I still think this is the weirdest story of the last couple years:
In a seeming flashback to the cold war, Russian and American officials traded prisoners in the bright sunlight on the tarmac of Vienna’s international airport on Friday, bringing to a quick end an episode that had threatened to disrupt relations between the countries.
Planes carrying 10 convicted Russian sleeper agents and 4 men accused by Moscow of spying for the West swooped into the Austrian capital, once a hub of clandestine East-West maneuvering, and the men and women were transferred, the Justice Department said. The planes soon took off again in a coda fitting of an espionage novel.
I haven’t read one report that credibly explains what the Russian spies were actually attempting to spy on. This whole thing seems so much more Austin Powers than it does James Bond.
Captain Haddock
See, the 80’s are cool again!
superking
I think this was about diplomatic relations. The Russians initially disavowed knowledge of this group, but then we trade them for some people. I would bet that the State department was involved in the exposure, i.e. in some way this was about clearing some old grievances and/or improving relations with Russia. NPR’s report this morning implied that much.
John Bird
Why is this weird?
1) We have high-level talks with Russia.
2) Mysteriously, we round up a bunch of their spies living here.
3) Mysteriously, the Russians immediately agree to release people accused of spying in our employ.
4) They get exchanged.
5) The media speculates – what could this possibly mean?
6) Repeat.
This happens at LEAST every 10 years. The Cold War may have changed things, but not which two countries have the most developed foreign intelligence agencies, nor which two countries they’re interested in spying on. They wedge in a sexy angle whenever they can, and this time, Facebook helped out. All around, a coup for some fat career employees.
burnspbesq
What, you think just because intelligence agencies have “intelligence” in their name, they always act intelligently, and ruthlessly stamp out dumbass ideas before they see the light of day? What bureaucracy ever accomplishes that?
jonas
They weren’t accused of spying. They were accused of being unregistered agents of a foreign power — that’s a step beneath actual espionage. Apparently their mission was to go into deep cover as average American suburbanites and then hopefully come into contact with people who might know sensitive government or corporate information. The whole story reminded me of this Onion classic.
John Bird
The people we exchanged were clearly guilty of being people that the Russians did not care enough about to keep in the United States for intelligence purposes, but cared enough about to get them into Russian and not American hands.
Other than that, they could have been popsicle salesmen for all it matters. They probably didn’t accomplish a thing.
Cassidy
Now to find Israeli spies. That’s the real trick.
fucen tarmal
i want to know that the american plane got priority take off ahead of the russian plane. dammit, we need to demonstrate that we are the most important country in every way!
Kirk Spencer
Very few sleeper agents have “credible objectives”. They represent potential opportunity. If they are in a place to actually spy on really useful stuff, they tend to quit being sleepers.
Consider the financial guy who spoke five or six languages. Eventually, maybe five to ten years down the road, he might have gotten picked up as a government appointee in either Commerce or State. A few years at that level and he’d have picked up clearances to see as well as influence actions.
There were a couple of reporters. There were a couple of real estate people. Both can remain completely innocuous. On the other hand, the first profession can build connections that let them glean information not normally available. The latter profession has opportunities for, well, subtle bribes. “Look, she got me this house for half what it’s worth. She’s GREAT… wait, whattaya mean, ‘if I don’t tell about Project X you’ll expose me for taking a bribe?'”
catclub
I think it was a budget cutting effort. Monitoring this group was expensive, and producing nothing of interest, so roll them up and save some overtime!
Never mind about not knowing who comes next to replace them.
Cheryl Rofer
A friend who has done business in Russia and I suspect that a cold-war spying mentality combined with corruption in Russia to send some folks with the right connections to a better life than they could have had in Moscow. More here.
Zifnab
It could be they weren’t well positioned enough yet. That said, it’s not like there’s a shortage of basic intel gathering that every nation doesn’t perform on it’s neighbors.
They could have just been sending back phone books or waiting for the opportunity to plant eavesdropping devices at key offices or households. They might not even be spying on the US Government. The way our government works, I’d rather have bugs in some lobbyist’s office or CEO’s board room.
http://articles.sfgate.com/1999-12-11/news/17707769_1_stanislav-borisovich-gusev-device-bug
These spy games pop up on the radar every so often. It’s normal.
lol
I got the impression it was about gathering rumors and what not which would be followed up by actual spies. Except they appear too lazy to even have done that.
homerhk
What does it matter? It all points to something horiffic that Obama did, natch.
