It would seem, at least on the surface, that in regards to Russiagate I was right and my numerous detractors were wrong. Of course the possibility certainly exists that Barr’s summary is directly at odds with Mueller’s findings, and I have no doubt that Mueller’s report contains much more damage to Trump than Barr lets on. But with that said, it seems highly unlikely that Mueller would quietly sit by and let Barr distort his work without speaking up*. Proof of this is that this past January Mueller broke his silence to shoot down a Buzzfeed story claiming that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, so he is obviously comfortable pushing back against falsehoods being disseminated in the public sphere. (*Please see Addendum at the bottom of this article)
Even though Mueller has found “no collusion or conspiracy” regarding Russiagate, it is also worth noting that from day one I have never trusted Robert Mueller and have repeatedly warned Democrats about embracing him (it should also be noted that I don’t trust Barr either, as both Barr and Mueller are creatures of the deep state who are right at home in the swamp) . I have often reminded liberals of Mueller’s long list of “problematic” behavior, such as his pushing the Iraq/WMD lie, his abuse of civil liberties and rounding up of Muslims after 9-11 and his botching of the post 9-11 Anthrax investigation. But instead of being wary of Mueller, the #Resistance deified and sainted him, putting him on a pedestal like some golden calf they could worship. St. Mueller was, to mix various horror story metaphors, the noble Van Helsing who had the silver bullet that would bring down the Trumpenstein monster. The #Resistance believed in him faithfully and fully…and since he hasn’t given them Trump’s head on a platter as they expected, they are left with egg on their faces.
Obviously, I was not shocked by Mueller’s alleged findings as I have been saying all along that it was clear there has not been any evidence brought forth that would substantiate the “collusion” claim. Sure there have been a lot of news stories and pundits claiming to know for a fact that Trump did “collude” with Russia, but there was never any solid evidence to back up this speculation. I was certainly always open to the possibility of collusion and open to any evidence brought forth, but none ever was.
CONSPIRACY THEORY
One big indicator that the media was more interested in conjuring Russian boogey men in order to knee-cap Trump and less interested in the Truth, was the language they used regarding Russiagate. The term “collusion” is a non-legal word that was continuously bandied about but is so amorphous that it could mean just about anything. The proper term for what was alleged in Russiagate is Conspiracy. Conspiracy is not only an accurate descriptive term but also a clearly defined legal term.
When the media refused to call Russiagate a conspiracy, it was a strong hint that there wasn’t much evidence underlying their conjecture. The reason for this is that you can twist “facts” to fit a nebulous charge like “collusion”, but it is much harder to do the same thing to a specific legal charge like conspiracy.
The other, and maybe more telling, reason that the word conspiracy was never used is that the media has spent the last sixty years or so denigrating the term and turning it into a cudgel to be used against enemies of the establishment. From the JFK assassination to 9-11 and beyond, anyone who deviates from the establishment narrative is labelled a “conspiracy theorist” in order to destroy their credibility without ever engaging their actual arguments. The problem for the media now though, is that Russiagate was an alleged conspiracy, and media speculation on Russiagate is the definition of a CONSPIRACY THEORY…because it theorizes a conspiracy.
As I wrote in September of 2017 in an article titled “The Media Hates Conspiracy Theories…Except When They Don’t”,
If the Russians did collude with Trump and interfere in the election, than that is most definitely a...conspiracy, but interestingly enough, the news media are very careful to not ever call the Russia story a "conspiracy". The establishment has so systematically and thoroughly degraded the word conspiracy that they cannot even use it when they are alleging an honest to goodness conspiracy in which they themselves actually believe.
The failure of the corporate media to call Russigate what it is/was…a conspiracy theory…was a giant red flag that the story was at best being manipulated and at worst manufactured. The semantics used by the corporate media around certain stories, like Russiagate, is extremely enlightening as the choice of words they use, and don’t use, reveals a great deal about motive and intent. For instance, since Attorney General William Barr’s letter regarding the Mueller report came out declaring “no collusion”, the establishment press has referred to Barr as Trump’s “hand-picked” Attorney General. This indicates an intent to deceive the viewer/reader as anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of civics knows that ALL ATTORNEY GENERALS ARE HAND-PICKED…that is how you get the job. By adding the qualifier that Barr is “hand-picked” you can quickly deduce that the person saying that phrase is not an honest broker and is twisting facts to fit an agenda.
