Sunday, November 18, 2018

Why I'm Still Talking About Russiagate


You may be wondering why in Heaven’s name I am dredging up Russiagate at this moment when it is not in the news cycle and it hardly seems relevant. To which I would reply that it never was relevant. But to be less smug about it, I am mentioning Russiagate now because to follow the news cycle is to always be one step behind the corporate-owned and intelligence-influenced media. I wish to remind people of a few things in a moment when their ability to reason is not hampered by their raw hatred of Donald Trump.

Russiagate is not in the news now because the media always buries its embarrassments. Nobody talks about the young lady who told us Iraqi soldiers were ripping babies from incubators and throwing them to the floor anymore, even though it should be brought up from time to time to remind us how easily we and our media are misled. Nobody mentions that Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found in Iraq and that the pretext for the war in Iraq was a lie. Even if they do mention it, they never mention the fact that nobody was held accountable and everyone who got it right thinks Russiagate is a joke and everybody who got it wrong still hold positions of influence.

The reason I am bringing Russiagate up at this point is because, though the media may bury their embarrassments, they resurrect them as indisputable truths whenever they feel the need. It’s astounding what a little time out of the spotlight will do to rehabilitate a lie or a liar. Just look at how liberals are now embracing George W. Bush.

I am most concerned that the whole Russian hacking, interference, meddling, mischief-making narrative is going to resurface with a vengeance, a full-throttled media push lacking both evidence and any tolerance for skepticism. When it does, it will spring from nowhere and everyone who’s bought into similar stories will gobble it up unquestioningly. And those who have seen such stories come and go a hundred—nay, a thousand—times without merit, will still have to spend days ferreting out the facts of the story in order to find the nothing-of-substance that will lie at its root. Therein lies the strength of this story; the ability of those who push it to dump a load and move on to the next pile before the facts can be sifted through.

Here, then is the most compelling reason why I call bullshit on the entire Russiagate narrative, as immense and seemingly beyond questioning as it is to those invested in it: the mountain of evidence of a massive propaganda campaign. I have never seen the likes of it in my entire life and I lived through a few. My eyes unblinded by an irrational hatred of Donald Trump, I was able to go to bed on the night of the election without worrying which of the two candidates would be president. When Trump won, I had no more of a feeling that my world had been torn apart than I did when I realized it was down to Trump/Clinton. Therefore, I had no vested interest in finding an explanation to the inexplicable. I did not need Russiagate.

So when the Russian interference narrative burst upon the scene without tangible evidence but with absolute certainty, I found it a little more than odd. And when I and others expressed our doubts about the story, those doubts were not responded to with evidence but with the kind of bullying tactics one would associate with Joe McCarthy. Story after story hit the airwaves and the internet, each of them exhibiting a nearly-identical pattern: screaming headlines, authoritative opening sentence, gradually falling into distraction, and at some point—a point beyond which 99% people read, apparently—an admission that there was no actual proof to the assertion.

The articles—too many to count—had the required links that are the hallmarks of serious online journalism, but almost without fail they could be traced back to the Washington Post citing anonymous individuals within intelligence agencies. I cannot tell you how often people I know and respect sent me such empty exercises in journalism as definitive proof of Russian interference. Their very consistency in structure led me to the inescapable conclusion that Russiagate was a massive propaganda campaign that was feeding on the zeitgeist of the moment. Anyone with any knowledge of U.S./Russia relations and pro-imperialist players could tell you who was behind it, but that goes beyond the scope of this article.

Russiagate, the absolute obsession of the liberal media for nearly two years, was nowhere to be found in the lead up to the 2018 elections. Perhaps it was because it had already served its purpose and pushed Trump into the arms of the military-industrial complex. Perhaps it was because the Democrats realized that nobody cared enough about it to make a decision on it come election day. Because, as demonstrated by a Gallop poll, less than 1% of Americans believe Russia is a problem.

Think about that: two years of the greatest propaganda blitz seen in our time, perhaps of all time, and less than 1% think it’s the biggest problem. It has been compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, and yet it could not muster the number one spot. Rachel Maddow has spoken about it nearly exclusively for two years, and the only people she’s reaching are already in the choir. Maddow has been paid $7 million a year, backed by the media machine that is an army in lock-step with those who have been pushing this story, and they could not sell it. Worst return on investment ever!

Take a look at the Russians, on the other hand. They flipped an election with $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, over half of which ran AFTER the election. Now I’m not saying the ads run after the election did not influence the election, but let’s for the moment concentrate on those that ran before. The sum total amount of money spent on these ads is roughly the equivalent earned by Rachel Maddow for a day and a half of work. Best return on investment ever!

Keep in mind, now, that when Congress asked Mark Zuckerberg to report on any evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. elections, he initially came back and told them he found nothing. It was only when they insisted he try harder that he came back with the absurd bundle of spamming which the media seized upon like ravenous wolves.

So how is it possible that $45,000 of Facebook ads were capable of flipping an election when billions in propaganda could not flip the American public? Could it be that the Russians are so adroit at the art of propaganda that they can sell refrigerators to Eskimos? If that were the case, wouldn’t we all be drinking Russian vodka and swapping borscht recipes on Pinterest? Let me offer you an alternative viewpoint.

Perhaps you can only stray so far from the truth before the narrative stops working. If that is true—and I dearly hope it is—I believe we are about at that point now. Whatever else the media is telling us to believe, the principle story they want us to accept is that the corporate media is trustworthy, and that story has consistently been proven false. The story they push is that their primary concern is to give you the information you need to make informed decisions. This is demonstrably false, and sooner or later trust must evaporate. The Russiagate narrative may well be the deciding moment. To swallow it you must once again swallow the “trust us” story.

The truth is, and provide me a counter-argument if you can, corporate media exists in order to attract the attention of viewers. Your attention they then sell to advertisers who will try to part you from your money. In this regard, they are no different than those Russian spammers who play upon Facebook users’ emotions by showing them pictures of puppies or Satan. The difference between the spammers and the media is that the media is beholden to their advertisers to spread their view of the world. Thus big pharma, the oil industry, and even weapons manufacturers advertise on corporate media, and corporate media would never bite the hand that feeds them because their only real motivator is profit.

I ask only that you look at the Russiagate narrative for what it is, that you rid yourself for the moment of the need of it as a substitute for a meaningful way of resisting all that Donald Trump stands for. If you are able to do that, you will see that Russiagate is a narrative that has required bullying and fanaticism rather than frank discussion. It has required secrecy, deception and censorship rather than openness. It cannot exist otherwise, and anything that requires such bad company deserves to be laid to rest.

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