I’ve read on the repub-tubes that Obama was once again out of his depth because we only got 4 in exchange for their 10. I suspect that the 4 the US got were fatter than the skinny femme fatales that the US sent back so maybe they cancel each other out weight-wise.
The Dangerman
No, Danger is MY first name, dammit (“the” is just the honorific for now; after I’m Knighted, it will be Sir Dangerman).
Edit: Hold on; I screwed this up. Major coffee input required, STAT.
Zandar
Where LeBron was going, duh.
burnspbesq
There is a Christopher Buckley book in here somewhere.
salacious crumb
it seems to me that one girl Anna Chapman was more interested in glamour and the razzmatazz of New York (and the States in general) and chasing the rich than getting any actual spying done. In one article, I read she complained to her attorney that she wanted to stay in the US and not go back to Russia. So it appears all the Russian agents played their handlers, the SVR, for a patsy and were enjoying the American life on the Russian taxpayer dime without actually getting any spying done.
Redshirt
I found a French spy at my last company. Young guy, really nice. He got too drunk one night after work and admitted his one year of government service consisted of working for an American company, and simply reporting back what he observed.
Nothing glamorous, but it kinda surprised me the French government would take an interest in some small time American sailboat company.
eemom
OT, but the Balkinization blog has what I think is a very good piece on why that Massachusetts judge striking down DOMA is, in fact, not a good thing at all — the bottom line of which is that, even as I type, rabid asshole Virginia AG Cuccinelli is probably filing a supplement to his brief in Richmond citing it as Exhibit A for why the court shouldn’t throw out his bullshit lawsuit against HCR.
As the Balkan guy says though, the Mass. opinion will probably be reversed on appeal, anyway.
But the point is worth making that there are better ways than the freaking 10th Amendment to support gay marriage. Don’t let’s go the way of Jane Hamsher and get in bed with the teabaggers.
Jager
@homerhk:
If Obama stopped BP’s oil spill by diving to the wellhead himself (breaking all the free diving records BTW) the right wing media would create a scandal out of it. OBAMA USED SCUBA GEAR MADE IN FRANCE! OBAMA MET WITH FOREIGN DIVING EXPERTS AT THE WHITEHOUSE…
John Bird
@Kirk Spencer:
Ha! Just think, a couple more decades and they might have had Cyber-Stevens (R-AK) in the pocket of the Kremlin. You know, he can download his consciousness to Russia from his house.
Now that I think about it, you could probably hook almost any Senator in the country that way, as they all mysteriously get these amazing deals on their third houses and are just shocked when it comes up in their reelection campaigns.
FPN
It’s weird b/c they have been following some of these spies for 9-10 years. I assume they followed them for so long to see who they are in contact with (other agents), their methods, and who their targets are.
Plus, some/all of the “spies” we got back have been rotting in prison for four years. If they were such a priority, we would’ve scooped the Russians up a few years ago.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if these morons are red herrings, and there are some serious “deep cover” types.
Bobby Thomson
I love spy swaps. It’s something that requires a reassuring level of maturity for both parties.
bobbo
Spies spy on other spies. It’s all a big, sophisticated, high-tech, exciting bunch of nonsense to give a few paranoid nutters a hard-on. I know this because I saw “The Good Shepherd” starring Jason Bourne.
John Bird
@Redshirt:
From what little I know about the scuttlebutt in the intelligence community, French and Israeli spies are supposedly everywhere in America’s public and private sector, reporting to expensive front companies on the reg, and accomplishing absolutely nothing. It’s government welfare for their foreign agencies.
frankdawg
Danger would be my middle name if my last name was not Mouse!
Really some of this is just old agencies doing what they have always done. As long as the money flows in they do . . . something with it.
But part of it is the nature of society, in addition to the actual threats of China & Israel, friendly nations like France, England and Germany have spies here & we have ours there. You never know what you might learn, there is always technical knowledge to steal and sometime you can check other information coming in to see if it is valid.
John Bird
Look: we “got” these spies by the normal fashion, which is that Russia made a calculated move and tipped its hand and we cut a deal. Of course they didn’t “do” anything.
