Many people who hate and fear
Donald Trump
feel that only political black magic or some form of trickery can
explain his election as US President. They convince themselves that we
are the victims
of a dark conspiracy rather than that the world we live in is changing,
and changing for the worse.
Cambridge
Analytica has now joined Russia at the top of a list of
conspirators who may have helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
This is satisfactory for Democrats as it shows that they ought to have
won, and delegitimises Trump’s mandate.
In
the Russian and Cambridge Analytica scandals, dodgy characters abound
who claim to have a
direct line to Putin or Trump, or to have secret information about
political opponents or a unique method of swaying the voting intentions
of millions of Americans. The most doubtful evidence is treated as
credible.
The
dossier by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele,
about Trump’s romps
in Moscow, struck me when I first read it as hilarious but entirely
unbelievable. The US media thought the same when this document was first
being hawked around Washington before the election, and refused to
publish it. It was only after Trump was elected
that that they and the US security agencies claimed to find it in any
way credible.
-- Patrick Cockburn, "It’s wishful thinking to blame Clinton’s loss on Cambridge Analytica" (THE INDEPENDENT).