Putin’s Revenge, Part II: Obama Was the Anti-Gorbachev, to Pull Our System Down

In Part I we explained why Vladimir Putin is trying to help the Democrats win, in order to weaken America compared to his own country, Russia. Why he’d want to do that seems pretty obvious: He sees the U.S. as a rival, and the pushy aggressiveness of our War Party elites after 1991 made it into his enemy. It might rankle you to try seeing things through Putin’s eyes, but if you want to beat him that’s simply what you must do.

However, if all you really want is to shake down the taxpayers for bigger military spending that favors the defense contractors who give you campaign contributions or offer you no-show jobs — see Nikki Haley, made an instant millionaire by Boeing — then knock yourself out. Refuse on moral “principle” even to try understanding what motivates Putin and Russia. Like Manuel Noriega and Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein they are literally Hitler. The time is always autumn, 1938, and the place is always Munich. And anyone who tries to argue against you is always Neville Chamberlain. That makes you Winston Churchill, now go feel a rush of self-esteem as you cash your check from Halliburton.

Hitler Didn’t Have Nukes Aimed at Our Cities

Have the neocons all left the room? Good, now we can seek out the truth. For Russia, Ukraine joining the nuclear hair trigger military alliance NATO is every bit as threatening as Soviet missiles were in Cuba to President Kennedy. He was ready to risk a nuclear war to roll that back. The Russians are ready to do the same today.

Maybe we ought to think about that before invoking the old “appeasing Hitler” tropes. Hitler didn’t have nukes. Krushchev did, which is why we held our noses and made deals with him instead of launching reckless unwinnable wars. Because liberating Ukraine wasn’t worth nukes falling on our cities.

The Rodney Dangerfield of Russia

But there’s another deeper reason why Putin wants revenge. He blames the U.S. for what Mikhail Gorbachev did to Russia, which Putin called one of history’s greatest tragedies. In the West, Gorbachev is a hero for dismantling Communist tyranny. In Russia he’s almost universally despised, as a clueless idealist who reduced Russia to chaos, poverty, and rape by oligarchs.

The Russians who resent poor Gorbachev aren’t hardline Communists, who wish they still had Red Army troops in Berlin. They’re ordinary Russians who saw how their economy collapsed, their lifespans shrank by five years on average (from 63 to 58), and their country was reduced to a third-rate power exploited by Western businessmen.

Gorbachev certainly meant well. Inspired in part by the Christian beliefs of his family, he rejected the cruel, autocratic methods of violent coercion the Soviets used to hold onto power. He hated the flagrant corruption that permeated that system. So as he came to power, Gorbachev sought to reform the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, not dissolve them. He still believed in socialism, the Warsaw Pact, and Russia as a great power. But he wanted to keep those realities in place, minus the violent coercion and the corruption.

Let’s Swap Out the Engine at 55 MPH

What Gorbachev didn’t realize was this: that violent coercion was the engine propelling the USSR, and corruption the vital lubricant that kept it from catching on fire. To a large degree, coercion and corruption had always been the ruling principles in Russia, even under the tsars. Read Richard Pipes’ classic history Russia Under the Old Regime, and learn that in pre-Revolutionary Russia (unlike Western Europe) private property never enjoyed full legal protection. In principle, every square foot of land and stick of furniture in the meanest peasant’s home belonged to the tsar, belonged to the State. Citizens were only using these things by the State’s permission. And no one had the right to challenge the System in power. That’s how Russia was run for hundreds of years, and that part didn’t change when the Communists seized power — though as Utopian atheists they were infinitely more ruthless.

Gorbachev thought he could swap out the USSR’s engine, but the vehicle wouldn’t stop moving. Instead, what happened should have been predictable: a systemic, total collapse that shattered the country’s economy, handed wealth and power to former Communist oligarchs, and left a rump Russia prostrate in world affairs. As Putin himself said to Tucker Carlson, the tipping point that made Russians hostile to America was our ham-handed (pro-Muslim) intervention in Serbia, the nation which Russia entered World War I to defend from foreign aggression.

Putin would enjoy the historical irony of the U.S. meeting the same fate as the old USSR. And America is obliging him.

White Culture, White Privilege, and Christian Nationalism

If coercion and corruption have always been the coins of the Russian realm, what have America’s been? Any honest historian will tell you: Anglo-American Christian culture, the rule of law, and individual rights. This trio of factors is what made places like the USA and Canada so radically different from other New World former colonies such as Mexico and Colombia.

And those are the three things that Barack Obama and his ideological allies hate. Obama was mentored as a young man by a Communist Party activist, Frank Marshall Davis. In college, he sought out professors who taught “post-colonial theory,” a mishmash of Marxism and anti-Western resentment. The church he found which would allow him to present as a Christian was Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church, which taught “Black Liberation Theology,” which is also a Marxist front heavily laced with racial hatred. Remember that Wright was Obama’s pastor for decades, performed Obama’s wedding, and baptized his children. Maybe it’s time to listen again to Wright’s famous sermon (in Obama’s church) declaring “God damn America!”

Just imagine if Donald Trump had spent decades attending a right-wing, white racialist church. Somebody might have mentioned that fact in the campaign.

Obama: The Anti-Gorbachev

Like Mikhail Gorbachev, Barack Obama came to power in a country whose governing system he’d come to hate. Like Gorbachev, Obama didn’t want to blow the whole thing up. He wanted, as his woke supporters still want, a prosperous society with fancy houses and high-tech gadgets. They want the Upper East Side to be posh, San Francisco to still be quaint, and private jets to whisk them to Climate Cult conferences.

But just like Gorbachev, Obama wanted to rip out the engine and expect the plane to fly. The woke movement specifically targets all the reasons why America works. They damn biblical Christianity as “Christian Nationalism.” Respect for property rights and high professional standards they denounce as “white culture” and “privilege.”

They trample on individual rights and the rule of law whenever it suits them — just ask Jake Gardner (RIP), Kyle Rittenhouse, Donald Trump, and the January 6 defendants. The mass importation of almost 10 million illegal immigrants (from countries where coercion and corruption rule) is simply the crudest, most powerful weapon in that attack.

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The more Obama and the Obamadites succeed, the more quickly America will collapse, as the USSR did in the early 1990s. Our system will stop functioning, and be replaced by one based on … coercion and corruption. Just like most godforsaken countries in our fallen world’s bleak history.

Obama didn’t just hate American exceptionalism. He may actually have killed it.

And for that Vladimir Putin should send him a Harry and David’s basket.

Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, popular podcast host, and human rights worker. He is president of the Human-Rights Education and Relief Organization (H.E.R.O.), known for its two main programs, the Vulnerable People Project and Movie to Movement. He was the first recipient of the East Turkistan Order of Friendship Medal for his advocacy of the Uyghur people. Jones was an executive producer of Bella and an associate producer of The Stoning of Soraya M. His humanitarian efforts have aided millions in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Ukraine, as well as pregnancy centers and women’s shelters throughout North America. Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream and the host of The Jason Jones Show. He is also the author of three books, The Race to Save Our Century, The World Is on Fire, and his latest book The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset. His latest film, Divided Hearts of America, is available on Amazon Prime.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.