The spies operated in the normal fashion, which is that they got paid to do nothing and live here and get counted on secret destroy-upon-reading spreadsheets in the Kremlin and then eventually get busted so we could count them on secret destroy-upon-reading spreadsheets in the Pentagon.
There is real international espionage going on but stuff like this is more like tariffs and UN speeches: it’s there to regulate high-level relations between uneasy pairs like the US and Russia.
stuckinred
@eemom: I was informed last night that you, me and several other “assholes” need to stop talking about a certain blog here.
bkny
@Cassidy:
oh, they’ve been found — just rarely prosecuted.
Randy P
@superking: I don’t know if it was State, the CIA or some other player, but these games definitely go back to Cold War days. We know damned well they’re spying on us, we know damned well who the spies are and who they’re meeting with. Just as they know who our agents are.
But every once in awhile, for some unstated objective, we decide to arrest or eject some of these known agents. When it first surfaced I wondered if perhaps the CIA was mad at Russian intelligence for lack of cooperation or something and this was a way to punish them.
Which would seem pointless since the typical Cold War response would be to arrest an exactly equal number of equivalent spies in Russia, so what would be accomplished? But there is almost certainly some hidden objective here, some message being sent, some sort of under the table negotiation or argument going on.
bkny
@John Bird:
pat lang writes frequently about israel’s spying on the u.s.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2010/01/giraldi-on-israeli-spying-in-the-us.html
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Wait, John, do you think spies are always enlisted with clear goals to gain useful information? The whole enterprise was considered of questionable value even back in the Cold War, when reports on Russian training exercises and strategy documents were considered major “gets”. From what I understand, the vast majority of information gathered by spies is hardly high-level.
Ted666
@Cassidy:
One of them is the Presidents Chief of Staff
John Bird
@bkny:
Thank you so much for the link. I’ve heard speculation (and it IS just speculation, mind you) from friends in the private sector with government contracts that Israeli spies were, and maybe still are, an integral, unspoken way that America passes technology, military and otherwise, to Israel that it officially does not share with any ally.
Of course, as I said above, I also hear that nowadays they’re mainly paid to do nothing and satisfy conference rooms full of Israeli ministers that they’re super awesome, while we whistle and look the other way, bolstering our relations with them in much the same fashion. Who knows?
bemused
Every country spies on each other. Nothing much earthshaking about this story that has had so much of the national media attention. It’s more fun and safer to talk about Russian spies, Lindsey Lohan, a star baseball player moving on, breathless excitement that Palin may run for Pres than stories they would rather avoid. I’m betting we won’t would hear much if anything on cable news about Canada adding 93,000 jobs in June, the wealthy foreclosing on their mansions in far higher numbers than those other irresponsible low income folk, that americans care a hell of a lot more about jobs than the deficit.
eemom
@stuckinred:
Really! Was this an authoritative command or did it come from some OTHER asshole?
Brachiator
It certainly does seem more farce than the last dying embers of Cold War era espionage. It might make a fun comedy-drama a few years from now.
I recently heard an anecdote (with a possible tinge of urban legend) that during the 50s and 60s, some Soviet spies would report to their superiors about the difficult work that they were doing to get US aircraft secrets, and it turned out that they were just sending photocopies of articles in Aviation Week and Popular Science magazines.
stuckinred
@eemom: Corner something.
Corner Stone
@stuckinred: Well, you, eemom, Nick and Mike Kay.
That’s like an All Star team of assholes you’re on son.
QuaintIrene
I can see the LIfetime movie now-
“My Neighbour, The Spy”
“Say, Bob. I notice your garden hose never gets kinked up. What’s your secret?”
John Bird
@Cheryl Rofer:
It’s not a bad theory. Getting on the Kremlin dole is your first step if you can muster the cash and influence to do it, or you get the right dirt on the right guy in the right office. Why not have them subsidize your life in a less depressing setting than Moscow?
(I say this as someone who likes Moscow enough to have actually gone back there after spending a summer there during college. It’s nice to be able to buy beer on the street for pennies, that’s for sure, although they still think that MGD is some sort of pimp luxury beverage and their Camels are a different mix and super-gross.)
eemom
@stuckinred:
Oooooh. Well, if Corner Stone said it, we’d better tremble and obey. Lest we fall victim to his rapier wit again.
I mean, “All Star Team of Assholes”? Fuckin OUCH.
Now, where was I…..oh yes.
Gimme a J!
J!
Gimme an A!
