still be counted among the surreal elements of the whole spectacle.
Then, there’s the whole question of who the public at large really can trust here. If the Russian interference is as extensive as the intelligence consensus is saying, then why on God’s green earth didn’t they stop it, or make a bigger fuss? Of course, looking back to the election, the Russian element was already politicized, with Trump denying the whole thing back then. But as with 9/11, it seems like the intelligence agencies were largely asleep at the wheel, indifferent to actual threats to American security.
Finally, there’s the depressing partisan angle. It still feels amazing to me that Trump supporters would rather look the other way than confront the reality that their man received significant support from the Russians - don’t a lot of these people consider themselves patriots and “real” Americans? So it also seems that another victim of this election is basic patriotism, although this may be more in the manner of a final nail in a coffin that probably began to be constructed in earnest during the Vietnam War.