Monday, March 06, 2017

Truest statement of the week

This time, it was even easier than last summer because, in the interim, many of the pseudo-insurgents had swallowed the poisoned pill of neo-McCarthyism, draining their “movement” of all moral authority. After all, if one believes the Big Lie that “the Russians” and their suborned collaborators at Wikileaks were the evil, outside force that had fatally weakened Hillary Clinton year’s long campaign, then the Bernie phenomenon was tainted, too. If Donald Trump’s presidency is mainly the product of a Russian disinformation and destabilization operation, rather than voter rejection of the corporate status quo, then it is the duty of every patriotic Democrat to avoid further rancor within the party, and to unite against the common foe in the Kremlin and his “puppet” in the White House. Which is precisely what Keith Ellison did, in Atlanta, joining with Tom Perez in calling for an investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged dealings with Russians.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, has been absolved. Wikileaks documents showed Podesta had early in the campaign urged Democratic operatives and cooperative media to boost Donald Trump’s candidacy, in the belief that far-right Republicans would be easier to beat. Logically, Trump owes Podesta for at least a portion of the $2 billion in free media publicity he received at the start of his quest -- gifts from the same media corporations that ignored Bernie Sanders’ campaign as long as they could, and would later blame Vladimir Putin for Trump’s success. It now appears that the bulk of Bernie’s supporters have now also bought into the Russian Conspiracy Theory, rendering their intra-party insurgency moot.




-- Glen Ford, "Keith Ellison: Sheep-dogging Through Trumpland" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).