In terms of the “conspiracy theory” idea, another blurb from my September 2017 article,
As a result of the distinction between official and alternative conspiracies, we get Rachel Maddow whole-heartedly embracing the Russian election conspiracy theory to the point that she makes Glenn Beck look like Walter Cronkite and Sean Hannity look like Edward R. Murrow. Maddow sees Russians behind every single thing that happens and furiously reports it as though she's found the Lindberg baby in the arms of Jimmy Hoffa. This should not be surprising though, as when it comes to the "officially" sanctioned Russian conspiracy theory, anything goes. Even the most stodgy of old school media entities have embraced the most batshit conspiracy peddlers in regards to the Russian story, one need look no further than the New York Times op-ed page where the certifiably insane Louise Mensch was allowed to write a piece, as proof of that.
Maddow may end up being totally right about Russia, and everything she is reporting true, but there has not been any solid, tangible evidence put forward to date to corroborate the claims of Russian interference she embraces. None.
What is ironic is that the same media that refused to describe Russiagate as a conspiracy theory, were quick to equate it with two events that attract quite a bit of conspiracy theories. Many in the establishment pundit class described the alleged Russian election interference as the modern day equivalent of “Pearl Harbor” or “9-11” and as an “act of war”. Of course, thousands of Americans died heinous deaths at Pearl Harbor and on 9-11, so the analogy was always painfully hyperbolic as well as very extremely dangerous since if it were an “act of war” that would mean we would be obligated TO GO TO WAR WITH RUSSIA. Once again, these sorts of semantic flourishes such as relating Russiagate to 9-11 or Pearl Harbor and calling the alleged interference an act of war, reveal a stark dishonesty and lack of credibility.
Regarding Russiagate and 9-11 comparisons, it is interesting that in terms of evidence, there is considerably more evidence in the public domain that 9-11 was an “inside job”, which is another amorphous term like “collusion”, than there is that Trump conspired with Russia or even that Russia ever hacked the DNC or interfered in the election at all.
Even though that is the case, the media would never in a million years allow people to come on cable networks and espouse the belief that 9-11 was an “inside job”, and they sure as hell would never make that the official position of their networks and dedicate years of coverage to it like they did with the conspiracy theory of Russiagate. The New York Times would never grant a “conspiracy theorist” like Alex Jones the prestigious position of space on their op-ed page to speculate on Bush being involved with the 9-11 hijackers through his family’s connection with the House of Saud…but they did basically the same thing when they let certifiable conspiracy loon and fantasist Louise Mensch write an op-ed about Russiagate.
RUSSOPHOBIA, MICROWAVE WEAPONS AND CRICKETS
The truth is that the establishment media loathes all “conspiracy theories” except for the ones they love. And when they love a conspiracy theory they don’t call it a conspiracy theory…they simply call it news. Russiagate is obviously one example of that, but there are a plethora of other Russia related stories that fit the bill as well.
Remember the story that broke this past September where both the New York Times and NBC News breathlessly reported that the reason that a group of U.S. “diplomats” in Cuba had fallen ill was because the Russians had attacked them with a mysterious microwave weapon? I wrote an article for CounterPunch in September titled “A Curious Case of Mystery Attacks, Microwaves and Media Manipulation”, shredding those “microwave attack” stories as being obvious nonsense and anti-Russian propaganda.
After meticulously dismantling the outrageous claims made in these news reports about a “Russian mystery microwave attack”, I ended my piece with this,
These incidents may very well be proven to be attacks, and Russia may ultimately be responsible for them, but we should wait for actual evidence and not accept whispered innuendo wrapped in a slavish deference to intelligence agency authority as proof…
Similar to the delirious fever for war in the lead up to Iraq, the media are currently suffering from a virulent hysteria, this time of the anti-Russian variety. Now more than ever it is imperative to maintain a healthy and vigilant skepticism whenever Russia is blamed for misdeeds but there is a dearth or absence of concrete evidence. If we succumb to the corporate media’s Siren’s call of compulsive Russia blaming, our new Cold war may just turn very hot, and that will be a catastrophe for all of us.
Months later it was reported that scientists studying the incidents and illnesses that sparked the
”microwave weapon” speculation, now conclude that they are not the result of a “microwave attack”, but rather a reaction to the noise made by a particular type of cricket during mating season.
