A traitor to the flag
I'm trying to understand the new definition of being a "traitor." Does questioning the contentions of the Central Intelligence Agency now qualify? This global intelligence agency of the United States that has meddled in dozens of foreign elections going back to its creation in the 1940's, going so far as to assassinate undesirable candidates, now seems to have the unqualified support of the other of the country's two major political tribes. We have turned on a dime. Am I a traitor to side with the Chilean government in opposing the CIA's assassination of that country's president, Salvador Allende, in 1973? Am I a traitor to call bogus the CIA's claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction somewhere inside Iraq in 2003? But then I am a traitor if I question the report on Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election from the person of Robert Mueller, George W. Bush's former FBI director, and one of his paid liars on the one-time matter of Iraq's alleged WMDs.When reports such as Mueller's get released, they demand terrific scrutiny, not blind allegiance. An indictment is a prosecutor's document. There is no evidence in it. There are, instead, assertions. This is very different. We've seen how prosecutors can stack assertions to issue indictments, and also to avoid indictments, such as in several high-profile police shootings of unarmed black children. Assertions are not proof.
These accusations of national disloyalty are sadly typical of the style of attacks against Donald Trump from the Democrats. We've done a complete 180 from the time that the McCarthyism existed on the right. But then it's worth remembering that, at the time of its inception, McCarthyism cut across both major political parties, leaving its victims without any mainstream political support whatsoever.
When a time of crisis, such as now, calls for more precision in debate and in the application of reason, we get more slop instead. When a critical case of presidential malfeasance needs to be made effectively to battle-weary voters, we get transparent partisanship instead. Nobody's switching sides based on these fiery internet memes. All we get are accusations that the other side's entirety amounts to a flock of sheep. And remember, the case of collusion involving Trump is another one to be made completely separate from that of the alleged hacking itself. I'm missing the part in the indictment that connects Guccifer 2.0, DCLeaks, and Russia's GRU with the Trump campaign. And if Trump simply benefited from an alleged campaign to disable the Clinton campaign, didn't Bernie Sanders also benefit? Is he also a paid Russian agent, and a traitor? Will that accusation surface when it becomes inconvenient during a 2020 Democratic presidential primary?
Is the sloppiness the strategy? Are we just attempting to rein in Trump by indiscriminately muddying him? Because that's a questionable axiom in American politics. Inferring to or telling the American people that half of them are stupid hasn't borne out-- of late-- to be a winning strategy for the Democratic Party.
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In the meantime, the cable television arm of the Democratic National Committee, MSNBC's parent company NBCUniversal, is revealed by the Intercept-- on the same day that the indictment came down-- to have given a campaign contribution to the incumbent opponent of the Democratic Socialist upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her victorious New York congressional primary. It's clear then that NBCUniversal knows where the real political revolution is happening, and they're taking up sides against it.
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For future reference, it's worth noting that, if the indictment can be trusted, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and WordPress all indisputably shared data with the U.S. government as part of the Mueller investigation. That information means to you exactly what it means to you.
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If you read the linked article above, you also are now aware of the fact that the former contractor for the National Security Agency Reality Winner-- sent to jail for five years-- was found guilty at the end of her 2017 trial of giving journalists the same information about Russian hacking that is contained in this indictment.
posted by CM @ 7:45 PM
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