Okay, my critics ...

So, a couple of weeks ago (or something) I left a comment at Montreal Simon's place. It was another post going after Trump for saying good things about Vladimir Putin and piling on to the whole unproven (and probably non-existent) Russian hacking of the US 2016 federal election. I was rather harsh in my assessment:

While it's entirely possible that Putin himself masterminded this nefarious hack which helped corrupt mass-murderer Hillary Clinton to lose to corrupt rapist Donald Trump, ... I have to beg you Simon, to please pull your head out of your ass and stop parroting Democratic hacks who treat these ALLEGATIONS as proven facts.

Stop doing your small part to re-ignite a useless Cold War.

The leaders in Washington DC and Moscow are ALL scum-bags. It matters little who is in power. You debase yourself with this nonsense.

Simon and I have since made up. Which is good, because I actually don't like fighting with allies. But my comment inspired some criticisms that I found remarkable. Here's the first one from persons unknown:

 Oh look it's another Both Sides™ moron. Let me guess, Trudeau=Harper as well?

"Both Sides." That was a Phil Collins' album. In the Irvine Welsh novel Filthy, the crooked Edinburgh cop says that "Both Sides" refers to Collins' fucking his wife's pussy and asshole. But I digress. "Both Sides Do It" AKA "Both-Siderism" is also the main pet peeve of stupid Democrat chump or evil Democrat hack "Driftglass." This is the phenomenon in US mainstream political culture wherein it is claimed that both the Democratic Party USA and the Republican Party USA are moral and intellectual equals. This phenomenon has the effect of increasing the vile Repugnican's moral stature while decreasing that of the Democrats.

So, for example, the Republicans can petulantly threaten to shut-down the government if Obama doesn't give the super-rich another tax-cut and they can stymie almost every initiative he comes up with, and the Democrats will, meanwhile, seek compromise and "grand bargains" with the Republicans, and the Sunday news talk-shows and major newspaper columnists will blame both parties for the partisan rancour and gridlock. The Republicans can indulge in brazen homophobia and get caught on tape claiming that they're targeting African-Americans with their voter suppression laws, but if a Democrat somewhere complains that die-hard Republicans are low-information voters, then its BOTH SIDES who are creating the culture of division that is harming the republic.

In this instance I agree with Driftglass. The Republicans are repugnant. They'll bash homosexuals and then they'll cover-up when one of their own is found to be a not-so-closeted one who is trying to seduce teenage Congressional pages. Their spokesperson Ann Coulter can gleefully call for the murder of her political opponents, but if Michael Moore angrily criticizes someone, then it just goes to show that BOTH SIDES are equally angry and dangerous.

But going beyond all of that surface stuff, when it comes to the interests of ordinary US-Americans, how different are the Democrats and the Republicans? BOTH SIDES support the surveillance state. BOTH SIDES serve Wall Street with slavish devotion. BOTH SIDES were united in bringing "regime change" and all the death and devastation that entailed, to the Middle East. BOTH SIDES have sided against organized labour. BOTH SIDES have conspired to keep public health-care for all (as opposed to cheaper health insurance for most) off the table.

I once described US politics as professional wrestling. It's all sham contests but they keep people's interest by having the Republicans as the cartoonish villains or "heels" and the Democrats are the "good guys" or "faces." Some US-Americans self-identify with the "heels," ... they hate "social-justice warriors" and Blacks and gays and they believe that Christ is being insulted by the lesbian secularist big-government, blah, blah, blah. Other US-Americans self-identify with the "faces" and bawl and whine when their heroes get a folding chair smacked into their heads while the referee is looking the other way. But more and more US-Americans have decided that the contests between the Democrats and the Republicans are insults to their intelligence and tune the whole charade out. So that, despite all the pissing and moaning from people like "Driftglass," mass-murder in foreign policy and corruption and corporate control is bad no matter WHICH SIDE does it.

Which is why when offered the choice between mass-murdering Wall Street shill Hillary Clinton and obnoxious, corrupt, racist, misogynist, boorish reality-tv celebrity/real-estate developer, sexual predator scum-bag Donald Trump, I reject both. As did many other US-Americans.

Next, commentator "rumleyflips" doesn't so much criticize me as offer some extra analysis:

Thwap: I don't know when far right websites became pro Russia and pro-Putin ( I should have been paying more attention ) but the about turn was amazing. Some of these sites are saying what they have been paid to say while others use misinformation dispensed by services like Wiki Leaks and RT. Now unpaid trolls are along for the ride using Russian " facts " to praise Trump and curse Clinton. It's pretty one sided.

It is not just the US that is being attacked by far right Russia supported groups. Farange and his Brexit boys have close ties to the Kremlin just as Trump and his cabinet do. Far right groups in France, Greece, Holland etc. receive Russian funding and attend expenses paid conferences in Russia. Just a few years ago, Russia backed left wing groups as a way of disrupting the West . Now they have decided the best way to damage the EU, UK, US, Nato etc. is to assist and finance far right wing politicians . The most interesting and frightening thing is the choice , by Putin, of Trump as the person most likely to damage the security and economy of the US.

