“The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.”
This is a lie.
Facebook released the ads, we know beyond a doubt that they were disparaging both candidates and why they did it. The Kremlin's primary goals were twofold: 1) exacerbate the divisions within our society and 2) compromise the ability to govern, for whoever won the election. I think it's safe to say at this point that they've succeeded on both fronts, beyond their wildest expectations. True, in the bigger picture, we know Russia preferred Trump to Hillary. Coincidentally, the United States, we now know, also preferred Trump to Hillary and it would not surprise me if much of the world, if not most if they really had to choose between either disease, feels the same, too.
The problem with the Russian canard is not its partisan implications, it's the fact that we're all singing along to a song
that was composed in a Brooklyn campaign headquarters. The
Shattered authors are not conservative hacks or right wing conspiracy theorists - following the election, the Clinton team
really did engineer a narrative to undermine
a democratically-elected administration. Their confederates publicly and unashamedly set up the Moscow Project to disseminate the idea and the media has not just played along, they've turned it into a full-fledged Broadway production. Coordination between losing campaigns, wealthy special interest groups, and billion-dollar media conglomerates to cast aside the results of a democratic election is, flat out, evil, and far more dangerous to our democracy than the online misadventures of glorified banana republics.
Don't get me wrong, foreign interference is
a very big deal and our intelligence agencies should do everything they can to combat this. That's why I thought it was absolutely unthinkable for Obama
to order our intelligence agencies to stand down, because he thought it might undermine Hillary's mandate. Her conspirators (including the President of the United States) not only rendered us susceptible to the Russian attack - they're now working overtime doing everything they can to ensure its maximum effectiveness. Their determination to unilaterally impose this dying, deceitful, morally bankrupt demagogue upon the nation has not only torpedoed the Democratic Party and exposed our republic, it's destroying our comraderie to the extent its tearing apart families.
This is not going to end how you think. Republican pundits are already prepared for the endgame, circulating talking points that there is no statute which would make this a crime. We will never reach the Congressional threshold for impeachment. With Neil Gorsuch succeeding Justice Scalia, after he passed during Obama's term, Trump has already delivered them the impossible. For Constitutionalists, Federalists, and Christian Conservatives, there genuinely is too much at stake for this to in any way diminish their support for the Republican party. As much as I hope Trump is made to answer for the extent to which he cooperated with any Russian efforts, I have no faith that Congressional Republicans will follow through, and I'm actually very scared about how the Establishment Left is going to react to that. We've already seen ideological extremism physically clashing in violence at tense moments. I don't think we truly appreciate just how dangerous the situation in our country is right now.
Fortunately, there's an alternative: we can have Democracy. We can challenge Trump on the things we can't accept and work with him on the things we want. And we can absolutely hold his team accountable, independent of how I feel about their political opinions. But it's becoming increasingly hard to believe the drawn out nature and resuscitation of these investigations are serving the interests of our nation, or if they're only providing solace to the delusions of the defeated, pouring salt on the wounds already inflicted by Moscow, and giving comfort to the worst political criminal in our history, as she travels the world falling down staircases and fracturing her wrist on gold-plated Indian bathtubs.
