Losing At A Not So Trivial Game

Since 2,000, the Democrats have lost the presidency to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. I’ll just pause for a moment while you contemplate the degree of losertude required to accomplish such failure. George Bush could not win at Who’s Smarter Than A 1^st Grader, while Donald Trump shouldn’t even be allowed in the same room as children. If either one of them was to be on Dancing With The Stars, he’d be the first one to be voted off. If they were on The Dating Game, they wouldn’t be picked even if the third contestant was Richard Speck and the woman doing the choosing was a nursing student. If the two of them played Trivial Pursuit, they couldn’t beat your cat.

Go ahead, imagine for a moment how that game might go down, imagine Trump and W. sitting around a dinner table, you might as well throw in Sarah Palin for good measure. True, Sarah lost in 2008, but it was only because the nation was in the midst of a financial meltdown the likes of which we have not seen in nearly 80 years.

First of all, you know one of them is going to call it the Genius Edition and none of the others is going to correct him (with the possible exception of your cat). Imagine too the conversation as they struggle to pronounce words and names such as pharmaceutical, isthmus, Medici, Diogenes, and Francois Mitterand. You can just hear Palin massacre the name of Charlemagne and Trump correcting her with something even worse, can’t you?

Imagine the response you’d get to a question like “What black author wrote Another Country and Nobody Knows My Name?” Or “What U.S. president declared ‘The ballot is stronger than the bullet?’” Or “How many stripes did the flag first called The Star Spangled Banner have?” Or “What was stormed in Paris in 1789?”

Just close your eyes and it is easy to visualize them studiously avoiding the categories of History, Arts And Literature, Geography, and Science And Nature, hoping instead to get lucky with a Sports or Entertainment question.

And you just know, two hours into the game, that when they are on Roll Again and they roll a 4, they’re still going to have to count it out to get to the other Roll Again. Of course, long before then, they’ll already be blaming others for their abysmal inability to get a single slice of pie. Sarah will be accusing the creators of the game of being Ivy League liberals while Trump will be saying the answer is not right while providing no evidence that he even understood the question. It will be accompanied all the while by W.’s patented idiot chuckle as he sits and grins and time after time grabs the die, believing it is his turn when it is not. And should one of them whine their way or connive their way into a slice of pie, they’ll put it in sideways and you’ll end up the next day trying to pull it out with a pair of tweezers, all the while cursing their names.

Now imagine losing to that.

Imagine being on the side that actually knew many of the answers to those questions and yet losing to the others in election after election.

If you were laughing at the earlier descriptions of Trump, W., and Sarah, I’m guessing you’re not laughing now. Doesn’t that warrant a long, hard look in the mirror? Doesn’t that make you stop dead in your tracks and question your most basic assumptions of the world you are living in?

You can blame other people, I suppose. You can blame all the people who voted for Donald Trump and call them stupid and evil. You can hate people who didn’t see things your way and hope they all die and have their jobs exported or eliminated by technology. It sounds a lot like the very thing you say you oppose, but you could do that. You can blame the Russians, it’s quite tempting, although I don’t see how even Putin would find Donald Trump someone he’d want with keys to a nuclear arsenal. You can blame the Bernie Bros, assigning them a label in order to stereotype and denigrate them.

There’s a lot of things and people you can blame for the fact that Hillary Clinton lost, for the fact that Democrats are consistently losing to candidates that look and smell like something that just crawled of your toilet. But winners don’t blame others, losers do. Winners take honest stock of what they’ve done wrong in order that they can stop doing that and do something better. I haven’t seen a single hopeful sign of that happening.

Oh sure, Democrats have unveiled a new game plan. As I recall, they also had a game plan in 2,000 and 2,016, too. They had boatloads of strategists, advertising agents, propagandists, spinmeisters—whatever you want to call them—figuring out how to best project their candidate in order to match with focus groups in ways that would connect (I could have probably phrased that better to sound more like those kind of people, but I have rejected walking down that path even if only to understand and mimic it). Democrats spent $10 for every vote for their candidate, and still couldn’t win against a meaner, cruder version of Uncle Buck.

