The Democrat party’s self-destructive bent reminds me of a famous Russian proverb.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one who’s been shocked by the Democrats’ advocating for violence even when it hurts their own followers. Remember the violent protests in Democrat run cities during the summer of 2020. Who was hurt? Primarily, their voters.
Then there are Democrat-run cities that continue their sanctuary city policies despite the harm done to their residents, most of whom are their own constituents. This holds true with their open borders policies. Yes, Republicans are hurt, but their own constituents are harmed. It’s like they are intentionally self-destructing. What are they thinking?
It defies explanation and sanity, at least for those of us living in the West. However, there is a famous Russian proverb that seems to explain it. Bill Browder witnessed in play when he lived in Russia and wrote about it in Red Notice.
Who is Bill Browder? He is an American. His grandfather, Earl Browder, was head of the American communist party. Running for president twice, first in 1936 and then in 1940, he became the face of the American Communist Party. However, Bill did not follow in the footsteps of his grandfather or his father, who favored Marxism over capitalism. Instead, he rebelled against their ideology and became a venture capitalist. His dream was to invest in Eastern Europe.
When the USSR collapsed and Putin opened up Russia to foreign investors, Browder went over and became one of the first foreign investors through his company, Hermitage Capital. It went well at first, but then things changed.
One of the companies Browder invested in was Sidanco (Siberian Far-East Oil Company). In 1997, BP announced it was buying 10 percent of Vladimir Potanin’s share in the company. Potanin is a Russian billionaire oligarch. BP’s offer was basically a 600% premium to the price Browder had paid just a year earlier. Once the deal went through, Hermitage Capital and its investors stood to profit very, very handsomely from it.
However, Potanin also saw that as well. To keep that from happening, Sidanco diluted its shares via a 3 to 1 stock split. Doing this cost Potanin big time but he couldn’t allow foreigners to be that successful in Russia. Crazy right?
It makes no sense, right? That’s exactly what Browder initially thought until he remembered the famous Russian proverb.
One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.”[i]
The moral is simple: when it comes to money, Russians will gladly—gleefully, even—sacrifice their own success to screw their neighbor.
Does that not describe the Democrat party’s MO perfectly? Even though their own constituents are harmed, they embrace illegal immigration, gender mutilation, and dangerous hormone therapies because they profit financially from these policies.
The same holds true with the climate hoax. They say nothing of the environmental harm caused by their “green” energy policies. Why would they? It generates all sorts of money for them. Look at what Lee Zeldin discovered when he took over the EPA. $20B had been paid out to green energy companies or NGOs that had neither done anything nor had any concrete plans to do anything.
By the way, an NGO is really a GFO, a government-funded organization, because it cannot exist without government funding. Several have shuttered their doors since the Trump administration cut off their funding.
As Trump recently pointed out, these companies receive the “grant” money upfront with little or no plan to implement anything. If a green energy company fails like Solyndra, it never has to account for the money. Worse yet, the company doesn’t have to pay any of it back, at least as far as I know. Let’s not forget that these loans or grants are taxpayer money. Of course, by the time they file for bankruptcy as Solyndra did, the money is long gone.
The only green thing about their green energy initiatives is the money they skim off of it. That is becoming more and more evident as Doge continues to follow the money in the federal bureaucracy. That’s why it always pays to follow the money, because they love it so much. Their greed reminds me of 1 Timothy 6:10.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
However, they don’t just love money, they also love power. Trump’s agenda cuts off the money flow they need to support their agenda and enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. As long as he is in control, they don’t have the power or their cash cow, aka taxpayer money. That’s why they want to bring Trump down, and they will do anything to stop him, even if it hurts their followers or themselves.
Take Tim Walz. He was ecstatic over the drop in Tesla stock. Never mind that it impacts his state workers’ pension as well as his. He’s okay with his constituents and even himself losing money as long as it hurts Musk and, by extension, Trump. As long as it hurts Trump in some way, they see it as a victory.
We see this scenario played out over and over.
Unlike the Russian villager, however, Democrats aren’t just trying to screw their neighbor out of spite. No, their aspirations are much bigger. They want their power back. In their minds, the only way to do that and get their greedy hands on our money is to destroy Trump. Incredibly, they are more than willing to destroy anything and anyone to get both back. Let that sink in.
[i] Browder, Bill. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice. Simon and Schuster, 2015.