A!
Gimme an N!
N!
Gimme an E!
E!
Gimme an S!
S!
Gimme a U!
U!
Gimme an X!
X!
Whaddaya got??
JAAAAAAAAANE SUUUUUUUUUUUX………!!!
Comrade Rich
2.5.0.0.2.5. Финляндия Красный Белый Египет. Это в два раза благословенным. Это в два раза благословенным. Дождь с неба
John Bird
@bemused:
Exactly. This is our politically-addicted ilk’s version of Lindsay Lohan, with about as much relevance (at least until investigative journalism returns from the rubble of the planet Krypton and tries to figure out what sort of deal we actually cut with Russia).
It’s fun gossip but it’s not news. Now, those million-dollar walkaways, that’s news, and hell, the fact that the Times even printed that story, that’s wild, crazy, important news.
stuckinred
@eemom: I never hoid of da bum.
John Bird
@Comrade Rich:
Yeah, but the Russians eat this stuff up even more than we do, anyway. Hell, they love to elect the creeps. They’re the only country that longs for the return of the sociopathic, brutal Cold War superspy more than the UK, and we’re right behind the two of them.
Michael
@stuckinred:
You are such a tattletale fucking candy ass. I don’t even know what you’re whimpering about or if I might even agree with you on the subject, but it doesn’t matter – once more, like an 8 year old girl, you’re going to “tell mom”.
Grow a sack.
stuckinred
@Michael: Fuck you punk.
Comrade Rich
@John Bird:
Insightful, and probably true. My wife and I eat that show up, but I hope it’s less nostalgia than simple enjoyment of a dark, dark premise.
eemom
@Michael:
don’t worry, dude. I’ll still let Corner out to play with you.
handsmile
I must say I’m with our esteemed host on this matter. Ever since the story broke, I’ve been waiting for a splashy press conference from ABC announcing the affair as the pilot episode of a new series to placate “Lost” fans.
Nevertheless, there is a certain daffy comfort to be derived from my adamantine conviction that not a single news story or analysis has presented substantive information that will withstand future scrutiny and revelation. “Whoocuddanode?” will soon again be bleated by the Very Serious People.
But for now, let’s all slaver over commercial prospects! I just know that Maggie Gyllenhaal is already poring over scripts for “Manhattan Mata Hari: the Anna Chapman Story.” C’mon, everybody play!
stuckinred
@eemom: you’ll have to throw a bucket of cold water on them to get them apart.
rootless_e
If the Russians learn the secrets of New York nightlife, they could destroy our way of life.
John Bird
@Brachiator:
To me, this looks exactly like Cold War espionage, and not its dying embers, but the machine chugging along at the exact same pace.
That is, the part we hear about has to do with greasing our diplomatic relations with Russia, not, well, espionage.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Cassidy:
Not really. They hide in the open… AIPAC, Jeff Goldberg, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, etc.
MattR
@eemom: So the answer is to say “screw the Constitution” if it is politically inconvenient. It sounds like you actually want “activist judges” who will let their personal feelings interfere with their professional responsibilities.
Brachiator
@handsmile:
Bryce Dallas Howard for Anna Chapman! It’s a stone cold lock.
grumpy realist
The FT ran a marvelous article about the whole “embedded spies” thing a few days back. It’s not even a Russian thing–the average Muscovite is busting his spleen with laughter over this. It’s a Kremlin/KGB thing. Extremely paranoid, needing an excuse for their existence, and insisting that all knowledge be collected via The Great Spy Network, even if the exact same material is on the front page of the NYTimes.
I think the most amusing example was a physicist who kept getting pestered by his country’s secret service for “nuclear secrets”. He translated a few articles on nuclear physics from the Encyclopedia Britannica, handed them over, and they were perfectly happy.
John Bird
Yeah, as much as I love Maggie, I’m going to go ahead and say that Anna is more of a Scarlett Johansson.
The second thing Google gives me when I’m searching for the proper spelling of her name is “Scarlett Johansson breast size” by the way, which seems awfully specific information considering the probable purpose of that search.
Oh, and grumpy realist, do you have a link? Sounds right up my alley.
eemom
@MattR:
Undoubtedly you’re an expert in 10th Amendment jurisprudence, so why don’t you educate me as to how what I said amounts to “screw the Constitution if it’s politically inconvenient”?