But the Democrats have revealed that they have found their problem and are working to improve it. It was not that there was anything wrong with their platform, it was that they weren’t doing a good job of communicating their message. $1.2 billion dollars on campaign funding for Hillary’s campaign. Able to buy the most brilliant and evil story tellers. Those guys who sell diabetes to children and cancer to smokers, they could not sell your product.

The Democrats say they have not been doing a good job of getting their message out, the obvious implication being that George W. and Donald Trump were masterful communicators. Let’s face it, the Democrats don’t want to change their product—and let’s face it, product is the right word—they want to change the packaging.

The Democrats won’t change, they can’t change. They can’t change because they are a corporation that exists only to make a profit for its shareholders. If a candidate is good at selling the product that shareholders want to sell, they’ll make a lot of money. If someone actually questions the mission statement they’ll be out the door without a severance package.

The Democrats can’t win, either. They can’t win because they are only a diluted version of the Republicans. They are Bud Light compared to Bud, and most people, if they like drinking mass-produced fizz-water, will choose the real thing. Changing the name to America isn’t going to make it more palatable, nor does it make it a real alternative.

It doesn’t matter to the shareholders whether the Democrats win or lose, because they own the competition as well. If the Democrats win, they’ll make money, but if the Democrats lose, they’ll make more. And all those micro-breweries trying to provide an alternative to the big guys? They’re systematically being squeezed off the shelf or bought out. So much for choice.

But the game goes on, until enough people refuse to play it. Donald will continue to “accidentally” move his pie three spaces instead of two and get away with it because that’s the rules that have been determined. The precedent has been set, the game has been crooked for so long there are no rules anyone adheres to anymore. Trump is merely the most grievous example of a game we should never have agreed to play.

We should have walked away a long time ago, insisted on more accountability, insisted someone with integrity be allowed to hold onto the rule book. But as long as we were able to get our slice of pie, we allowed it to happen. But now all the pieces of pie have been handed out, some people having more pieces than will ever fit in their pie while others, smart and hard-working though they be, have nothing. Like the Wheel of Samsara, still the game goes on.

Evaluating The Russian Hacking Argument

I would like to think I learned something during my time in college. And as I majored in English, I would say what I learned is how to create an intelligent argument as well as how to critically evaluate the arguments of others. I wrote countless papers not only for my English classes but also for history, philosophy, religion and others, all of my teachers grading me on how well I put forth my argument. And as I went to a small Catholic liberal arts college, many of my professors were nuns who took their jobs quite seriously.

I worked too, for a time, as a reporter for a newspaper, though I would never dare call what I did journalism. Still, I did know a few people I considered journalists and had a basic understanding of journalistic procedure. So as I take issue with the official narrative of Russian hacking, please note that I have some small platform upon which I base my argument.

First let me say that if you have proof you have no need for an argument and if you have no proof you need a compelling argument. The Russian hacking story has neither. Let me show you what proof of interference in the election of another country looks like.

(By the way, this is what people are referring to when they speak of a deep state: unelected officials who remain in power whether we vote in a Democratic or Republican administration, making decisions that the average citizen is not even aware of. Victoria Nuland worked for the Obama administration. Her husband, Robert Kagan, was one of the principle authors of the Project For A New American Century, the guiding vision behind George W. Bush’s presidency.)

The above clip requires no argument. Here you can hear two U.S. officials discussing who they are going to choose to be the next leader of Ukraine. This isn’t a smoking gun, it is you being there as the gun is fired. This is proof that has no need for unnamed sources.

The mainstream media try to act as though “Russian hacking” is incontrovertible, an established fact to which only fools and tools would object. But there is in fact no proof nor is there even an explanation for what the term means. If there is no proof, then there must be a compelling argument, and an argument needs to be tested before it should be accepted. Have you ever heard the proponents for the “Russian hacking” narrative call for a rational debate to get to the truth of the matter or do you hear them shouting down opposing narratives? I could only imagine what my English Professor Sr. Renita would have to say about such an argument.

