Wednesday, January 15, 2020

What I Forgot To Say Yesterday


Yesterday I posted something I'd been fiddling with for a few weeks about Matt Taibbi's summarizing of the US Justice Department's IG Horowitz report on the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign. In the labour of actually typing it out, one of my central points became forgotten, and I pressed "Publish" without it.

Essentially I was going to say that the FBI abused its powers, perjured itself (I mean it did flat-out lie to a [FISA] Court right? Isn't that perjury?) and violated the rights of a US-American citizen (Carter Page) in order to spy on the political campaign of a candidate they did not like. This is a bad thing. Furthermore, this initial fraud and abuse of power produced the toxic swill of "Russiagate" and all the journalistic abominations contained therein. And that even if you anti-Trump people (mostly liberals) are happy with ignoring these truths and pretending that they didn't happen, Trump's base is going to do the opposite.

You see, the IG Report is a real, existing thing. It's a fact. It's based on reality. Which is that the initial investigation into Trump's collusion was based on fraud. And that the fraudulent nature of that investigation probably goes a long way to explaining why Saint Mueller could not find collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. That the US mainstream media either deliberately lied or deluded themselves as they covered the entire topic. (Very often they obviously lied, as with the Guardian's nonsensical claim that Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.) What do you call news reports that say that something happened when it didn't happen? Oh yeah! You call that "FAKE NEWS."

What do you call it when there are investigations of people, based on fraud and abuse of power, that violate people's rights and freedoms in order to find evidence of guilt for something that never happened and that is ridiculous on its face? Oh yeah! You call that a "WITCH HUNT."

Liberals and progressives! Why oh why did you have to foolishly give support to FAKE NEWS and an ominous WITCH HUNT and thereby give validation to Donald J. Trump's claims and the beliefs of his fans? Because the ends justified the means? Because attacking that monster was more important than not embarrassing yourselves? Because you only made him stronger! Because "Russiagate" being based on fraud, failed utterly. You true believers might have convinced yourselves that Trump is a "Russian usurper" or Putin's butt-boy, and that only his criminal obstruction prevented Mueller from proving this. But it doesn't matter what you believe. It doesn't matter because it's demonstrably not true.

Trump's fans, and many "independent" voters look at all of this swill and they feel vindicated. You achieve less than nothing. You damage your own cause. You show yourself as hopelessly partisan and tribal and hypocritical as anyone else.


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