Because, you know, someone who’s not a Constitutional scholar like you are might actually believe that Balkin has the better argument about why the Massachusetts judge reached the wrong result.
So please……elaborate.
John Bird
“10th Amendment jurisprudence”, oh mercy me, that’s a good one.
The best way to treat the 10th Amendment as regards the power of the states is probably “screw it”, albeit in a textually sound fashion.
Brachiator
@John Bird:
Makes sense, although there seems to be a bit of inertia at work here as well. There does not much seem to be much of a point for the supposed “sleeper agents” (especially since Russia is now an ally), aside from the notion that this is just how the former Soviet Union rolls.
It’s just as provocative as the fact that “Jennifer Connelly breast reduction surgery” pops up near the top of the list when you do a google search for that actress.
John Bird
@Brachiator:
As far as my experience with Russian state officials has informed me, any government that isn’t controlled by ethnic Slavs (preferably Russians) directly loyal to Moscow isn’t really an ally as far as they see it, just a trading partner.
The most paranoid chunk of the Young Turks of their old guard (that’s a mouthful, but it’s my best stab at it) is now who’s driving the Lada. And they may be slicing and dicing freedom of speech and press, as well as the freedom of local elections, but they do have a lot of legitimate public support and they did get to office by election.
Look at how the eXile got treated by Moscow businesses after they ran a very tame satirical piece on Putin. I don’t think it’s a cult of personality as much as it is, well, a lot of Russians really like the guy and his people for their policies. That’s why all the goofing over Medvedev and whether he was a puppet of Putin was silly to me. It’s Putin’s party, and the Russians like it, and vote for it, and Medvedev is a puppet more or less exactly how W. Bush was a puppet.
Larkspur
@Cheryl Rofer:
I think you nailed it, Cheryl. Then the paperwork gets lost, or possibly even “lost”, and what smart sleeper agent is really going to call Moscow and say, “I feel I must inform you, for the good of the Motherland, that our presence here is redundant, unproductive, and a poor way to allocate the precious resources of the Russian people. We ought to be sent home immediately.”
Jon H
“I haven’t read one report that credibly explains what the Russian spies were actually attempting to spy on.”
I think the idea was that they’d make lots of connections, and establish an apparently mundane history, and then ten, fifteen years later the people they know would be more likely to be in positions of influence and power.
For example, the one guy in Cambridge who went to the Kennedy School of Government. His instructors and classmates, down the road, might be quite influential or even in government themselves.
The young hotty seemed to be cultivating London financiers and Wall Street types, who as we know also end up in government, or pulling strings of government.
With either of these, they’d be much more effective at getting information out of high US officials if they had been friends or acquaintances for a decade, than they would be as complete strangers.
The point being they likely weren’t doing much active spying yet, but were putting down roots so they’d be useful later.
Think of it as LinkedIn or Facebook espionage. Not that they were doing espionage via those sites, but they’ll be far more effective if they’re a “Friend of Friend” or in the social network of a target, rather than a complete stranger with a foreign accent.
The others, I’m not so sure about. It probably doesn’t help the Russians that they’ve lost the motivational leverage of the ideological chasm between the Soviets and the US. The Latino couple seem to be true-believers in Communism, but the couple that wheedled ownership of their house in Jersey? Probably not.
PS: I lived about two blocks from the Cambridge spies.
amorphous
I like Big Media Matt’s (baseless and non-serious [I think]) theory that maybe these rubes were planted by the Ruskis because they were going to get caught (i.e. grab attention and resources) while the really good Russian spies continue spying protected by the lack of resources committed to smoking them out.
eemom
@John Bird:
Don’t tell me you’re one of those Article 6, “supreme law of the land” Elitist Big Government sockulists??
I mean the 10th Amendment is in the Constitution TOO, right? I mean doesn’t it say RIGHT THERE that all Constitutional provisions are created equal?
iluvcapra
The NYT article was interesting, they interviewed her first husband in England. It had some interesting tidbits, like Anna/Anya’s father had been a big wheel with Soviet and then Russian foreign intelligence, and that he’d never liked her husband and wanted Anna to take up the family business. That she was a cute NyLon 20-something seemed to help her portfolio, whatever the hell it actually was, but I got the feeling that her spying job was something of a sinecure/control-my-little-girl move from daddy.