I try to think what she would say if I were to turn in a paper on “Russian hacking” similar to the one the mainstream media has given to us. She would say that the paper has no concise thesis. She would say that the phrase Russian hacking was so broad and vague that it could encompass everything or nothing. She would demand I state clearly what it was I was trying to argue. It’s called a thesis statement.

Next she would tell me to cite my sources. If one of my papers was even a tiny bit unclear on who the quote was attributed to, you can believe I heard about it. Oh boy, I could only imagine what she would say if I included quotes from “unnamed sources”.

She would also insist that I cite many different sources in order to make a more compelling argument. I would tell her that I cited many different sources, CNN, The New York Times, The Daily Kos, etc. Then I would get real quiet and hope she didn’t bother to actually check into the sources I’ve cited. Because in 95% of the articles I’ve read on Russian hacking, they invariably refer back to The Washington Post quoting unnamed U.S. Officials. Check them out here, here, here, here, and elsewhere. But of course, Sister Renita took her job seriously and would have looked into my sources and called me out on it.

Now I know that journalism is different than writing a research paper for your teacher. Unnamed sources are often necessary to help a journalist get his story. But to rely exclusively on unnamed sources and to be so utterly and immediately convinced of what they are telling you smells of something and it ain’t journalism.

Especially when the owner of your paper has a $600 million contract with the CIA. Surely we must harbor some skepticism about the relationship between “unnamed U.S. officials” and a newspaper owned by someone who profits greatly from a secretive government organization with a very long and established history in overthrowing foreign governments and manufacturing justifications for war.

“But,” you say, “where there’s smoke, there’s surely fire.” I will grant you the fire, though the smoke smells suspiciously like wacky tobacky. In fact, for the sake of argument, I will grant you every theory that has been posited by those searching for fire. I freely admit that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are homosexual lovers who colluded to hack the U.S. election, the French election, the Vermont power grid, and make love to each other while Russian prostitutes pee on them. I will agree with you on all of this and whatever other suspicions may arise, whether there be fire or smoke or a whisp of vapor you thought you might have spied out of the corner of your eye.

I have granted not only that you have the rights to your beliefs but accept them as the Gospel truth, and all I ask in return is that you consider for a moment a few questions regarding—not Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin—the media.

Do you believe the media’s behavior during this episode has been exemplary, or even normal? Do you ever remember a news story so filled with references to unnamed sources? Please keep in mind I have already ceded the argument on the guilt of Trump and Putin, my concerns rest solely with the behavior and worth of the mainstream media.

Do you think their primary concern is to dig for the truth in the matter or has profit become not only their primary but in fact their only motivator? Does the mainstream media exist to educate us so that we can better perform our roles as citizens or does it exist merely to titillate and distract us while making millions for it owners? Should journalism consist of investigative journalists doing the hard work of sifting through the vast amounts of information that is out there in order to get to the truth amidst the spin, or is it enough to have a few camera-friendly people sit around tables and ask questions of paid representatives of organizations that were founded to promote the agendas of powerful entities?

Do you think the media has your best interests at heart, or do they care most about pleasing those who pay them money to advertise, businesses like pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, oil companies, and weapons manufacturers? Is even National Public Radio capable of being impartial when they are being funded by the Koch brothers and the Waltons?

Do you feel the media has done a sufficient job providing you context of Russia’s place in the world and the legitimate concerns of the Russian people and their government? Have they explained to you why Russia is in Syria, or why the U.S. military is involved there to oppose both ISIS AND the Syrian government that is fighting for its life against ISIS?