The “collusion” claims made by the media seemed to me to be very similar to the “microwave weapon attack” story in that they fell flat on their face upon closer inspection. There is a long list of similarly dubious anti-Russian stories in recent years and they all crumble upon even the most rudimentary examination. There was “Russia hacked the Vermont electrical grid”, “Russia hacked C-Span”, “DNC emails were altered”, “Russian spy-harlot used sex to infiltrate America”, “Russia could turn off the heat in the U.S.”, “Michael Cohen went to Prague”, “Manafort visited Assange” and on and on and on. These stories all garnered lots of attention and lots of headlines and then a few days or weeks later had to be retracted or amended because they were at best misleading and at worst outright fabrications.
ASSESSING THE ASSESSMENT
Just like these other fabulist anti-Russia stories, Russiagate was bound to collapse because it was built on an unstable foundation that was devoid of facts and evidence and rife with innuendo and assumption. The founding document of Russiagate is the aptly titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections”. This assessment, which was published on January 6, 2016, was such a flimsy, tenuous and superficial document that it was utterly startling, and frankly alarming, to witness it being taken so seriously.
The document contains not a single shred of hard evidence of Russian interference in the election, and only uses outdated and specious claims against the Russian news channel RT as proof of Russia’s nefarious actions and intents during the 2016 election. For example, here is a quote from an article I wrote in January of 2017 titled “Through the Looking Glass” where I describe the case made in the assessment for Russia’s guilt regarding election interference. (FULL DISCLOSURE - While I was not a contributing writer for RT at the time I wrote “Through the Looking Glass”, I am now.)
Another section…will come as quite a shock to liberals and Democrats…in the lead up to the 2012, again, to be clear, this is not the 2016 election but the 2012 election, RT aired a documentary on Occupy Wall Street that the report described like this…"RT framed the movement (Occupy Wall Street) as a fight against the ruling class and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations". Is there any rational and uncompromised human being on the planet who would describe the US political system any other way?
…other parts…of the report say that RT "alleges widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use" in America. Another part says that RT is attacking the US by criticizing "alleged Wall street greed." Let that one sink in for a minute. I hope liberals and Democrats are starting to understand how this report, and the intelligence community that prepared it, are not your friends, not by a long shot. Neither are they friends of Truth.
Every single liberal I spoke with about the assessment agreed with it fully…but not surprisingly none of them had ever laid eyes on it. I encouraged everyone to read it but most never did. I would ask these liberals if they were against fracking and police brutality and supportive of Occupy Wall Street and to a person they all said they were…and when I informed them that the assessment asserted that RT covering those subjects was evidence of a nefarious Russian plot to undermine American democracy, they were left befuddled. To me it was obvious that the intelligence community was using anti-Trump hatred and fervor among the #Resistance as a way to surreptitiously criminalize left wing political beliefs through this assessment. Of course people thought I was crazy and ignored my warnings and instead put their faith in the intel community and eventually in St. Mueller.
Without fail, the media and Democrat talking point regarding the assessment was that it was “all 17 intelligence agencies” that declared that Russia interfered in the election. This establishment media talking point of “all 17 intelligence agencies” quickly became the chorus of the hit song “Intel Assessment”, the first single off of the album Russiagate, and was meant to stifle dissent, debate or questioning of the assessment and its findings. Everybody sang this tune…from establishment court jesters on Late Night TV to the journalists at tony institutions like the New York Times to the blathering buffoons of cable news and cocktail party goers who wanted to sound informed. Of course, the problem was that the talking point was patently false. It wasn’t “all 17 intel agencies”, it was parts of four intel agencies…the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with specifically selected analysts from the NSA, CIA and FBI. This is just one of many false narratives that were implanted into the public consciousness by the media and that became ingrained in individual’s minds and solidified as “fact”.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
Speaking of people’s minds, this might be a good time to examine why it was that so many people, in the media and out, fell for the Russiagate hoax hook, line and sinker. I believe that the main reason for this is our old nemesis confirmation bias.
The reason the #Resistance embraced the assessment (even when they never read it) is because the assessment told them what they wanted to hear, and since the assessment made them feel better they didn’t want to dig deeper into it out of the fear they may find out it wasn’t the truth. This is how confirmation bias works.
The intel assessment in particular, and Russiagate in general, confirmed all of the biases of the #Resistance and the establishment. It allowed these folks to believe that Trump didn’t legitimately win, Hillary didn’t lose and more importantly, that they weren’t so spectacularly wrong.
