Doug's Darkworld

My long promised last Russiagate post. I tried to cover all the important points, and marshall my arguments logicly. Even so, there are things I didn’t have space to include, so I chose carefully. As my mentor Sally used to say “If you can’t explain something on a single page, you don’t understand it.” If anyone disagrees, persuade me otherwise. In any case, enjoy the ride.

So, I posted this link on the Doug’s Darkworld Facebook group, and commented on it. In this case probably best to read the article at the link before carrying on. This was my comment:

“Sanders has consistently pushed Russiagate? I find that deeply disappointing.”

And it opened a can of worms. In essence a number of people claimed I was taking Russiagate way too lightly, and that Russian interference in the 2016 election was a fact. Several points were raised, and hopefully I will cover them. In considered order:

First, how I feel about Russiagate and whether or not Russia tried to meddle in the election isn’t the point of the article. The point of the article above is that the reaction to alleged Russian meddling has been over the top, and used to seriously limit freedom of the press in the US. This is far more a danger to an open democracy than putative foreign meddling, I mean really, we’re going to limit our press to preserve our freedoms? Wait, what? I might also mention that since the US government  is the greatest meddler in foreign elections the world has ever known, outrage about Russian teenage trolls is a bit misplaced.

That aside, yeah, I still think what I thought a year or so ago. Meuller’s first round of indictments showed us that Russiagate was Nothingate. An oligarch paying a handful of teenage trolls to post a microscopic number of crude memes on Facebook affected the outcome of the election? Boy, billions of dollars in US election spending has been wasted if that’s all it takes. The second round of indictments showed it was political, timed as they were just before Trump’s Putin summit. A bunch of more or less random Russians indicted on “secret” evidence, Mueller knowing full well none of them are ever going to show up in court to testify. This was all Mueller came up with in a year?

Now granted I didn’t read the Mueller Report, because I knew if it contained any smoking gun evidence, it would be broadcast 24/7 on every available media outlet. I didn’t hear  of any. He had two years to write a report that sounds very convincing to people who already believe in Russian interference, without presenting any actual evidence. Other people read it though, and there’s a lot of problems with what is in the report, which this article dissects in detail. And Mueller Report aside, there are simply logical problems with the whole ‘Russia interfered’ premise. I will expound:

First, if Clinton had run a fabulous campaign, pulled the Democrats together, gotten out the vote, had crossover appeal, and was set to win the election by a huge margin … and Trump unexpectedly won by some margin that was clearly traced to Russian tampering, yes, we’d have a big problem. That’s not what happened. The Clinton campaign was uninspired and made major gaffes. She failed to inspire Democrats to get out and vote in droves. And as a result Trump eked out an electoral victory by some very thin vote margins in a handful of states. Huge numbers of factors, many of which were controlled by Clinton herself, influenced how people voted … or didn’t vote. To claim that alleged Russian interference somehow trumped myriad other factors in the elections is to credit Putin with Godlike powers.

Moreover. Putin isn’t an idiot. The opposite in fact. He had to know his ability to directly influence the election was negligible. And if he got caught the repercussions could be extreme. Basically to believe Putin tried to influence the election is to believe that Putin did something brain dead stupid so that Clinton would have an excuse for losing the election. Because it certainly wouldn’t do him any good, the idea that Trump is some Manchurian candidate is again ridiculous. And this is completely borne out by the facts, relations with Russia are worse than they have been in decades, and Trump has done nothing to change that. Hell, he is happily selling Ukraine advanced weapons to use against their ethnic Russian rebels. Trump doesn’t serve anyone but his own ego and family, the idea that he is Putin’s puppet is, well, up there with Obama being a secret Muslim.

The thing that is most obvious to me in understanding Russiagate, who benefits? The people who have been running the country for decades, the Pentagon, the big corporations, the rich, and of course the Democratic party. What Russiagate has been, and continues to be, is brilliant propaganda. No need for Clinton and the Dems to examine their failings in the election, no siree, it was all the Russian’s doing. Perfect rationalization to justify our global domination ambitions, we need to defend the world against the evil Russians, Cold War II. Putin of course is in the unenviable position of trying to disprove something for which there is no proof in the first place.  Trump is in the same position too, though for him it’s a great distraction from his other myriad giveaways to the rich. The GOP has illegal immigration, the Dems have Russiagate. Huge amounts of outrage and attention over distraction issues that are dwarfed by things like climate change, wealth inequality, out-of-control military spending, student debt, health care, etc.

The greatest propaganda aspect about both issues is … they can never be fixed! Neither Russia nor illegal immigration is going to vanish from the Earth, so always endless opportunity to demonize and spin. I grew up with the Cold War, and realized by my teenage years that the “threat” posed by Russia was being wildly exaggerated. And now Russia is a shadow of its former globe spanning imperial self, and we’re supposed to regard them as some sort of existential threat? Give me a break. The only threats to what is left of our democracy are in Washington and Wall Street.

In summation, it makes no sense for Putin to have tried to influence the election, his ability to do so is dwarfed by purely domestic factors in the election, and what “proof” has been offered boils down to “Trust Meuller!” As my old hippie friends say, “When did we start trusting the FBI?”

Copyright © 2019 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: Trump trolling the Democrats. Credit: Russia.ru. I think that’s a Russian news site, but it may be an official Russian site, my Russian is rusty. I got it off Wikipedia so presuming it’s Public Domain under US copyright law.)