Captain American’s pal Vlad may be Sixth Eye
what you want for a spy org.
But if America under Trump is now playing a duet with Russia, does that mean they’re leaving the band? What will happen to the Five Eyes? Is America now Harry Styles, gone in his own direction, and are we the remaining members of One Direction, sipping on the fumes? (I’m not even sure if this is accurate, but I want to suggest I’m down with the kids.)
Certainly flatting rules should apply — if the US leaves Five Eyes, it has to find a replacement before it stops paying rent. And it’s hard not to think that if America leaves Five Eyes, it takes all the spy toys with it, leaving us remaining Eyes with nothing but Google, Wikipedia and rich heritage of Shakespeare.
Is Russamerica — the Putin-Trump love affair — just the final plot twist in a rom-com that’s teased out over decades? Was the entire Cold War simply two lovers playing hard to get?
Try as we like to get het up about treason — an idea that has about as much impact now as long hair — maybe it’s an outmoded concept in a world where America and Russia are about to merge. Never say never — remember, the unthinkable has already happened time and again in the past year. How many gamblers have lost their shirt on sure things since Brexit? First Brexit, then Trump, then La La Land. Throw in a couple of parallel-universe sporting results I refuse to Google — the Boston something and the Sheriff of Nottingham — and imagine the odds if someone had backed the underdog on all of them, at the beginning of 2016, in one massive “That’ll Never Ever Happen” wager. One dollar — indeed, probably one rouble — and today, they’d own the world. (Or at least, the portion of the world not owned secretly by Vladimir Putin. Hmmm. Drum roll please — as it happens, the winner of that wager is one V. Putin, of Monaco.)
But isn’t it incredible how far the goalposts for outrage have shifted when it comes to Trump? It’s massive, Zimbabwe-currency-level outrage inflation, where what was once completely outrageous (not even believable in a bad spy movie) now barely moves the needle.
At this pace, I’d like to bet that after the US merges with Russia, Isis merges with the Salvation Army, and the Justice League merges with Huey, Dewey and Louie. Gay dogs will marry straight cats, Klingons join the Federation, the KKK joins Black Lives Matter, Putin will marry Ivanka — securing an advisory position in the White House — and Julian Assange marries Hillary Clinton. You read it here first. Of course, all of this begs this question: Is classified intel still classified if the President speaks it out loud to non-allies? It’s a brain-teaser: Is there a noise if a tree falls in the forest because Putin put a hit on it and didn’t even try to make it look like an accident? (If you’re smart, you didn’t hear anything.)
Apparently the President can, at his whim — and nobody does whim like this guy, you’re gonna have so much whim, you’re gonna get bored with whimming — declassify classified info, whenever he wants.
He holds the stamp that says Top Secret, and he has the Twink to erase it. So when he passes secrets to the Russians, it’s not treason, because the moment he utters these secrets, well, they’re no longer secrets, are they?
So let’s wake up, read the tealeaves and plan for the future. All the rules are out the window. Time to consider merging with Australia. That’ll show the World Cup.
Without wishing to seem desperate for a local angle, I do wonder if our Government’s spies feel miffed that Donald Trump shared classified intel about Isis with Russian officials — spies — in the Oval Office, in the presence of Russian state media only — more spies — when Russia isn’t even one of the Five Eyes. What about us? New Zealand, let’s be honest, probably was picked last for the team, begrudgingly, the fifth of Five Eyes. Plus, we only got added because Four Eyes sounds more a playground insult than a global spy organisation.
Four Eyes declares a need for optical crutches, an interest in books (pah!) — not to mention embarrassing hand-eye co-ordination. In the age of always-on surveillance, God-style, the name of a spy organisation should strike awe, conjuring 360-degree, X-ray, soul-reading powers of vision and hearing. Think tough, gadgety, danger-zone names like Shield, the Avengers, or the Famous Five. That’s