Here is the most relevant question I have for you: Is the mainstream media enabling you to understand the world you live in so that you feel you have a way of helping to shape it, or does the mainstream media cause you to become confused, frightened and angry? Does the mainstream media help make sense of current events, does it empower you to fashion a government that works for you and all citizens of this nation of ours, or does it frustrate and disgust you to the point you turn off the television?

If the media is not providing us with the information and context we need to make the decisions that will affect our lives, is this not an even greater concern than Russia hacking our elections and dictating the behavior of our president? After all, a president can be impeached, future elections can be safeguarded. But a media that does more to propagandize and distract us than it does to enlighten us, how do we begin to fix that?

Again, let me remind you for the sake of this argument that I agree completely with the very worst accusations that have been made against both Donald Trump and Putin’s Russia. Even so, do those accusations merit the attention that the media has spent on it? The media thinks so.

A Deconstruction Of The Phrase "Russia Attempts To Hack Our Democracy"

I read this phrase recently—probably for the thousandth time—but the sheer idiocy of it finally struck home. The phrase is this: “Russian attempts to hack our democracy.” It has been bothering me for a while now, but sometimes it takes a while for inanity to cross the Rubicon. Roll it upon your tongue for a moment: “Russia attempts to hack our democracy”. Taste it if you can, see if you can find any depth or substance in this cotton candy assertion. To anyone with a sophisticated palate, the unusual pairings are rather jarring.

Let’s break it down, if we are capable of such an effort. Like a McDonald’s cheeseburger, it can appear quite acceptable to one who doesn’t much think about what one is consuming. But let us be connoisseurs of message for a moment, let us think about what it is we are digesting. Let us study the relatively simple phrase in its component parts, explore what the symbols mean to us.

Russian. The word is replete with associations. It has always been synonymous with the Soviet Union in the minds of anyone older than thirty and younger than a hundred and ten. The U.S. had always been the home team and the U.S.S.R. was (for anyone outside New York) the Yankees. They were the Ivan Drago to our beloved Rocky. They are the destroyers of freedom. They are, pure and simple, THE ENEMY! They are and always will be Mordor, the evil empire, the land to the east that is by its very existence a threat to all free peoples. One wonders why God or Tolkien saw fit to create such an abomination. We would all be better off if cartographers simply omitted it from any future maps.

Russian hack. What does this mean? Is hack the right word? Did Russia use sophisticated computer technology to change voting? Was it more damaging than the purging of blacks from voting by voter ID laws or sup-par equipment and limited access in lower-class neighborhoods? If it was not, why is the media ignoring such issues in favor of Russian hacking? Don’t they want what’s best for us?

Is it more relevant to our lives as Americans than the billions of dollars poured into our elections from special interest groups that determine the policies that their bought candidates do not write but rather copy into law? Is it more relevant to our elections than the fact that every single major political aspirant must genuflect before AIPAC, Israel’s lobbying group?

What do they mean by hacking? What does the word “hack” mean? What exactly does Russia stand accused of? For God’s sake, how can we prevent it from happening again if we don’t know what “it” is? I guess the lesson is that our secret intelligence agencies will take care of it and that we only need trust them. But it makes me wonder: how can we trust them to take care of the problem when they weren’t able to prevent it in the first place? And it makes me wonder why they even bothered to bring it up at all if they are giving us no actionable information. “The Russians hacked our election. We want you to know that, want you to know we are on it, and that what is most important is that you trust us unaccountable agents of security agencies.” Doesn’t spy stuff go on all the time without the need to reveal such shenanigans to the public? Why then did they feel the need to share this one?

It’s frustrating to place all the responsibility in the hands of the intelligence agencies. I as a United States citizen want to do something to help secure our democracy, something more than wearing a pussy hat and Russia-bating (sic) in groups that appear larger on CNN than they do in person. I feel like someone trying to fight terrorism with plastic sheeting and duct tape. It doesn’t make sense to me.

