I don’t know if I’ve cheated at cards. I never progressed much beyond ‘go fish’ and blackjack with the deck of fifty-two. I can’t remember if I ever kept excessive change dealt out by a storekeeper. I found $400 dollars in tightly rolled bills in a baking soda can, stashed in the demolished darkroom of a dentist’s office. I shared the windfall with my fellow workers and didn’t tell the property owner. I guess that was cheating. Or maybe it was worker’s comp.
I shoplifted a pocket full of Craftsman tools in Oakland for the revolution, but I got busted. I cheated on a girlfriend in college, but we were a continent apart and the relationship had been rendered ambiguous by final exams and farewells. Oh, and my partner and her accomplice cheated me and the accomplice’s mate in Monopoly. So much for true confessions, so I have been cheated on. But speaking of victimization…
I recently read a letter to the online Washington journal called Talking Points Memo, published by political analyst Josh Marshall. The letter was written by JI, a Finnish journalist who clearly feels nervous enough to ask that his name be withheld. Finland shares a long border with Russia and has been battling with its neighbor for a few thousand years now, and the Fins have a vested interest in what America has been doing vis a vis what JI the journalist calls “Russia’s long game.”
We Americans like to call modern Russia a kleptocracy, whose leaders we call oligarchs who play courtier to Putin’s queen bee. These kleptocrats and Putin himself operate outside the rule of law to embezzle money via kickbacks, bribes, and mafia-style favor exchanges to appropriate the wealth of the people. I’d call that cheating, wouldn’t you?
But JI doesn’t want to talk about cheating in Russia. He wants to talk about cheating in America. “I think you folks in the USA have not even started to realize the role of your internal politics in the long game of Russia!”
He talked about Trump cheating his way into office, partially with the help of Russia. He watched the GOP (whom he calls “Girlfriends of Putin”) cheating the American people by excusing Trump’s proven extortion of a new Ukrainian president. That’s right. Ukraine. And we all know Trump was impeached a second time for incitement to insurrection. And acquitted. Trump brags about that.
By ignoring the facts of Congress’s impeccably presented case, the Girls Of Putin rubber-stamped an acquittal of President Trump, stamped in red ink for the world to see. The world watched while America did nothing, helpless against a second monumental cheat of America and the world. Imagine Putin watching all this with his beady eyes.
Now, JI thinks it’s great that President Joe Biden is offering weapons and support to Ukraine and helping to organize a concerted NATO warning to Putin. But in the meantime, JI notes, we’re continuing to allow the cheaters to go free, the cheat perpetrated by the same GOP that acquitted Trump twice for impeachable crimes and still tries its damnest to steal the 2020 election from Biden.
Sure, we’ve busted a corral full of the duped bozos who attacked the capitol, but no big shot has yet been held accountable for supporting Trump’s big lie, for trumped up [sic] voter fraud, for rewriting voting laws, and threatening election officials.
A year has passed — Finland’s JI is writing in CAPS now — and our major institutions, including the Department of Justice, hasn’t even begun to question the main suspects named by Congress’s January 6 Committee. And the Girls of Putin are working overtime to make sure they can cheat even more on the next election than they did on the last one. “And you are just going to let it happen,” JI says. “Tralala.” (He’s very square in his colloquialisms, this JI, but what the hell, he lives in a land of reindeers and long winter nights.)
So, he says, if you really want to do something for Ukraine, “please do your own homework. Enforce your existing laws against ultrarich, influential white dudes. Stop being the Western flank of Putin’s army. Don’t let him use you. Please understand that, by your collective inaction in your internal affairs, you let bad things happen in the whole world.”
Now I think JI is a bit simplistic and not as knowledgeable as he might be about the battles we are fighting against the cheaters. In my opinion, Trump has been reduced to ranting in Mar a Lago. People who follow him are fools and cowards and in the minority. The long arm of the law moves slowly and carefully.
But JI lives on Putin’s flank, just like Poland. And we haven’t seen many of our own oligarchs and kleptomaniarchs pay for what they’ve done. We may or may not bring Giuliani, Meadows, Hawley, and even Ginni Thomas to the fore via the January 6 investigation. Clarence Thomas may even have to step down, but from the outside, it looks as if we’re defending democracy elsewhere and letting it languish here. I’d say we’ve been cheated… wouldn’t you?
