"If we're really being honest here, Russia poses no threat to the United States at all."
"Too many careers depend upon keeping our assumptions exactly where they were in the fall of 1977, when fighting the Soviet Menace consumed the lion's share of our federal budget," Carlson said.
"So here in Washington that's what we're doing. Our real fear is that the rest of America will at some point discover that the Soviet Union no longer exists," he continued.
Carlson went on to list things about Russia intended to minimize their power: an economy the size of Italy's, a military budget that is one-tenth of ours and an aircraft carrier "that needs to be towed around the ocean because it's broken." Newsweek
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Yup. It is true, pilgrims. The USSR no longer exists.
For years after the fall of that communist monstrosity, Soviet specialist analysts in the IC used to sing at office Christmas parties in Washington that they were dreaming of "A Red Christmas Just Like The Ones They used to Know." These characters had lived "high on the hog" since WW2. They got the lion's share of everything, funds, attention, you name it. Poor sods like me who specialized in regions where people actually fought each other with rusty rifles and machine guns were definitely the poor relatives come to town hat in hand.
And then, all of a sudden, the Soviet specialist people were essentially out of a job. Or, at least, they were a hell of a lot less important. The same thing happened to all the Iranian specialists when the Pahlavis went down. Fortunately for me, my good old Arabs and other assorted ME scoundrels kept right on bashing and backstabbing each other while most of them sat on a great big puddle of oil. That and the Zionist thing kept me well employed.
The Soviet guys needed a few years to rebound, but as Tucker says, they have done so by merchandising the notion that Russia = the USSR. The two pomposities (Taylor and Kent) from the Foreign Service who testified yesterday made it very clear that their real bitch against Trump is that 1. He thinks he can do business overseas without their bureaucratic intervention and 2. He doesn't really accept the assumption that Russia is an indispensable and inevitable enemy. Kent rather sadly said that it has been a basic assumption of his entire career that Russia is THE ENEMY. The whole swamp is infected with group think to that effect. In the case of the Foreign Service it is remarkable that such a group of soi-disant intellectuals and sophisticated veterans of the FOREIGN SERVICE EXAM should in truth be just another bunch of conformists seeking the approval of their colleagues. But, then, that is how one gets promoted.
No, pilgrims, China is THE REAL ENEMY. pl