Okay. Let's take this apart:

I don't know when far right websites became pro Russia and pro-Putin ( I should have been paying more attention ) but the about turn was amazing.

Whereas progressives and liberals hysterically stoking anti-Russian sentiment and sounding like paranoid 1950's Cold Warriors isn't?

Some of these sites are saying what they have been paid to say while others use misinformation dispensed by services like Wiki Leaks and RT. Now unpaid trolls are along for the ride using Russian " facts " to praise Trump and curse Clinton. It's pretty one sided.

Hold on! What "disinformation" has Wiki Leaks dispensed? The DNC/Podesta emails were either hacked or (more likely) leaked. Which means they're genuine. Which means the DNC did conspire to stifle the surprisingly strong candidacy of Bernie Sanders so that entitled ego-maniac, corrupt, mass-murdering monster Hillary Clinton could go out and take her decades of baggage and massively unpopular policies to the people of the United States and promptly lose to an unstable imbecile like Donald Trump. As for RT, sometimes they show themselves to be hacks, but in so doing they're no worse than the whole stable of lying hacks and corporate servants of the US media of the major networks and newspapers like the NYT and the Washington Post. I mean, is it even a serious question whether those news providers are liars and servants of their super-rich owners and advertisers? Don't we have decades of evidence of their deceit and stupidity?

It is not just the US that is being attacked by far right Russia supported groups. Farange and his Brexit boys have close ties to the Kremlin just as Trump and his cabinet do. Far right groups in France, Greece, Holland etc. receive Russian funding and attend expenses paid conferences in Russia. Just a few years ago, Russia backed left wing groups as a way of disrupting the West . Now they have decided the best way to damage the EU, UK, US, Nato etc. is to assist and finance far right wing politicians .

Well, first of all, here I thought that most on the Left were self-propelled activists. Now I find out we've been "fellow-travelers" or "useful idiots" or even paid mercenaries of the former Soviet Union. Now it appears that far-right nativists are dupes of the Russians! British and American and French and everyone else who has seen their living standards stagnate or decline under neo-liberalist "free trade" scams aren't voting as a rejection of their arrogant elites' ruinous policies. They're merely "sheeple" under the sway of Putin.

And heavens to Betsy! Who but a monster would want to disrupt NATO??? An alliance against the now non-existent Soviet Union that has found a new lease on life as military enforcer of the United Nations (or, just an enforcer of Washington regime-change if the UN won't go along).

And if Putin is funding right-wing groups in Western Europe, it's not as if the USA doesn't fund its own subversives worldwide, including in the former Soviet republics. There's no reason to ratchet-up international tensions over such one-sided, hypocritical outrage.

Finally, someone calling himself "Mr. Perfect" lets loose with a truly bizarre tirade:

Thwap spends very little time anywhere other than his own site. He has come to hate anyone who doesn't buy into his dog whistle for revolution statements while hiding away expecting others to get run over by the machine he demands be overthrown by the rest of us. I've lost all respect for him and no longer peruse his site, it's almost reading the rantings of a want to be Pol Pot. Go away thwap, you have nothing to contribute any more.

Strange.

Thwap spends very little time anywhere other than his own site. 

This actually isn't true. For a long time after the 2015 federal election I was at other sites more than my own.  I admit to visiting less sites than I used to, but I still read and commented more at other people's blogs n' stuff than making my own original content.

He has come to hate anyone who doesn't buy into his dog whistle for revolution statements 

I have been critical of people for refusing to offer original tactics and for doing the same thing over and over again, but I don't "hate" the left anymore than I hate humanity in general. (Which I admit is quite a bit of hate, but nowhere near what Mr. Perfect imagines.)

while hiding away expecting others to get run over by the machine he demands be overthrown by the rest of us.

I'm sorry, but that's complete bullshit. Show me anywhere where I've told people they have to get their heads smashed in or I'll think they're phoney-baloneys. My aborted plan to bring down the un-elected, anti-democratic harpercon government was specifically designed to first build the movement so large that the police and etc., would not be able to bust heads.
I have not called for violence. I have not said that non-violence is the policy of cowards and wimps. I have only said, again and again, over and over, that I will not reflexively condemn violence when frustrated, oppressed groups resort to it. Sometimes it's justified I think. I think that when non-violence becomes dogmatic it becomes ridiculous and self-evidently self-defeating. Mr. Perfect has totally misinterpreted me.

I've lost all respect for him and no longer peruse his site ...

As I asked him at Simon's; how does he know what I'm doing here then??

it's almost reading the rantings of a want to be Pol Pot. 

Jesus Christ. Words fail me.