Russiagate had a convenient scapegoat for all that ailed the #Resistance and the establishment…namely Russia. Russia had put Trump in office and Russia had denied Hillary her rightful place on the throne, because of this belief any and all stories and speculation about Russia (and Trump) were immediately assumed to be true. All Russia related claims weren’t taken as truth because after a reasoned weighing of the evidence conclusions were drawn, but rather because those claims on their face simply made people feel better.
Declaring that Russia hacked the election, the DNC, C-Span, Vermont, American diplomat’s brains and all the rest, made people feel good…or at least gave them a brief reprieve from their Trump induced anxiety, fury or depression from which they suffered. That is what confirmation bias does, it excludes negative information that challenges your bias and heightens positive information that confirms it in order to buttress your belief system.
Confirmation bias is radioactive to the critical thinking function. This is why it is so dangerous for the #Resistance. Immediately after Trump’s victory there was a tsunami of “unfriending” in liberal circles where anyone who disagreed with Clinton supporters was exiled, I know this because it happened to me and some of my compatriots. Instead of self-examination in the wake of Hillary’s loss, Clinton supporters doubled down on their confirmation bias and tightened the lock on their echo chamber…which is part of the reason why they lost in the first place. It was in this echo chamber that Russiagate was born and prospered, like a fungus thriving in the darkness of intentional ignorance.
It is in these hermetically sealed echo chambers where “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy thinking” flourish because ideas are never challenged and sharpened but rather are coddled and grow flaccid. The echo chamber insidiously replaces critical thinking with a proud and defiant emotionalism.
The lesson of all this is quite clear…allegedly ”serious” people love to denigrate conspiracy theories…except when those conspiracy theories confirm their biases. If a conspiracy theory tells people what they want to hear then it will gain traction in whatever community needs for it to be believed regardless of how tenuous the supporting evidence for it may be. In the case of the Russiagate conspiracy theory, it told millions of Democrats and establishmentarians exactly what they wanted to hear….that Trump was the lowest of the low, a traitor who only won by cheating…which made them feel good and allowed them to ignore their responsibility in his victory.
MEDIA MALPRACTICE
Media con artists and grifters, like the vacuous and repugnant frauds Luke Harding, Malcolm Nance, Jonathon Chait and David Corn or the coterie of professional liars from the intelligence community like John Brennan, James Clapper and Jeremy Bash or the journalistic poseurs at CNN or MSNBC, like the ridiculous Rachel Maddow. Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes and Chris Matthews, and at The New York Times and the Washington Post, pushed a plethora of Russiagate bullshit stories and narratives for all they were worth and made millions and billions by doing nothing more than making anti-Trumpists feel good by confirming their biases.
Harding, Nance and Corn all wrote books about the Russiagate story that alleged to show the “truth” but were little more than shallow and shameless attempts to pad their bank account at the expense of their #Resistance marks. The Mueller report has decimated the credibility of these men and their books, but that has only forced them to double down on their extravagant claims. And of course, no one in the media is being held accountable for their journalistic malpractice and malfeasance.
Speaking of malfeasance, former head of the CIA John Brennan was lionized by the corporate press as a paragon of truth and honor when he declared Trump a traitor. When Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance last year, the media reacted as if Trump had sodomized Brennan on national television and excoriated the president for being so petty to a “true American hero”.
As I wrote in regards to the media and the #Resistance (in this case at a taping of Bill Maher’s HBO show) fawning over Brennan in an article last August titled “In a Fit of Anti-Trump Pique, Liberals Shamelessly Embrace Deep State Criminals”,
The nadir for the #Resistance occurred shortly thereafter as Brennan rumbled on stage and was greeted by the eruption of a raucous standing ovation by the liberal audience, with Little Bill calling it a "well-deserved standing ovation". Only in the bizarre universe where a silver-spooned, multi-bankrupted, reality television star is president does a former CIA director who has committed crimes and war crimes such as implementing and covering up Bush's rendition and torture regime, spying on the U.S. Senate and masterminding Obama's deadly drone program, get a delirious ovation from those on the left.
