The deep state vs Bozo

Left and right meet in seeing the leaks on which so much anti-Trump news and publicity is based as originating in "the deep state".

Some on the Trump supporting right claim to fear its supposed determination to "take him down," while some on the Trump opposing left have great hopes for it.

Apparently, Russian propaganda is now pessimistic about Trump's supposed efforts to improve relations with Russia, saying the American deep state, committed to Cold War II, won't allow it.

But conspiracy theories and paranoid references to the deep state are unnecessary.

Very nearly to a man, the grim and the powerful of the Washington establishment, regardless of party and including those in Trump's own administration, both the cabinet and the White House, are deathlessly committed to Cold War II, and that is no secret from anyone.

They will resist any effort by Trump to back away from that commitment even to the point - a point some of them have already reached - of labeling such efforts as treason and people engaged in them as traitors.

When Jane Fonda was visiting North Vietnam the Democrats and most of the American establishment accepted the dogma of the left that there can be no crime of treason giving aid and comfort to anyone against whom the US had not at the time declared war.

The word has already been used more than once against not only Flynn but against Trump, himself.

Even lefties one would ordinarily expect to oppose Cold War II, and so be rather pleased at efforts to back away from it, are engaging in relentless scare propaganda demonizing Putin, Russia, and the very idea of better relations with him and his country.

But who knows what Trump is really about, or even if he is really about anything?

In the space of a few days he deserted the one China policy of decades in favor of the Cold War two China policy, and then returned to orthodoxy after freaking everyone out.

As for getting NATO itself to withdraw its protection from all states that used to be controlled by Stalin, or at least those that were part of the Soviet Union, something Anne Applebaum has suggested might be Trump's goal, that does not actually seem to be on the table.

Not now, anyway.

But her call for a new European security pact to tie everyone together from Ireland to Latvia is understandable.

And would make tempering or even ending American defense commitments to Europe a lot easier and safer for everyone, I must say.