Dear Editor:

History may not repeat itself, exactly, but it does seem to favor symmetry.

In April 1917, the government of Imperial Germany used a weapon of mass destruction to eliminate the Eastern Front: they colluded with subversives in Russia to smuggle the one candidate for supreme power ambitious enough to destroy the liberal democracy of the Provisional Government – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin – in a sealed train from Zürich to the Finland Station in Petrograd.

By November 1917, the plague bacillus of Marxism was established in its unwitting host, as the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government and imposed a totalitarian regime on the largest country in the world. Under the guise of soviet “democracy” and “majority rule,” Lenin rapidly concluded a separate peace with Germany, withdrew Russia from the First World War, and initiated the Russian Civil War, costing ten million lives. Though the Second German Reich did not survive the war, its rulers had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams of crippling Russia.

Fast forward a century to January 2017. Russia has lost the Cold War, failed to establish a democracy, and succumbed to the kleptocratic tyranny of Vladimir Putin. No longer a superpower and resentful of the Obama-Clinton sanctions against their war crimes and global corruption, Mafia-ruled Russia has finally scored a victory over its Western nemesis. Using his new weapon of mass destruction, cyber warfare, along with KGB tactics of infiltration, recruitment, and kompromat, Putin has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Instead of using a sealed train, he ushered his Manchurian candidate into Washington, D.C. with hijacked social media platforms, email hacking, and fake political rallies. By the following November, this unprepared and unfit womanizer had unilaterally withdrawn the United States from leadership in global trade (TPP), hemispheric trade (NAFTA), international education (UNESCO), and environmental stewardship (Paris Climate Accord). He has divided our nation and collaborated with the Russians in attacking the integrity of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, our election systems, and our free press, while dismantling laws guaranteeing affordable health care and environmental safety.

Not a bad return for Putin’s million-dollar-a-month investment in troll factories!

Bill Hammond

Trevett