Brennan was deeply involved in Russiagate, as he was Director of the CIA when the alleged election meddling occurred. Brennan then used his “intel insider status” to get a job at MSNBC as a talking head and then spent his time on air making outrageous claims about Trump and the devious Russians. Now that Mueller has cleared Trump of collusion, Brennan says he must’ve gotten “bad information”…or as I have been warning for years now, maybe he is just a bad guy who is prone to lying…his history seems to back my assertion. Of course, liberals ignored my warnings on Brennan (and Mueller) because what Brennan told them confirmed their bias and made them feel better.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was the ringmaster of the cable news circus that was Russiagate. Maddow peddled any and all Russophobic conspiracy theory she could get her hands on and her audience ate it up. Maddow’s ratings shot to the penthouse as her integrity went to the bottom of the septic tank. Maddow exploited her audience’s desire for denial by going full Glenn Beck…and you never want to go full Glenn Beck. It is obvious that Maddow made the business decision to tell people what they wanted to hear (confirm their bias) as opposed to the journalistic decision to tell people the Truth.
What is so repugnant to me is that Maddow, Nance, Corn, Harding, Brennan and the rest of the corporate media lap dogs all preyed upon the grief of hurt Democrats in the wake of Trump’s election and sold them a bill of goods regarding Russiagate. MSNBC, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post and the rest of the corporate media exploited vulnerable people who were in pain for their own aggrandizement and monetary gain. These media con-artists did what all con-artists do, they told their marks exactly what they wanted to hear in order to bilk them and enrich themselves.
RUSSIAGATE AUTOPSY - HOW AND WHY
The foundation from which this perfect storm of fraud called Russiagate took root, grew and raged among the elite as well as the rank and file Democrats and liberals was the deep, profound and disorienting grief that staunch supporters of Hillary Clinton fell into after Trump’s 2016 election victory.
Some liberals (women in particular), with a large assist from the media, projected a great deal of cultural, political, psychological and personal meaning onto Hillary Clinton and her 2016 candidacy, understandably so considering she was the first woman to be a presidential candidate from a major party. These supporters projected themselves onto Hillary and she became an avatar and an archetypal symbol for their hopes, dreams, struggles and lives.
These projections fostered a deeply personal and powerful emotional attachment to Hillary among some voters (most particularly, but not exclusively, female Democrats). The problem with this type of projection and archetypal emotional connection is that it often breeds an emotionalism that leads to a crippling of the critical thinking function…and so it was with these particular type of Clinton supporters. The simple idea that Hillary could lose to, in their eyes, such a repugnant, sexist pig as Trump, was entirely inconceivable to these type of Hillary supporters (in the media and the public) because their projections and emotional attachment, and its accompanying emotionalism, caused a myopia and historical amnesia that led them to be blinded to reality on the ground.
TRAUMA
Due to this emotionally induced blindness, when Clinton lost the electoral college to Trump it wasn’t just a defeat or disappointment or shock to these Clinton projectors/supporters…it was a trauma….and I do not use that term lightly. Trauma is derived from the Greek word trauma, which means “ a wound, a hurt; a defeat”, and Clinton projectors/supporters suffered a trauma in every sense of the word as they were “wounded”, “hurt” and “defeated”.
In psychological terms, Hillary’s defeat to Trump felt like an actual physical or sexual assault upon these Clinton projectors/supporters. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true, and proof of it is that Clinton projectors/supporters have been suffering from post traumatic stress for the past two and a half years.
If you look at the symptoms of PTSD they read like a perfect descriptor of Clinton projectors/supporters behavior since Trump defeated Hillary.
1. IRRITABLE OR AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR - Since Trump’s victory and Hillary’s defeat, Clinton projector/supporters have ranted and raved incessantly, called all Trump voters racist and misogynyst, advocated the punching of alt-right members and cheered when it happened, and also shouted at and banned right wing public figures from restaurants and certain spaces. Russiagate was also a form of this symptom of PTSD as evidenced by the wildly aggressive charges and conspiracies being bandied about by supposedly serious journalists.
2. RECKLESS AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR - This is Russiagate in a nutshell. Instead of being rational and logical, Clinton projectors/supporters in the media and the general public threw ever more wild accusations at Trump thinking that Mueller would be the tool by which to remove him from office. The story was a nothing burger from day one…a total farce…but Clinton projectors/supporters were blind to it…and now they have handed Trump a powerful weapon for his reelection. Russiagate is a wonderful example of reckless and self-destructive behavior and cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face.
3. HYPERVIGILANCE - This again took the form of Russiagate, as the media and Clinton true believers saw Russian boogey men and women around every corner. Rachel Maddow and her fans are the poster children for this form of nonsensical and hysterical hypervigilance.
