Deny, distract and lie

In case you missed this, our ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, just called out Russia for secretly shipping oil and coal to North Korea in violation of international sanctions that Russia outwardly supports. Russia, of course, denied this allegation. In response, Haley said: “Deny, distract and lie” is “the new norm of Russian culture.”

Haley is clearly on the right side of this issue, but I would add: (a) the norm isn’t new, and (b) it is not culture, but policy. It became so in 1917 with the rise of Vladimir Lenin’s morally bankrupt Bolshevik regime and continues to prevail today among Lenin’s heirs in the Kremlin.

Haley is also a bright person, so she must appreciate the irony of serving under a president who makes a daily practice of denying, distracting and lying.

Trump’s mentor, Steve Bannon, is quoted as calling himself a Leninist, and Trump’s role model, Vladimir Putin, is one by his own admission: “There’s no such thing as a ‘former’ Cheka [i.e., KGB] agent,” he has said; “this is for life.” What these unprincipled types hold in common is a willingness to say and do anything to acquire and maintain power. For them, truth, justice and (dare I say it?) the “American Way” are just naïve, bourgeois illusions. Let us hope that 2016 wasn’t the turning point when “deny, distract and lie” became America’s new norm.