"Russia is prepping the battlefield in the United States for what comes next"

[hedda_foil]

10. Another hugely important paragraph

"Both leaders also refer to the need to “defend civilization”—but they mean a very specific concept of civilization defined not by values or governance, but by history and religion. This is the “blood and soil” nationalism of the 19th century—not the postwar liberal internationalism that American presidents of both parties have embraced for the past 70 years. Trump repeatedly spoke of souls and God—neither standard references in his speeches—going so far as to say: “We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives.” Putin frequently refers to spiritual tradition as a core part of identity, and of the importance of the “ideals of family” as a bulwark against Western decadence. Trump’s diss of “bureaucracy” was an unmistakable code word for the European Union—the institution Putin seeks to dismantle—as was his reference to sovereignty as a core tenet of how he thinks the world should be ordered."