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Charles DegelmanWriter, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles. He's also played a lot of music. Degelman teaches writing at California State University, Los Angeles.
Degelman lives in the hills of Hollywood with his companion on the road of life, four cats, assorted dogs, and a coterie of communard brothers and sisters.
Charlie, you’ve given us a wonderful story, as always. I love your first two paragraphs, with your personal true confessions. Then you follow it with your description of the Finnish journalist’s observations about cheating in America, interspersed with your own thoughts. Thank you for reminding us of all the political cheating going on, not that we could forget. You and JI do a fabulous job of bringing it all back home.
Thanks for your kind and supportive words, Suzy. Not the most popular form of cheating, I admit. I was seduced by thr combination of the prompt and my discovery of a European comment on our own democracy and its impact on others.
Thanx Charles for sharing your justifiable rant, and for being our political conscience.
These last few years in this country have been disheartening to say the least.
At times I’ve been sleepless worrying about family matters, my husband who’s more aware and informed told me he was up at night worrying about the world.
Thanks, Dana. It’s interesting how we bifurcate the world into circles of concern as you describe the causes of your sleeplessness. It’s a dark and restless time.
I couldn’t agree more, Charles. It is so frustrating to wait while the wheels of justice grind so slowly, if at all. Putin’s war is great for Trump and his GOP allies. There is no other news these days. We all know what they say about people who live in glass houses.
Thanks, Laurie. I do think some wheels grind and some do not. I am heartened by Biden’s continued drive on so many fronts. I have to disagree with you about Trump and the GOP. I think the behavior of an autocrat that has been condoned by some in the U.S. is flushing out the reality of who Trump was (and never will be again). As for the GOP, they are not of woman borne, and are worse off than we may think in these tough times.
With you 100% Charlie! It is infuriating to see the lies swell as the cheaters feel they can wait out the mid-terms and Garland and the DOJ does nothing. Thank you for writing about this I get gloomy reading the news every day.
Not to be discouraged. The recent release of information Ginni Thomas, Eastman’s texts, emails, phone records all puts us steps closer to Trump. And notice carefully, please, who is telling us that the DOJ and Garland are doing nothing? To leak or not to leak info about investigations is not a binary circumstance. Who says Garland is doing nothing? Why are they saying this? Carry on!
I love this, Charles.
Of course, your piece makes me itch with internal ants. Our whole world does just now. Russia is falling apart under its dictatorship and we are crumbling internally in different ways. La-la-la, I sing as I put my fingers in my ears, just as I did in 5th grade when someone tried to teach me Russian during the Cuban missile crisis. La-la-la. “Zdrastviche, Gospodin. Goodday, Sir.” La-la-la.
Underneath all the truth you speak lies a profound question. Are “they,” (I love the Girls of Putin moniker) THEY, operating in a totally ruleless world? I can’t see they have a different set of rules, but are rather a seethe of vipers in a shallow pool, shifting, changing, and amoral.
No rules mean they aren’t even cheating. You have to have a rule to break it. Rule of law, or rule of morality or ethics or even common decency.. These don’t seem to apply. Appalling.
Thanks for the conversation!
A seethe of vipers in a shallow pool. Wow, Lucinda, what an apt and vivid image. And they’re visible. Although they have everything to hide, they don’t seem to be aware of their visibility.
I don’t want to give Trump credit. He saw the possibility of extending his rule-breaking fetish from the world of real-estate in NYC (essentially a rule-less enclave in itself since Tammany) and he took the U.S. power structure by surprise. “Unprecedented…” May I count the ways. The only way out now is via accountability and I am hopeful.
I think it’s important that progressives/Dems/liberals — whatever the hell you want to call them — work hard to step out of this slough of electoral despond. The worst case scenario is not always the most authentic scenario. People are fighting back. A Florida court just threw out its monstrous voting restrictions. The DOJ is going after the Texas law. We’re in a war and need to learn how to fight like the Ukrainians. They’re a special breed.
YES YES YES.