4. EXAGGERATED STARTLE RESPONSE - Again…this is Russiagate in a nutshell as it is an entirely exaggerated startle response. See Rachel Maddow and her co-”conspirators” in the establishment press who are so quick to turn everything Trump does into a Russian conspiracy and the apocalypse. Clinton supporters also pretend like everything was fine before Trump and have an exaggerated startle response when he acts just like every other asshole president we’ve had.
ON DEATH AND DYING
Besides suffering from Trump related PTSD, Clinton projectors/supporters are also suffering from grief. All losses are accompanied by grief of one form or another, and political losses are no different. When reality does not conform to your dreams, then there is a grieving that occurs…but in the case of Hillary projectors/supporters, that grief was much, much more intense than usual. A female candidate didn’t just lose, which would be bad enough as it would signal or reinforce feelings of personal unworthiness among Hillary’s projectors/supporters, but she lost to a man deemed to be not just a misogynist but an abhorrent sexual predator and racist monster. Hillary’s loss seen through this lens, which is the lens that the Hillary projectors/supporters used, was a catastrophic political, moral and ethical defeat, a personal repudiation and a trauma.
In the wake of Hillary’s loss, these projectors/supporters dove into the deep end of the grief pool with the added complication of the burden of PTSD, and the result was that they frothed and flailed and raged about desperately looking for something for which to grasp. The Clinton campaign and the media tossed them a lifebuoy with “Russiagate” written on the side of it and these projector/supporters grabbed on to it with a maniacal fervor.
According to the Kubler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief that in chronological order are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages of grief never quite go in as linear a fashion as one might expect. Grief is usually a one step forward, two steps back type of process where the stage you are in can change from moment to moment and day to day, sometimes moving forward, sometimes moving back.
In the case of Clinton projectors/supporters, Russiagate short-circuited the grief cycle and created a grief vortex where they repeatedly vacillate between denial and anger. Russiagate allowed these wounded, confused, traumatized and grieving Clinton projectors/supporters to cling to the hope that none of it had happened, that none of it was real and that they had been “right” all along. The problem is that reality and time inevitably transform an open system of hope into the closed system of denial. Some of these Clinton projectors/supporters became such dead-enders that they still defiantly declare that Hillary should be sworn in because she is the rightfully and duly elected president…which is a very clear indication of denial winning the day.
HELLO, COG DIS MY OLD FRIEND
The bottom line was this, that Clinton projectors/supporters were in such pain in the wake of Trump’s victory that they would do anything to alleviate that pain. One way to alleviate that pain was through confirmation bias, another was through outright denial, and yet another was through our old friend cognitive dissonance.
As I wrote in my article “Truth, Justice and the Curious Case of Chris Kyle” back in 2014,
Cognitive Dissonance is "psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously". People will contort in all sorts of ways to avoid seeing the uncomfortable truth that is right in front of their eyes and facing that conflict.
In the case of Chris Kyle, his supporters vociferously attacked me for pointing out the incongruity of his tall tales regarding his shooting of two carjackers, his “discovery” of WMD’s in Iraq and a plethora of other lies. These Kyle supporters were struggling with the discomfort of reading information that was at odds with their previously held belief. In order to alleviate that discomfort, they ignored the new information and attacked the source of it…me.
In the case of the 2016 election, Clinton supporters suffered from a similar malady where they simply could not accept that Hillary lost the election, and maybe even more importantly, that Trump actually won it. They were so emotionally attached to Clinton and their dream of a female President that the new information, Trump’s win, caused tremendous psychological discomfort…and in order to alleviate that discomfort they simply denied the new information with the delusion of Russiagate.
Clinton projectors/supporters simply cannot accept the reality of Trump as president and Hillary as defeated because it is so damaging to their identity and their cosmology. So instead they suspend their disbelief by short circuiting their critical thinking, and embrace the delusion of Russiagate.
When news stories appeared that alleged to show Trump’s guilt regarding collusion, liberals would celebrate like it was Christmas morning and pass the stories around like gifts. Days, or even hours later, when those stories were shot down, liberals simply ignored the new information, preferring to live in the delusion upholding grandeur of the original story.
The most glaring example of this is the infamous Steele Dossier, which alleged all sorts of suspicious activity on the part of Trump…the most embarrassing being the supposed “pee tape”. The Steele Dossier has been thoroughly debunked, so much so that even establishment shills like Michael Isikoff, who wrote an entire book with David Corn based upon the presumption that the Steele Dossier was accurate, have now declared it to be totally false. But liberals still cling to the Steele Dossier as if it is the gospel truth, and most believe that Trump is “compromised” (and in attempts to sound sophisticated use terms like “Kompromat”) by the Russians who have “pee tape” or something much worse on him.
