The Chris Moeller Archives

The Russian attack

I feel like such a dope. Through a bit of online sorcery, thirteen Russian agents tricked me into not voting for Hillary Clinton in November of 2016. There’s some solace in the fact that I wasn’t alone in my confusion. Tens of millions of other Americans also filled out ballots for other candidates. Twenty-six years of Clinton in the public spotlight, and we still didn’t have a good idea what to make of her. That’s where these agents found our blind spot and manipulated it. Though I wasn’t one of them, most voters that shunned Clinton chose a candidate who had been in the public eye for on or about forty years.

Borrell Associates, an agency that tracks and forecasts spending for the advertising industry, reports that $1.415 billion was spent on online advertising by local, state, and national campaigns in 2015 and 2016. Two out of every five of those dollars-- so almost five hundred million-- were spent on social media sites. Ten billion dollars were spent overall during the election season on media advertising of all kinds. The Russian “bots” spent $100,000.

The indictments of these Russian agents by the Robert Mueller team will likely have about the same resonance as those of foreign countries when their judicial systems indict agents of the U.S. government for interfering in their political process and in their elections. The difference is that those indictments are often written up for crimes such as an overthrow or assassination. Here, foreign agents allegedly buy ads online and develop memes that reflect political partiality. As long as these Russian agents don’t plan to live in the U.S., our courts likely won’t be able to hold them to account. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has been indicted in at least five different countries. So when you hear American politicos discussing the best way for us to retaliate for interference, know that in other nations, these sorts of actions are considered the retaliation.

This distraction from the real issues of the day causes great harm to everyone, including Democrats, who are so beholden to corporate interests that they are truly incapable of accepting responsibility for their corrosive actions and devastating failures during the ’16 electoral cycle. It’s not even a question of political courage at this point. Their representatives are so intrinsically cuffed to their corporate paymasters that the bond can certainly not be broken. Since the fall of ’16, when their underhanded actions in relation to the Bernie Sanders opposition campaign in their own primaries were revealed by an email leak, they have, in their defense, done the only thing their compromised predicament allows them to do-- distract through an investigation into the leak.

Is the loud public investigation into Russian meddling helping to fuel the Trump opposition? Of course not. His approval ratings are up five points-- to 40%-- since December. A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released eight days ago shows that for the first time since November 2016, more registered voters say they would support the Republican candidate for Congress in their district than the Democrat. The Democratic Party, with its nearly preternatural ability to project hyper-partisanship while standing for absolutely nothing, threatens to once again fumble away the gift of Donald Trump that was handed to them by Republican primary voters right at about two years ago.

As one of the most important examples, the President and the Republican Congress passed a crippling tax bill a few weeks ago, one that provides unprecedented cuts for the wealthy, and which will then translate into a disproportionate burden for working people and the defenseless. In December, 49% of Americans opposed that Trump tax plan with only 29% in favor, according to Public Policy Polling. Now those numbers are virtually even—41% opposed, 39% in favor. And why wouldn’t it be that way? There are no Democrats making the political case against these crushing cuts in revenue that will be made up out of the pockets of those of ordinary means. The subject came and went while politicians and the media were focusing on Vladimir Putin. The national anthem performance at the NBA All-Star Game has had a longer life in the news cycle than the tax cuts.

The electoral interference that actually took place was between the DNC, pockets of the Intelligence State, and a colluding news media. It was actually done to elevate Trump, who was the Democrats’ preferred opponent all the way up to Election Day, but also to sabotage progressives like Sanders and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. For eight years, President Obama made the case that Russia was our ally while Republicans attacked him for it. Now, in left-wing circles, you get called "comrade" if you demand that the National Security State show evidence of their charges. In order to survive, the primary goals of the Democratic Party must always be the elimination of opposition voices and convincing progressive and moderate voters that the Democratic Party is their only option. What better way to sabotage and censor than to sidetrack from the stories of their own misdeeds and spin a story instead of how the oppressor has supposedly been wronged? The only alternative option would be to repent, give back the corporate bribes, replace the compromised with new leaders, and go to work for the people, and that's not going to happen.

posted by CM @ 9:47 AM