Congressman Don Beyer told me last week that his friend and fellow Virginian, U.S. Senator Mark Warner, has repeated numerous times in his company that the realities behind the alleged ties and collusion between Trump and the Russians are “far worse” than anyone not privy to classified information realizes.

No wonder Warner has felt so frustrated in recent weeks as the congressional investigations into this matter have stalled.

There are two stunning aspects to all this – absolutely stunning – that seem to be escaping most public discourse on the matter.

First is the fact that Republicans are treating this whole thing like just another partisan standoff. To them, it is like a fight over taxes or some other area of policy making. But no, it is qualitatively different!

Do these people realize that they are covering up for an active operation by a hostile foreign power to disrupt and meddle with the sovereign U.S. government? If what they are doing cannot technically be called treason, it is just about as close to it as you can get.

They are taking the same type of glib and disdainful attitude toward this matter as they did in trying to blunt Obamacare over the last eight years. But this isn’t about Obamacare!

I shake my head when thinking about what the reputations of all these elected Republican sycophants will look like when the truth finally comes out and an entire major U.S. political party is implicated in the most brazen “invasion” of the U.S. and its democratic institutions in the nation’s history.

Every day is a step closer to the facts of this coming to light, despite the relentless efforts of the Trump White House and its allies in Congress to stall, delay and torpedo them.

This is shaping up to be far bigger than Watergate, the biggest threat to the sovereignty of the United States since the Civil War.

Second, the other stunning aspect of all this is the way in which the Russians have deployed into the social fabric, as well as governmental institutions and elections, of the U.S.

It surprises me that almost no one is commenting about how the Russian assets in the U.S. are all right wing racists and criminally-tinged. Didn’t J. Edgar Hoover and Sen. Joe McCarthy go after the left wing as Soviet-connected Communists, and not the right?

When did the Russians change their operational mode of infiltration, espionage and compromise of the U.S. system? It’s pretty amazing that they did shift, and one would think the subject would be a matter of keen interest.

Alas, perhaps the Americans have become so distracted by all the false flags, football, and hockey and basketball playoffs and shallow TV sitcoms to even notice, much less care.

This student of spy-counterspy covert ops matters, especially the cults that the KGB and the CIA once fought over in the 1960s and early 1970s, saw the sea-change in the Russian/Soviet mode of infiltration of the U.S. first arrive in the wake of the so-called “detente” that Richard Nixon instigated in the early 1970s.

The era of “detente” led to an above-board massive influx of Soviet intelligence operatives into the U.S. in the guise of harmless immigrants. They situated in the Coney Island area of New York’s Long Island, which became known as “Little Odessa,” and the set up shop as a ruthless organized crime syndicate.

They proceeded to roust out the residues of the old leftist-style pro-Soviet elements, and replace them with radical right wing cults, working hand-in-glove with Hoover in many cases.

(The deluded Hoover saw this as a plus, since it meant weakening civil rights, anti-war and trade union movements that were the main thorns in the side of his corporate elite masters.)

Through the 1970s, the KGB’s “paradigm shift,” with Hoover’s complicity, was completely overlooked by the normal watchdogs of our democracy.
Some day a more informed look at key 1970s events that turned our culture over to the far right, including the “Reagan revolution,” may take place.
An investigation could extend to the Jonestown massacre and the assassination of Harvey Milk.

Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com.