Like if some French media executive’s kid comes to America, his dad hooks him up with a job in the Time Magazine mail room for 6 months before he becomes a VP. In Russia the really powerful people are all in government, so maybe low-intensity corporate espionage might be considered the easy job that pays well and affords a globe-trotting lifestyle to the spawn of the Russian oligarchy.
Jon H
@Zifnab: “They could have just been sending back phone books or waiting for the opportunity to plant eavesdropping devices at key offices or households. ”
Or going through the motions to stay in contact and not get rusty on the methods. Which doesn’t seem to have helped, but…
MattR
@eemom:
How is this not saying “screw the Constitution”? If DOMA violates the 10th Amendment, it is unconstitutional regardless of whether or not the argument used might also undercut some other worthy political cause.
(You will note that I never said that it actually violates the 10th (or that I think it does). I have not fully read the court’s decision and I did not read the Balkinization article. But that is also irrelevant to the point being made. Should the ACLU stop using the First Amendment just because Fred Phelps also uses it as his defense?)
Jon H
Another point: real-life spies don’t generally go Mission: Impossible and break in somewhere to get secrets.
They find a disgruntled or greedy employee who can get the secrets for them. The rewards are far greater. Find and turn a native, a Kim Philby or Aldrich Ames or Robert Hansen, and you’ve got an advantage that can last for decades.
Of course, nowadays they might just set up something like Wikileaks and let the disgruntled Americans come to them with secrets.
eemom
@MattR:
Because I don’t believe that DOMA does violate the 10th Amendment and I believe the argument that it does is frivolous. It also happens to be the same argument being put forth by toxic waste products like Cuccinelli against HCR, in which context it is also wrong and also frivolous.
On the other hand, the reality is that there are “results oriented” people on both sides, and some of the ones on “our” side who are opposed to DOMA are out there right now celebrating the Mass court’s decision (see, e.g., Lake, Firedog).
I guess I should have been clearer: I oppose that for TWO reasons: (1) legally, because it’s wrong on the law, and
(2) politically, because it is stupid, short-sighted and self-defeating to advocate a flawed legal argument to get Result A that you would oppose in the Context of Result B. (not that the firebaggers would oppose striking down HCR, but that’s another story).
This is NOT the same thing as the First Amendment context, in which you are absolutely right that the ACLU has to be on the same side as vermin like Fred Phelps and the Nazis in Skokie. That’s because the legal principle at issue — i.e., that the right to free speech protects such vermin just like it does everyone else — is a settled and sound one. The 10th Amendment argument about DOMA or HCR, by contrast, is bullshit.
Jon H
@Kirk Spencer: “There were a couple of reporters. There were a couple of real estate people. Both can remain completely innocuous. On the other hand, the first profession can build connections that let them glean information not normally available. The latter profession has opportunities for, well, subtle bribes.”
Not to mention that they often have access to a house before a buyer moves in. Great opportunity to plant bugs.
MattR
@eemom: Thanks for the answer/clarification. Your initial comment made it sound like you were opposed to the judges using the 10th Amendment when in reality it now seems like you were referring to activists. And there is a slight difference in the rules those two groups should follow :)
Nemo_N
Why weren’t they waterboarded?
/sarcasm
frankdawg
See, you guys should all calm down a bit. It seems like sometimes you expect the worst from other commenters. Try to imagine that they might not have been clear or that they misstated what they though in a rush as opposed to their being an asshole.
I’m guilty of it too but, to quote that great American philosopher “Can’t we all just get along?”
Anne Laurie
@John Bird:
And in my best blame-Amurka-first mindset, may I point out that those paranoid Young Slavs have plenty of mirror-image NSAers, young straight-arrows fresh out of Brigham Young or Liberty University, eager to keep the Cold-War faith and prove that you just can’t trust a Russkie, not ever, they’re all liars and opportunists (except of course for the guys across the table handing you the intel, cuz at least those are professionals). The low-level True Believers, wittingly or not, work tirelessly to uphold the comforts of the top-ranked Oligarchy, with the full support of the Heartland Citizens(tm) who don’t know much about politics beyond “Our team GOOD, their team BAD — it’s in the Bible, or something.”
There’s probably an argument to be made that such Upright Individuals are better employed looking through each other’s sekkrit coded emails than left at loose ends to expend their considerable energies on monitoring their actual neighbors’ lawn signs and recreational beverage consumption…