If we have a problem with our elections being hackable, shouldn’t we be taking concrete actions to ensure that it is more difficult for it to happen next election? Why in God’s name aren’t our elected officials scrambling to pass laws that require paper ballots that are hand-counted rather than using hackable computers? Questioning Trump’s involvement can wait until we’ve taken control of our systems back from the Russians. Why are we doing nothing, don’t we care?

If our elections are hackable, shouldn’t we have been concerned about this before now? If Russia was able to hack our elections, might not other powerful agents do the same? Perhaps even one or two of our intelligence agencies might think it a good idea to do such a thing. If they did, who would alert the media to the hacking? If, say, the CIA decided to hack our elections, would anybody know? If right now the media is doing no actual journalism on the validity of Russian hacking claims other than passing along information from intelligence agencies, how could we ever expect our media to ferret out the information if such an action took place? If our elections were to be hacked by intelligence agencies or other nefarious domestic groups, wouldn’t we want Russia to release the facts to us?

Which once again makes me return to asking what is meant by hacking. Does it mean releasing accurate and truthful information gathered through unsecured e-mail servers? Does it mean revealing inconvenient truths about what is really going on in our country, the way Radio Free Europe once provided a counter narrative to the citizens of the Soviet Bloc?

I worry about the very vagueness of the expression “Russian Attempts To Hack Our Democracy”. It is a statement written with an unsharpened pencil and it is hard to read. And vagary is the tool used by those who would like to get you to believe in something without explicitly saying anything. It is the way Iago talked to Othello about Desdemona, feigning concern for a friend while sowing unfounded suspicions designed to destroy him.

But perhaps it is the use of the word “democracy” that confounds most of all. The word just seems to have an air of purity to it, doesn’t it? Democracy is one of those core values, a sacrosanct institution whose virtue needs protecting from debauched men looking to stain its innocence. Accusing someone of hacking democracy contains within it associations of raping a virgin: our minds rebel at the very thought of it, our reason goes out the window and we become brutes willing to do anything to protect our women folk. Democracy is an archetypal principle at once vague and yet all-encompassing. It embodies all that is good, and it is enshrined within our most holy of temples: to imagine a foreign power penetrating so deeply into our holiest of holies demands that we defend it at all costs or lose our very identity as a people.

Would that we had such an institution. Democracy—at least that which we now call democracy—is not a vestal virgin but a seasoned prostitute. Russia has no need to hack, spy, or subvert. The U.S. government is quite simply up for sale to the highest bidder, and she has no biases whether she sleeps with a local or a foreigner. It is all about the money.

And as far as hookers go, the U.S. government is not especially high priced. Russia has enough money to buy a few well-positioned congresspersons should it so desire. Granted Saudi Arabia is a wealthy John, but it has the U.S. doing things that would make most harlots blush. After all, a prostitute only sells what is hers to give, while a politician makes his money giving away that which does not belong to him. Even children are not safe from such business deals.

Israel too has been frequenting the Capital Hill whorehouse for decades, tossing bills on the pillow for the permission to have its way with Palestinians of all ages. United Arab Emirates plopped down $14.2 million in 2013 and apparently liked the treatment it received, namely a $2 billion weapons sale. And for a mere $2.5 mil they got former Attorney General John Ashcroft to work for them, though whether he will be required to wear high heels and garter is not mentioned in this article: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/qatar-hires-former-u-s-attorney-general-john-ashcroft/

Foreign countries are making serious investments to shape U.S. opinions all the time. Here is a list of contributions to think tanks the New York Times compiled: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-government-contributions-to-nine-think-tanks.html

Why then would Russia risk war with the most powerful military in the world when it could simply buy what they wanted like everyone else? Why get the John after you to break your legs when for a modest fee you could have your kinkiest fantasies satisfied? Why “hack” when one could “contribute”? Doesn’t that sound so much better?

This was my quick dissection of the message. Notice that I make no mention of the messengers. That is a subject I’ve mentioned in other posts, notably here: http://jamesrozoffsolutionist.blogspot.com/2017/04/syria-russia-and-what-i-can-say-with_25.html