In this column Victor Davis Hanson opines on an ironic phenomenon that has resulted from the Democratic need to discredit President Trump: their sudden discovery of the awfulness of the Russians.

Like so many things happening today, it’s so obvious and egregious a contradiction that it would be funny if the whole situation weren’t so sad and dangerous. But that’s where we’ve arrived.

Hanson writes:

The recent orthodox progressive and Democratic view of Russia — until the appearance of Donald Trump — was largely what it had been throughout the Cold War: one of empathy for Russia and understanding of its dilemmas, and shame over supposed right-wing American paranoia over a bogus “Russian bear.”….

The Obama administration showed indifference to the absorption of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. There was also not much anger over prior Russian cyberattacks on the United States. In October 2016, Obama offered a haughty, flat-out dismissal of the notion that Russia could change the way people vote in any election:

There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, there’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that it will happen this time.

His optimism was apparently predicated on his certainty that Hillary Clinton would win and that a defeated and humiliated Donald Trump should not post facto “whine” about losing.

It could not be more obvious that that was Obama’s motive. But that’s so 2016. The times they have a-changed, and all good Democrats change with them.

Continued:

After a year and a half, Mueller so far has been reduced to indicting some Russians operatives for cyber crimes and a few former Trump officials on charges that have had nothing to do with collusion.

But out of the Mueller conundrum and congressional investigations arose damning information that Obama national-security officials illegally unmasked and leaked to the press the names of those surveilled. In addition, DOJ and FBI officials deliberately misled either gullible or partisan FISA court judges to obtain surveillance warrants on American citizens, on the basis of an unverified dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Discredited FBI officials lied to federal investigators. The former FBI director leaked confidential memos written on FBI time on FBI devices, and he probably worked with CIA Director John Brennan (who had previously lied twice under oath to the United States Congress) to monitor the Trump campaign, including but not limited to implanting government informants among Trump employees…

In other words, once Mueller deviated from his original mandate in order to search for wrongdoing anywhere he could find it, he was obligated to look at the acts of illegality committed by those in the Obama NSC, FBI, CIA, and DOJ, all in connection with thwarting the Trump campaign. He did not do so because his “dream” or “all-star” legal team was overwhelmingly composed of either Democratic partisans and donors to the Clinton campaign, or biased zealots such as Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, or those with prior affinities with Hillary Clinton or her employees and supporters…

In sum, Russian collusion is a 2016 election construct. The hysteria over it serves a palliative for hatred of a presidency that so far cannot be stopped before 2020.

And what of Russia? It’s of interest to the Democrats only as a weapon—or wannabee weapon—against Trump:

The progressive-driven effort to re-create the Cold War is surreal, given the far greater threat of an ascendant China and leftists’ past appeasement of Putin.

All that is not to say that Putin would not act like China if he could, only that he lacks the wherewithal to do so…

…Yet Putin as Satan is also a dangerous notion — Russia has nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. One of the stupidest policies in recent U.S. diplomacy was the prior lose-lose Obama program of first courting Putin as a misunderstood figure likely to reciprocate liberal empathies, then, when rebuffed, demonizing him as an ogre worthy of a new Cold War.

It is difficult now to imagine what else Trump might still do to punish Putin. He has already beefed up sanctions, expelled Russians, had Russian mercenary thugs killed in Syria, sent threats to Putin not to overreach in Syria, armed the Ukrainians, expanded U.S. oil production, increased defense spending, jawboned NATO to toughen up, and blasted German-Russian appeasement and the dangerous developing German dependency on Russian fossil fuels.

What more concrete action do Trump haters want: air strikes on Moscow?

They couldn’t care less about any of it. All they want is Trump gone, and to be in control of Congress themselves, as well. Then to win the presidential election in 2020 from Pence, who is perceived as weaker…

The entire Hanson article is well worth reading; it contains a great deal more than these excerpts. The arguments it makes are so obviously true that I don’t see how anyone could disagree—but of course, vast swaths of the population disagree and/or are not even familiar with anything the right has to say other than the distortions presented through the MSM filter.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]