Russiagate As I Understand It

There are certain…peculiarities about the Russiagate narrative. I can’t help thinking George Carlin would have loved to have a go at this one, but he has moved on from this mortal coil. So let me give it a try in my own humble way.

So the DNC servers were hacked but the intelligence agencies never actually looked at the servers but knew they were hacked. By Russia. Non-governmental experts said the servers were not hacked but leaked, which would mean that someone in the DNC did it and not Russia. This idea has been purged from the official narrative like a former comrade of Stalin. Seth Rich, a disaffected data analyst for the DNC was gunned down in an attempted robbery in which nothing was taken from him. Nobody knows who killed him but they know with absolute certainty it did not involve his work or the hacked or leaked information from the servers, even though the person who ended up with the information, Julien Assange, hinted that there might be a connection. In order to clear the air on this issue, no intelligence agency has bothered to contact Mr. Assange and his access to the internet and the outside world has been blocked.

Shortly after this, the Russians hacked the Vermont power grid. Except they didn’t but they were undoubtedly up to some mischief. Shortly after that, we were authoritatively informed that the Russians were involved in hacking the French election, an error that was, fortunately, cleared up after the false claim achieved its desired aim of electing the proper candidate.

For the last two years, Russiagate has been unprecedentedly the main subject of conversation in the media, but all the conversation revolves around conjecture and taking the assertions of anonymous, unelected and unaccountable persons within the intelligence communities, and echoed far and wide through the Washington Post, a paper purchased by the richest man in the world at about the same time as he inked a very lucrative deal with one of those intelligence agencies.

The entire focus of Russiagate has been to reinforce how factual the unprovable assertions are while dismissing any questioning of it as conspiracy theory. Which means that anyone skeptical of collusion, a synonym for conspiracy, is oddly enough a conspiracy theorist. Each unsubstantiated new assertion is either accepted as gospel truth or else placed in the public's mind as one of those ideas too foolish to actually be stated as true but is secretly accepted as such (e.g. pee tapes and Pokemon Go).

The sole lesson to be learned from Russiagate is how bad Russia and Putin is, and that they must be seen as an enemy rather than a country with an elected ruler that has to share the same planet with us whether we like it or not. The goal is not to protect our country from undue outside (or inside) influence, it is to whip up hatred for Russia. In short, it is not a call for defensive measures but offensive ones.

Not once in the last two years has anyone in our government or media discussed ideas of how to diminish foreign intervention in our election process that did not involve censoring independent journalists. Never once has anybody in authority mentioned the idea of using paper ballots. Nor has anybody in that span of time wondered if any other nation might be interfering in our elections. There is no evidence or speculation, none, that any other nation in the world might be seeking to influence our nation, despite the fact that campaign contributions are flooding us from around the world. And every presidential aspirant has to meet and kowtow to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group. Crickets.

Meanwhile anyone to the left of Nancy Pelosi is being attacked as Russian bots, Russian trolls, traitors, or useful idiots. U.S. search engines and social media are restricting access to progressive news sites in the name of protecting our democracy.

Elsewhere, in England: 5 years after releasing a spy from their prison where they had him at their mercy, the Russians decided to poison him in England just to show the world how evil they are. Then deny doing it. Russia asks for evidence but is instead given contempt and their ambassadors back. This happens at a most inconvenient time for Russia, as they are just about to host the World Cup Soccer Games. But I’m sure it is all part of grand chess master Putin’s plan.

As Putin behaves, so behaves his Ally Assad in Syria. Just at the time when he was winning the civil war (is that what you call it when the combatants are jihadists from other countries armed with weapons gained from the overthrow of Gaddafi as well as those given by the U.S.?) Assad uses chemical weapons on his own people—just to show how evil he is and to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies. He of course denies it. Just like Lee Harvey Oswald, he committed an unspeakable evil and then claimed he was a patsy.

This leads to an immediate response from the U.S and its allies France and the UK, because they are certain they know what happened, just like they are certain Russia poisoned the Skrypals and needed to respond right away. Just like when they were certain Russia and Trump colluded and…are taking nearly two years to carefully build a case while a president who is controlled by a foreign power is given free reign to destroy his nation. Because delaying a reprisal on the other two issues could have had consequences.

Vladimir Putin, you see, is blackmailing a person utterly lacking in shame with shameful videos, according to a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, an agent of a foreign government who worked with Russians in order to help dig up dirt on Donald Trump, who, after all, is suspected of working with agents of a foreign government in order to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Manchurian Candidate, the Putin Puppet, the man who will do anything in order to avoid having the dreaded pee tapes available for anyone to see, is acting more hostile to Putin than President Obama ever did, kicking out Russian ambassadors, selling arms to Russia’s neighbor, adding Montenegro to the military alliance that was formed to combat the alleged threat that Russia once was, and killing Russians in Syria. All part of the devious plan to distract people away from the devious plan.

Oddly enough, everyone who got the WMDs story right has gotten the Russiagate story wrong, claiming it to be, as Chomsky said, “a joke”. Equally as odd, everybody who got the WMDs story wrong has got the Russiagate story right, from Joe Scarborough to Adam Schiff.

The New York Times and The Washington Post, who both issued apologies for not being more skeptical about the WMDs and said they would have to be more diligent next time, are proving they are the respectable news sources by not questioning anything. But we aren’t supposed to talk about The Iraq war because that is called Whataboutism, which is a bad thing because it points out the other times people lied right to your face.

Then the dissident Russian journalist died but he didn’t die, he just faked his death so that he could catch the people that killed him.

I can’t help thinking that in the early days the story was meant to divide us along party lines. Stories like Russia using Pokemon Go to influence the election were so laughable I can’t help thinking they were served up as red meat to Trump supporters. Another was the Reality Winner story—it was a name that most liberals would accept as normal but one that most Republicans would immediately associate with the term snowflake.

Oh, and the prime thrust of the strategic campaign of the tactical genius Putin, besides releasing the truth that was too complicated to make an impact on most people, was to use social media to confuse us, most of the confusing memes appearing after the election, which is truly confusing when you think about it. If this was an event comparable to Pearl Harbor, one has to question Putin's (evil) genius because Japan was able to take out our entire Pacific fleet with their proclamation of war. I can't imagine what Putin gained from this surprise attack other than my confusion, which I confess is profound.

And each time they come out with something new, they say “Ha, everybody has to believe us now because this is indisputable truth that cannot be denied”, but it always boils down to the word of some anonymous person within an intelligence community. And they say “Everybody on the planet believes the story except Donald Trump and his band of nut-huggers.” But Chomsky says the rest of the world is laughing at us. And I’m no fan of Donald Trump but I’m a fan of good journalism and honest and open government, and this aint it.