For almost 2 years, the Democrats have pushed a narrative purporting that Russians, operating at the direct orders of Vladimir Putin, have been working to subvert American Democracy and install a puppet in power in the form of Donald Trump.
First, it was the Russian Hacking hoax_—_the idea that the DNC servers had been hacked by Russian operatives reporting directly to Vladimir Putin. This story started circulating even before the election took place, and evolved and grew over time until, after the 2016 election was lost by the Democrats at all levels and in all branches of Government, it became necessary to develop the story into a full-blown narrative as a way to explain the stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton at the hands of the “monster” Donald Trump.
We know from the book, Shattered, that the Russia narrative was a political construct from the start:
That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.
This story has since been fully debunked by experts, and after a year of looking, no one has been able to produce one piece of evidence to prove Russians hacked the DNC servers. The fact that the DNC on several occasions refused to let either the FBI or DHS examine their servers makes the original claim highly suspect, and recent analyses by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have further proven that the WikiLeaks emails that were released came from an inside leaker and not a hacker, just as Julian Assange has always maintained.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz boldly asserting that Jeh Johnson, Obama’s head of DHS, and FBI chief James Comey were all LYING about the DNC refusing to let them inspect their servers. Seriously.
The balls on her.
Once the DNC hacking story became dead in the water, the Democrats quickly moved on. The Russia-Gate narrative changed focus from the claim of “hacking” to the more amorphous claim of “collusion”_—_the idea that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Russian Government to steal the election from Hillary Clinton and deliver the White House to Donald Trump. This story too has lost steam for lack of evidence, and the investigations that are underway currently seem to be shifting focus away from coordinated campaign activities toward possibly illegal (or at least embarrassing) financial dealings between Trump and his associates (such as Paul Manafort) and what are loosely described as “the Russians”.
With the Congressional investigations falling off the radar, the Democrats have flailed around desperately for a new “active narrative” with which to occupy the news cycles in the mainstream media.
They have now seized upon Social Media. This narrative is multifaceted, and is probably the most revealing of just why the Democrats NEED to have the Russia-Gate narrative alive and front and center in our collective consciousness.
Under this story, Russian “troll farms” were operating feverishly all during the 2016 election cycle, working overtime to not just damage Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump, but to also elevate Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein online in such places as Facebook and Twitter. Stories of these operations have appeared repeatedly in the Washington Post and The New York Times and on CNN.
Moreover, “the Russians” were buying advertisements on Facebook, Google and Twitter which were designed to foment division, animosity and conflict among Americans.
This story, however, has now also been debunked. Actually though, it hardly needs debunking because if you total up the value of all the ads that were supposedly bought across all three Social Media platforms it comes to about $300,000. This is roughly 0.025% of the roughly $2 BILLION that was spent during the course of the election. This, folks, is a fly fart in the wind.
But wait, there’s more: CNN has now scooped an expose entitled: “Exclusive: Even Pokémon Go used by extensive Russian-linked meddling effort”
I am not kidding. They would actually have us believe that even Pokemon Go has been compromised by Russian agents. This seems ridiculous, even laughable. But unfortunately, the craven dissembling and disinformation being spewed by the Clinton/Obama Democratic Elite and their allies in the Deep State and the Media is serious business.
Taking a Joke too Far?
It is one thing to blame your catastrophic and embarrassing loss on foreign interference. But to characterise such “meddling” as an “act of war” is going too far. And that is what dozens of Democrats are doing every day.
Paul Begala, a “lifelong Clinton campaign aide” recently went on CNN to declare:
“We were and are under attack by a hostile foreign power, and they seem to be abetting that hostile foreign power. We should be debating … whether we should blow up the KGB … We should be retaliating massively. “
Donna Brazile, long-time Democratic operative and former DNC Chair (and disgraced ex-CNN commentator), said:
“I’ve never agreed with Dick Cheney in my entire life, but when he said this was an act of war, I have to agree with the former vice president”
Moreover, Brazile, like Begala, seems perfectly willing to conjure up the spectre of the USSR and the Communist threat to The American Way of Life.
Donna Brazile later defended this Tweet as accurate. If you can believe that.
What could possibly incite a Democrat to call for open hostilities with another nuclear power? What could push a well-known Democratic operative to agree with the most reviled Republican in pre-Trump history? What could make them want to re-start the Cold War, with all it’s Dr. Strangelove implications?
Why Democrats need to cling to this ridiculous narrative
Indeed, one may also wonder why the Democrats feel a need to keep pushing the “Russian meddling” narrative given that it is going nowhere and only seems to further divide the nation and, well, make them look stupid. And one must especially wonder why they are willing to take it so far as to threaten thermonuclear war.
The answer is as simple as it is banal, and as sad as it is frightening. Let me explain.
