One by one, the plaster gods fall, cracked and crumbled on the ground: the latest is Bernie Sanders, the Great Pinko Hope of the (very few) remaining Democrats with a modicum of sense who reject the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” paranoia of Rep. Adam Schiff and what I call the party’s California Crazies. The official Democratic leadership seems to have no real commitment to anything other than fealty to a few well-known oligarchs, who provide the party with needed cash, a burning hatred of Russia – an issue no ordinary voter outside of the Sunshine State loony bin and Washington, D.C. cares about – and exotic issues of interest only to the upper class virtue-signalers who are now their main constituency (e.g., where will trans people go to the bathroom?). Overlaying this potpourri of nothingness, the glue holding it all together, is pure unadulterated hatred: of President Trump, of Trump voters, of Middle America in general, and, of course, fear and loathing of Russia and all things Russian.
And now the one supposedly bright spot in this pit of abysmal darkness has flickered out, with Bernie Sanders, the Ron Paul of the Reds, jumping on the Russia-did-it bandwagon and cowering in the wake of Robert Mueller’s laughable “indictment,” in which the special prosecutor avers that $100,000 in Facebook ads were designed to throw the election to Trump – and to help Bernie!
Oh no, says Bernie, from his place of exile in the wilds of Vermont, where the Russians did not take over the electrical grid: It wasn’t me!
Instead of standing up to the crazies – by which I mean the Democratic party Establishment – and saying that the whole Russia-phobic campaign is based on nothing but hot air and fantasy, he’s kowtowing to the very people who are trying to smear him as a Russian agent. Here he is signing on to the Clintonite canon of faith that poor Hillary “had to run against the Russian government” as well as Trump.
This is laughable: there’s no evidence for this other than Mueller’s comical “indictment,” which shows that something called the “Internet Research Agency,” run by an out-of-work chef, spent a grand total of $100,000 – mostly after the election – on Facebook ads that were both anti-Clinton and anti-Trump. Michael Moore attended one “Russian-sponsored” event – a rally of thousands targeting Trump Tower, and, by the way, the only successful “Russian” event (the pro-Trump events were flops).
Not only is Bernie buying into Russia-gate, now that the case for it is collapsing – nearly two years later and there’s still no evidence of “collusion” – but he’s calling for a full-fledged witch-hunt:
“The key issues now are: 1) How we prevent the unwitting manipulation of our electoral and political system by foreign governments. 2) Exposing who was actively consorting with the Russian government’s attack on our democracy.”
This is the real goal of anti-Trump groups like the “Alliance for Securing Democracy” and their “Hamilton dashboard,” which purports to track “pro-Russian” sentiment online: it’s the explicit intention of #TheResistance to censor the media with the cooperation of the tech oligarchs like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s back to the 1950s, folks, only this time the Thought Police are “liberals,” and “socialists” like Bernie and the Bernie Bros.
Sanders’ followers have taken up the hate-on-Russia battle cry with alacrity, with material by the fraudulent fanatic Luke Harding all over the web site of the Democratic Socialists of America. And being the left edge of the Democratic party, DSA will be supporting the very Democratic officeholders and officials who are shouting the loudest about Russia.
Coming soon: a congressional “investigation” into “pro-Russian” Americans using the “Hamilton dashboard” and the Southern Poverty Law Center as templates. Remember the House UnAmerican Activities Committee? Well, it’s coming back. That’s always been in the cards, and now those cards are about to be dealt.
I’ll tell you one thing: I would have colluded with the Klingon Empire to prevent Hillary and her band of authoritarian statists and warmongering nutcases from taking the White House. If only the Russians had intervened, they’d have been doing this country – and the world – a great service. Alas, there’s not one lick of solid evidence – forensic, documentary, witness testimony – that shows this. Which is what the Mueller investigation is all about: the Democrats are claiming there was interference, and Mueller is out to find corroboration. Except it’s been over a year and he’s come up with … nothing.
Oh, he’s got money-laundering charges on Paul Manafort and associates, but that has nothing to do with the Trump campaign: it all happened years before Trump ran. He’s got Carter Page pleading guilty to lying to the FBI – but it’s not clear what this means, exactly, since he’s not been charged with a crime after all this time.
The Deep State’s bid for power has hit several roadblocks recently, but it could yet succeed. First, Mueller could indict the President for “obstruction of justice” – a charge derived not from any real criminal activity, but from the investigation itself. I think this is the most probable outcome of all this.
Barring that, however, there is one road they could and probably would go down, given the intensity of their hatred for this President and their overweening power lust. Having gone this far in an attempt to overthrow a sitting President, they can’t just stop halfway to their goal. They have to go all the way, or else suffer the consequences – public exposure, and possible criminal charges. In short, if they fail to get Trump on some semi-legal basis, I think they’d welcome his assassination.
The Deep State cannot allow the Trump administration to stand for a number of reasons, the chief one being that the coup is already in progress and there’s no stopping it now. The President’s enemies are legion, they are powerful, and they are abroad as well as here on American shores. They cannot allow his brand of “America First” nationalism to succeed, or seem to succeed: it conflicts too violently with their globalist vision of a borderless America-centric empire ruled by a coalition of oligarchs, technocrats, and Deep State operatives who’ve been shaping world events from the shadows for generations.
So no matter what you may think of Trump and his policies, the real question is: will the Deep State and their allies in the media succeed in their bid for power? Will they oust a sitting President and institute a new era in our politics, one in which the political class can exercise its veto over the democratic will of the people?
That’s the issue at hand and that’s why I spend so much time writing about Trump and his enemies’ efforts to destroy him. Because if the Deep State succeeds, the America we knew and loved will be no more. Something else will take its place – and believe me, it won’t be pretty.
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NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
