Tuesday 7 March 2017

Russia: The Conspiracy Trap

Masha Gessen.

The dream fueling the Russia frenzy is that it will eventually create a dark enough cloud of suspicion around Trump that Congress will find the will and the grounds to impeach him. If that happens, it will have resulted largely from a media campaign orchestrated by members of the intelligence community—setting a dangerous political precedent that will have corrupted the public sphere and promoted paranoia. And that is the best-case outcome.
More likely, the Russia allegations will not bring down Trump. He may sacrifice more of his people, as he sacrificed Flynn, as further leaks discredit them. Various investigations may drag on for months, drowning out other, far more urgent issues. In the end, Congressional Republicans will likely conclude that their constituents don’t care enough about Trump’s Russian ties to warrant trying to impeach the Republican president. Meanwhile, while Russia continues to dominate the front pages, Trump will continue waging war on immigrants, cutting funding for everything that’s not the military, assembling his cabinet of deplorables—with six Democrats voting to confirm Ben Carson for Housing, for example, and ten to confirm Rick Perry for Energy. According to the Trump plan, each of these seems intent on destroying the agency he or she is chosen to run—to carry out what Steve Bannon calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” As for Sessions, in his first speech as attorney general he promised to cut back civil rights enforcement and he has already abandoned a Justice Department case against a discriminatory Texas voter ID law. But it was his Russia lie that grabbed the big headlines.

8 comments:

  1. This is the Democrat equivalent of the Obama "birther" movement.

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  2. It's far more 'sophisticated' and more widely disseminated than the birther crap though. The latter seemed to mainly entertain the Alex Jones and 'Pizzagate' crowds.

    Russiagate remains the figleaf for rank and file 'I'm with her' libtards.

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    1. I wonder how much Putin's going to pay me this week?

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    2. A former classmate of mine unfriended me at Facebook over this. He's a CEO who was heavily involved with the Obama Admin over Import/Exports... was on one of their panels and used to travel with Hillary. He's flat out convinced that the Russians are trying to take over the USA...

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    3. All this ratcheting up tensions with the Bear is seriously dangerous, if you ask me. And all of it to score partisan points! Ugh!

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    4. He was extremely proud of his panel's work on increasing US Exports. I merely asked, "What about Imports?"

      His panel of CEOs was set to discuss the "disturbing reports of Russians hacking the electrical grid" which I had previously labelled "fake news". Touchy, touchy, touchy...

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    5. I suppose that I embarrassed him in front of his "peers" and so, I had to go. Oh well...

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