Trump is a bad man, corrupt and immoral. But putting the focus solely on his action in Finland is misleading. Russian meddling might have given him a slight boost in the last election, but really…lots of Americans voted for him. The Republican party is supporting him. All the howling aimed at one man is a distraction from the long term problem.
Why were Americans susceptible to Russian propaganda? Why do they vote for a criminal political party? Because for decades we’ve been demolishing our infrastructure, undermining unions, allowing big money to corrupt the political process, setting our standards for news media low, fostering greater income inequality, allowing racism and misogyny to run amuck, wrecking the educational system, and investing in the military rather than our people. It should be no surprise that people distrust and are resentful of The System, and are willing to endorse radicals who offer nothing but the promise to tear it all down and agree with the worst of our impulses.
Imagine a fantasy resolution: the Trump regime is thrown down, all of his appointees are thrown out and imprisoned, and the man himself is shipped off to the Hague and locked away for the rest of his life (that’s fantasy, it’s not going to happen). What next? What will change to prevent the next demagogue from taking over? What about the thousands of Republican party apparatchiks and the tens of millions of citizens who voted for them? We don’t need one guy stopped, we need the system changed.