President Putin’s Purloined Letter: The Poetic Principle in Political Affairs

On the night of November 8, 2016 American television audiences were treated to a delightful spectacle as they watched every narrative-spinning TV anchorman and woman dumbstruck by the resounding defeat of establishment-favorite Hillary Clinton. Their comments were hilarious. One journalist on Fox News, as heard by this writer, said something like, “I know we’ve experienced an economic recovery under Obama, but the recovery just isn’t being felt by millions of middle class Americans.” Really? Did she ever consider that perhaps Obama’s recovery was part of the “Fake News” offensive being peddled by the American press, and that Americans can no longer afford to buy it?

Then there was the morning after, when Hillary Clinton was presumed to have metamorphosed from former First Lady, to President-Elect, except that she hadn’t, and the November 9th New York Times carried a four-page Netflix ad depicting Queen Elizabeth I in a new TV series with the caption: “We have a new leader: a woman. Let us give her the celebration…” How much money was spent on that ad which turned out to be so spectacularly mis-timed?!

Obviously something underhanded must have occurred. It couldn’t be that the honorable carriers of the so-called non-Fake News could have been so wildly out of touch with reality, and so drunk with their own—dare we say it—Fake News narratives that they grossly miscalculated what the election results were going to be. Was it possible that Hillary Clinton, the Heiress of the Obama Legacy, with that gigantic stage, shaped like the United States, under the highest imaginable glass ceiling at the Javits Center, could have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe even millions from her Goldman Sachs sponsors) for all that glitter, only to lose? She was so shocked that she couldn’t even speak to her own loyal supporters who were there with her, staying late to wait for every last tally to come in—those intrepid souls who stood out in the cold, hoping to partake in her triumph.

It didn’t take long for the so-called non-Fake News, otherwise known as the mainstream media, to come up with an explanation for the rude surprise. After all, it was impossible that all of them could have been so very wrong. And so finally, they discovered the answer: it was the Russians. It had to be the Russians. Not only were the Russians hacking into DNC emails (at least according to the non-Fake News, they were), but they were undoubtedly also using top of the line cyber warfare techniques to hack into voting machines, and even spreading Fake News all over Facebook and Twitter, which caused millions of gullible Americans to vote for Donald Trump.

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It was Putin

The truth of the matter is, it was the Russians. Well, actually, a specific Russian: President Vladimir Putin. Except none of what he did was a secret. He has been quite public about his intentions, just as President Barack Obama and other bankrupt western leaders have been very public about theirs. For example, Hillary Clinton explicitly called for a no-fly zone over Syria. Since President Putin had publicly declared his intent to eradicate ISIS, and, at the invitation of the recognized leader of Syria, President Assad, had been launching non-secret strikes on terrorist targets, it was quite clear that Hillary’s no-fly zone would have meant the U.S. would be shooting down Russian planes. Even Green Party candidate Jill Stein characterized a Hillary Clinton Presidency as “a mushroom cloud waiting to happen.” It seems that many Americans—as well as many others in places like Moldova, Bulgaria, France and the Philippines, nations that recently voted for candidates for President that actually want to work with Putin—do not believe that a thermonuclear war with Russia or China is something they desire, or something that they would even survive! Is it really so shocking then, that they would vote for candidates, who, like Donald Trump, express a willingness to collaborate with Russia?

But there’s more. There is also the economy. What has actually happened to the standard of living in the United States these past 16 years? The record increases in suicides, drug overdoses, alcoholism, and the increasing death rates across the board are not exactly indicators of happiness, hope and prosperity.

In contrast, what has happened in China? What has happened in those nations that are collaborating with China? Despite the American non-Fake News media’s lack of coverage, China has opened dozens of new trade routes involving as many as 70 nations, built over 20,000 km of modern high-speed rail, and lifted 700 million of its own people out of poverty. Thanks to collaboration with China, Ethiopia did not lose thousands of people to starvation in the most recent drought because of a new railroad which cut transport time from weeks to hours.

Nations which border Russia and Asia on one side, and Western Europe and/or the United States on the other, whether physically or economically speaking, are aware of the great chasm between the two systems; one direction means life while the other means death. Having one’s email hacked, or your Facebook account overflowing with Fake News, is not required to recognize the obvious.

That is why American Statesman Lyndon LaRouche’s first comment on the Trump victory was that the election result was not an American phenomenon per se, but an American manifestation of a global dynamic. The election result, no matter how the media tries to spin it, was not about personalities, gender or hand size, but was a revolution against a bankrupt order, most recently known as the British Empire.

It is also a revolution for something better, even if most people worldwide are not yet poetical, or musical enough to give voice for which they strivine. This sentiment was evident in Manhattan this past September when the Schiller Institute Chorus participated in a series of performances of the Mozart Requiem dedicated to the memory of those who had perished 15 years earlier on September 11, 2001, and in its aftermath. Over 3,000 people attended those concerts in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and New Jersey, and this unity of intent emerged again in the U.S. Senate which voted 97 to 1 to override President Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. That vote, plus Obama’s forced release of the famous “28 Pages” on the Saudi role in the 9-11 attacks, and the Chilcot Inquiry findings regarding war crimes against former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as last June’s Brexit vote against the London liberal fascists, ALL should have informed the self-styled geniuses reporting on the projected U.S. election outcomes that something bigger than even their own egos is shaping global events these days.

Perhaps it is time for all of us to read and re-read Percy Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry.” Perhaps German Chancellor Angela Merkel might want to reconsider her expressed intent to run for a fourth term.