The Golden Loophole
Forward: There is a story waiting to be told.
This week everyone has been talking about the Mueller report. When the full report will be released and to what degree the information will be shared with the public remains unknown. What we do know is that the highly anticipated report has been a bit of a dud so far. According to the latest information on the subject, Mueller is seeking no new indictments. President Trump is already crowing about victory and vindication.
Is this the end of the investigation? Let’s stop and think about that for a moment. Might the Mueller investigation be sitting on a story so explosive that the truth has become like a bitter pill that no one wants to take? Could fraud, off-shore banking and money laundering have become so common place that it has given rise to an international kleptocracy of corrupt state leaders, oligarchs and retired military men like Mr Flynn, who are capable of acting in concert to benefit only themselves?
Prior to the release of the Mueller report I believed that the slow pace of the investigation seemed to reflect two distinct possibilities. One, there are so many leads and interlocking threads to be tracked down that an expeditious accounting of the facts is simply impossible to undertake in a finite and reasonable time frame. The second possibility, enhanced by my fear of extensive moral turpitude and its corrosive effects on the country, reflected the possibility that the timely outcome of the investigation was influenced by an unspoken third rail. This rail would, in essence, protect the perpetrators by design. It would reflexively limit the scope of the investigation to maintain the integrity of the country and the system of government in which millions of Americans have placed their deep trust and faith. In this scenario Mueller’s muted investigation caps a blowout of epic criminality instead of targeting it.
This of course begs the question; are we staring into the abyss of a world completely dominated by the ruthless exploitation of people and natural resources by others already wealthy and powerful beyond our wildest dreams? Has the will of the people been tamed and narcotized by an international cartel of autocrats all delivering the same hackneyed phrases born of a rose tinted nostalgia for the past? Can we really step back in time and make our countries great again?
Let’s be frank, the charade of noblesse oblige and emphasis on solipsistic navel-gazing promoted by these fraudulent government leaders has done nothing of the sort. Under the auspices of returning to a better time we have seen moral relativism shred our national comity and destroy the commonly held belief that facts, truth and the rule of law actually mean something. Our countries are divided like never before.
The actions of these men, whom I shall name later, are now ironically loosening the twin cornerstones of common decency and collective security that created the very wealth and power that they so assiduously covet. There is nothing great about returning to the past. Millions died fighting wars born of the same division and misinformation flooding our senses today. It is the future which offers the promise of a better life, especially for those just beginning life’s journey.
It is true that the history of every nation is rooted in the past but we must resist mythologizing these roots just as we must resist putting our faith in a single leader. It is the entire tree, from the roots to the tip of every leaf, that must be considered. To believe that your intentions are just does not make them so. It only proves a willingness to be blind to the truth.
Rodion Raskolnikov, the impoverished ex-student who killed an unscrupulous pawnbroker to liberate himself from poverty in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” believed he would go on to do great things. He was wrong. Mr Trump has promised to do the same despite an overwhelming history of cheating, lying and association with numerous convicted felons. He teases us with the thought that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it, knowing full well the reaction he will receive.
Those who haven’t read “Crime and Punishment” will celebrate his candor. Those complicit in his crimes will smirk. Seasoned readers will see it differently. They will roundly condemn his thoughtless boast for the dangerous precedent it sets.
It is exactly this type of shameless and overt egoism that triggered Dostoevsky to write “Crime and Punishment”. Russian nihilism was in full bloom during the 1860s and it rejected all forms of authority by promoting the idea that certain individuals were, by virtue of their genius, free from the bounds that constrained others.
Raskolnikov robbed and killed the pawnbroker because he believed that no one would object to her death. He also believed he was smart enough to get away with it. In short, he thought he was a genius.
The eventual demise of Raskolnikov should serve as a warning to us all. Dostoevsky wrote his novel to illustrate what can happen to a society that condones such an arrangement. The descent of the United States into the backwaters of extreme violence, addiction, and unvarnished misogyny that characterizes our country today reflects similar themes found in Dostoevsky’s work over 150 years ago. Trump isn’t a carbon copy of Raskolnikov but the exceptionally flawed history of his background suggests that he too, will never be capable of great things.
This is not to say that Trump’s story wouldn’t be worthy of a great novel. That is why I have referenced Dostoevsky. To fully grasp and absorb the complexity of Trump’s narrative requires the patience and devotion of a novelist. Most of us don’t have those credentials. I began writing and researching my project by tugging at a tiny thread overlooked by most every major news organization; the arrest of a Turkish man responsible for laundering billions in illegal oil money. He did so by evading economic sanctions against Iran. This act of discovery eventually led me to Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s handpicked National Security Advisor.
Michael Flynn represents the tip of a massive iceberg of wealth and corruption that threatens to capsize all democratic nations and cast us all into the demagogue’s shark tank of perverted exceptionalism. It is a land devoid of borders, national identity and compassion for those struggling to survive in the face of outright discrimination and material deprivation. The men at the heart of my story have only an allegiance to themselves. They mask their true intentions using old school journalistic repression and high tech “military grade” algorithms designed to manufacture consent using personal data harvested by stealth. The public, for the most part, has already been defeated by a form of warfare so silent, so pervasive and so powerful that it delivers victory before the loser is even aware of the attack.
These illegal activities are occurring in plain site if one chooses to go looking for them. Trump uses it, Putin uses it, as does the Turkish President Recep Erdogan and the newly chosen leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman. Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovich also used it before political revolution in Ukraine forced him to abdicate his position and flee to Russia.
These men comprise a cabal of petro-state leaders unwilling to relinquish control of the world. They are stuck in an outdated mode of economic repression that is stifling growth and willingly ignoring the overwhelming evidence attributing carbon based energy systems to catastrophic global warming.
Think about it, the US (now the world’s top producer), Russia (#2) and Saudi Arabia (#3) have all been in the news of late in a diffuse, yet strangely, interrelated way. I apologize for the lack of clarity but I think we all know what I’m talking about; election meddling, missing and dead journalists, political corruption, and open warfare against anyone seeking to encroach upon their turf. The same goes for Turkey and Ukraine.
These countries are defined by oil and gas production, and they are increasingly united in realizing the objectives and goals of their state supported corporations. Turkey and Ukraine, 53rd and 58th on the U.S. Energy Administration database for the year 2016, may not have the highest production numbers relative to the rest of the world but they do control, or have attempted to control, the pipelines that deliver Russian and Middle Eastern oil to the rest of the world. Squeezing out other producers, to maintain a world wide monopoly sets the stage for where we are today.