1. They really, truly believe that Hillary should have won
Obama described Hillary as “the most qualified person ever to have run for President.” This statement seems ridiculous on its face, but the Clintonites really, truly believe it. The ONLY way Hillary could have lost, they believe, is if there were some nefarious machinations behind the scenes, some skulduggery and illicit interference that prevented what they all KNEW to be an inevitable victory. As the reining political establishment, the Democrats dare not suggest that that any “rigging” took place (that was, after all, Trump’s line) so they must look elsewhere. The Russians are the perfect patsies.
Hillary blames Bernie – and almost everyone else. But mostly Putin.
2. They refuse to self-examine or take blame
There is still a large contingent of Democrats who hate, and I mean hate, Bernie Sanders and his supporters for daring to have mounted a serious challenge to the Anointed One and the coronation that had been 8 years in the making. Hillary herself has blamed Bernie in her book and on her book tour. She has also blamed, in turn, James Comey, the media, the DNC, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and even the Brexit vote.
But Vladimir Putin is clearly the primary villain in her eyes. She has claimed multiple times that Putin has a vendetta against her, that he is bent on revenge for her, because in her role as Secretary of State, she alleged openly that Russia’s elections in 2011 were rigged.
But it’s not just Hillary. So far there is not one Democrat who has accepted any blame for the 2016 disaster: no one has lost their job or been asked to resign; no one has been disgraced or ostracised. Hillary’s campaign staff have transitioned seamlessly into other positions in the political and media establishment. The Congressional leaders, Pelosi and Schumer, have retained their positions with no serious opposition. They see no reason to change, and unlike the Republicans after 2012, they refuse to do a true post-mortem or to do anything differently. After winning re-election as House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi was adamant: “I don’t think people want a new direction,” Pelosi told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
And why should they change, when the only reason they lost was because Russia “hacked the election” -?
Nancy Pelosi maintains that Democrats are most certainly NOT seeking a change in direction.
3. They MUST defend Obama’s legacy – and Neoliberalism
Democrats have a very insular worldview in which Barack Obama brought peace and stability to the world, revived the American economy, brought universal healthcare to the people, and proved once and for all that America was truly a “post-racial” society. Liberals love to pat themselves on the back for having elected a man of color; it proves that their “values” of equality etc. had created what they called “the coalition of the ascendant”, as Thomas Frank describes in his book, Listen, Liberal, Democrats in DC really think they have created a permanent majority that should win Presidential elections for years to come. Poverty and racism have been vanquished, the neoliberal agenda introduced by Bill Clinton in the 90’s has resulted inevitably in a just and wealthy society. Look at the White House! Look at the racially diverse cabinet! Look at how well Wall Street and the NYSE are doing!
Obama at the DNCC: “America is already great!” – yeah, for YOU, maybe.
Democrats cannot and must not allow anything to contradict this narrative. They cannot grasp the fact that their neoliberal society has resulted in increased income and wealth inequality under Obama; they will not accept that race relations actually worsened under Obama. Their minds simply cannot conceive that their neoliberal policies led to more people living in poverty since Obama took office.
On the campaign trail and at the DNC convention, both Clinton and Obama taunted Trump, shouting, “America is already great!”.
Sheesh. It’s no wonder that 2/3 of Americans think that the Democratic Party is out of touch.
As proof of this final point, I refer you to the Pokemon Go contest I referenced above. This was a contest which concentrated on what CNN repeatedly calls “alleged police brutality.”
Specifically, the Don’t Shoot Us contest directed readers to go to find and train Pokémon near locations where alleged incidents of police brutality had taken place. Users were instructed to give their Pokémon names corresponding with those of the victims. A post promoting the contest showed a Pokémon named “Eric Garner,” for the African-American man who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York Police Department officer.
It’s unclear what the people behind the contest hoped to accomplish, though it may have been to remind people living near places where these incidents had taken place of what had happened and to upset or anger them.
So there you have it, folks. The Russians were trying to destroy America by reminding people about innocent citizens who had been killed by police in their communities. Truly diabolical, wouldn’t you say? Obviously, anyone who was trying to remind citizens of police shootings of unarmed African-Americans was acting in, for want of a better term, an “Un-American” way. This is as ludicrous as it is disgusting.
The Russia-Gate Narrative is Here to Stay
This “blame Russia” narrative will never, ever stop. For to abandon the Russia-Gate narrative would mean that the Democrats would have to face the fact that they well and truly LOST the 2016 elections, and moreover, that they well and truly deserved to do so.
I expect that the Russia-Gate narrative will continue until the Democratic Party is reformed. It is just too convenient and too effective politically for them to simply cling to the “blame Russia” defense to deflect blame and maintain their own narrative of the success of neoliberalism and the success of the Obama Presidency.
While it is amusing to watch the Democrats make fools of themselves, we must realise that this nonsense can lead to real world consequences_—_much like the “Blame Canada” movement depicted in a South Park movie. Yes, that’s right: The Simpsons predicted the Presidency of Donald Trump, but South Park predicted the senseless and baseless demonization of another country for purely political purposes.
EuroYankee is a dual citizen, US-EU. He travels around Europe, writing on politics, culture and such. He pays his US taxes so he gets to weigh in on what is happening in the States.