The Steele Dossier claimed that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague to collude with Russians and the media and liberals clung to this story as damning evidence of collusion. But when Cohen flipped on Trump he testified under oath before Congress he swore he had never been to Prague. Instead of accepting and integrating this new information, liberals and the corporate media instead posited that Cohen was telling the truth in his testimony about everything except the Prague stuff…this is what cognitive dissonance looks like in action.
More from my Chris Kyle article,
What usually occurs when people are presented with new information that clashes with their strongly held belief, is that they "seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists."
Russiagate was the magic bullet for Clinton projectors/supporters and the #Resistance because it allowed them to alleviate their cognitive dissonance through confirmation bias, which allowed them to live in a state of denial and delusion.
Russiagate may have felt like a lifesaver at the time for these traumatized and hurting Clinton projectors/supporters, but as I pointed out right after the election, it was not a life jacket but an albatross. Denial is normal and natural when grieving, but if you stay in it too long you never evolve and heal from the wound. In the case of Russiagate, the #Resistance and the Clinton projectors/supporters, denial became an addiction that needed to be fed to be maintained in order to keep the pain of reality at bay. This addiction, like all addictions when they are so acute, was accompanied by hysteria, mania and delusion.
NEO-CONNING
The biggest winners in the Russiagate fiasco are not the Trumps, but the neo-cons, who have long wished for a revived war with Russia, be it cold or hot, and now they have not only their conservative cohorts on board but a plethora of supposed liberals who have been duped by Russiagate.
In a fevered attempt to take down Trump through Russiagate, the #Resistance made the calamitous mistake when they whole-heartedly embraced and rehabilitated the neo-cons from the Bush administration who lied us into Iraq and who were aided and abetted in that crime by the same corporate media that has been pushing Russiagate. The Decider himself, George W. Bush, has even been rehabilitated and transformed from being a war criminal and worst president ever to being hailed as a man of great principle and deep character all because he gave a candy to Michelle Obama at a funeral.
Other neo-cons, such as the reprehensible Bill Kristol and David Frum, are now held in the highest esteem by those who should know better just because they oppose Trump on stylistic grounds. Besides reviving the neo-cons and exorcising their Iraq ghosts, the #Resistance also warmly embraced the neo-liberals and their economics which gave us the 2008 housing collapse and the big bailouts among other notable disasters. Russiagate makes for strange bedfellows…but the #Resistance is going to find out that when you sleep with war criminals and banking fraud pigs, you wake up with blood on your hands and smelling like shit.
CONSEQUENCES
The long-term consequences of going all in on Russiagate for the #Resistance, Clinton projectors/supporters and the media are dire.
In their fever and fervor to bring down Trump, the media have handed him a gift of epic proportions by stripping themselves of any last vestiges of credibility they had left. Trump’s favorite claim is that of “fake news”, and when something comes out that makes him look bad, he labels it “fake news” and the media and #Resistance goes crazy. Now with Russiagate, the media have propagated the motherload of “fake news” and have legitimized Trump’s future claims of “fake news”, thus neutering themselves as a functioning and vital part of our Republic.
The Russiagate fiasco is a weapon that Trump will now use to bludgeon his enemies and to protect himself from any further charges of wrong doing (of which, I am sure, there are a lot), and it is entirely the fault of the fourth estate and the #Resistance for having gotten out ahead of themselves and the evidence.
Sadly, just as with their utter failure regarding the Iraq War and WMD’s, the media will face no consequences for their miscarriage of journalism in the case of Russiagate. The loudest media voices that got it wrong…AGAIN…will simply fail upwards and maintain their standing as guardians of the establishment just as they did after the Iraq/WMD mess. The corporate media in America is so tainted and so toxic that it is a cancer on our culture and simply cannot be trusted at all anymore…and that is dangerous for our Republic.
LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
While the media is certainly to blame for this Russia-Gate fiasco, at some point people need to take responsibility for their own thinking, or lack thereof. How many times does the media have to reveal itself to be a mendacious propaganda machine before people wake up and push back? The media malpractice in their coverage of the Iraq War/WMD lies, the housing collapse, the Chris Kyle fabrications, the cavalcade of anti-Russian misreporting, the Jussie Smollett nonsense, the Russiagate fraud, how many more times does the media have to prove itself to be untrustworthy before people start holding them accountable?
And this is not some frivolous question, this is crucial for the survival of the Republic. If the press cannot function with some semblance of impartiality, journalistic quality and professionalism then an authoritarian will simply use the public’s distrust and disgust with them to his advantage and will further erode our already tenuous civil liberties….oh wait…that is already happening!
That is the most frustrating thing about the Russiagate horseshit…it has aided, abetted and emboldened Trump. This shouldn’t be surprising since the corporate media were already complicit in getting Trump elected the first time, but now with their incessant shrieking about the Russiagate “collusion” hoax they have given Trump a great boost for 2020.
At this point in the Russiagate story It isn’t about people having more knowledge in regards to Russia, or Trump or the media, it is about knowledge of oneself. Why do you believe what you believe…and where does your loyalty lie? If it lies anywhere besides the Truth, you are bound to be suckered by something or someone. Remember…if you desperately want something to be true, you should be particularly wary of those who you tell it is.
Regardless of how things go forward from here and whether the report gets released (which I hope it does) or if it gets buried, I ask the #Resistance to listen to me now. I warned you two years ago and you ignored me. Don’t make that same mistake again. My advice to you now is to stop being so God-damn emotional and weak. Get tough. Get rational. Get logical. Get strategic. And most importantly pledge your loyalty not to your party, ideology, country or identity but rather to the Truth. It will serve you and America much better in the long run.
ADDENDUM
As I was writing this piece this week a story titled “Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed” broke in the New York Times that claimed that people from the Mueller team were frustrated over Attorney General Bill Barr’s summary of their findings, and claimed that Mueller’s report is much more damaging to Trump that Barr makes it seem.
Well…that isn’t really what the New York Times article says…but that is how it is being “reported” in its headline and by cable news outlets like MSNBC. In fact, in an odd confluence of events, I was watching MSNBC when the story broke and got to see in real time how dubious their journalism really is as Chris Matthews “paraphrased” the Times article by saying that Mueller’s team is finally speaking up after two years of silence.
Here is the first paragraph of the Times article which caused such a stir.
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney general William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
That is one hell of a paragraph…so let’s break it down.
Cable news and other media have declared that this story is really bad news for Trump because Mueller’s team is finally speaking out and is saying the report will be damning of the President. Of course, upon closer inspection, virtually none of the cable news pontification is even remotely backed up by the facts stated in the article.
For instance…even though the media is claiming this is Mueller’s team breaking their monk like silence…they aren’t. This isn’t Mueller’s team speaking out…these claims are allegedly being made by “associates” of Mueller’s investigators, not the investigators themselves. Beyond that, in that opening paragraph the Times also makes it clear that the sources for the story are “government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations”.
So let’s be perfectly clear as to what this story claims…that “government officials and others” have heard from “associates” of members of the Mueller team, that said Mueller team members believe that the Attorney General “failed to adequately portray their findings”.
This is like a bad game of telephone where the esteemed New York Times reports on third and fourth hand information that was allegedly told to “associates” of investigators on Mueller’s team, and then those “associates” told associates of theirs who are “government officials and others” who then told the New York Times who are now telling us.
Not surprisingly, MSNBC, CNN and the Washington Post all followed up the Times story with equally explosive claims but with similarly distant and dubious sourcing.
It is absolutely stunning when you break down the story and its sourcing and then consider the shock waves of glee this report sent through cable news and the #Resistance. Bill Maher, who is the id and village idiot of the center left, just last night was touting on his HBO show that treason is back on the table and so is collusion, all based on this extremely vacuous and flimsy report in the Times…which clearly states that the finding of “no collusion” is not in contention.
Maher is the hackneyed comedy version of cognitive dissonance with bad skin as on his show last week, the first since the Mueller Report was submitted and the Barr synopsis came out, he declared that he doesn’t need Mueller’s report because he KNOWS Trump is a traitor! This is textbook Cognitive Dissonance, where people “seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists."
This story and the media and the #Resistance’s rapturous response to it proves once again the seriousness of the maladies from which they suffer. This report and the liberal response to it highlights the conformation bias, cognitive dissonance, denial and delusion which I wrote about above. It is also emblematic of the media’s blatant dishonesty and unprofessionalism. This story is just one more piece of evidence for the thesis I laid out in the above article.
It is also a damning indictment that the #Resistance and its media cohorts like Bill Maher and MSNBC are irredeemable and a hopeless lost cause.
