Regarding the Russians-Made-Us-Do-It narrative that the Democrats are their propagandists in the media are busy pushing, some sober thought is much needed.
First, that the world’s sovereign states regularly attempt to interfere with the internal politics of other sovereign states, including their allies, is an open secret among those in the know. The United States is no exception to this rule. And given America’s eminent role as a geopolitical power, everyone has an interest invested in its politics, particularly and especially its national presidential elections.
Second, this being said, the proposition that the Russian government has made attempts (whatever this means) to intervene in our affairs is not implausible. However, it is no more plausible than the proposition that any other country attempted to do the same. In fact, given the wild unpopularity of Obama among Israelis, as well as the justified belief on their part that a vote for Hillary Clinton would be a vote for more of the same, it is more plausible that the Israelis would’ve pulled out all of the stops to insure her defeat.
Given the ever-growing perception that Obama and his fellow partisans are “anti-Israel,” however, the allegation that the Israelis hacked our election, though as baseless as that now being made against “the Russians,” is not politically palatable.
When Russia was ruled by brutal communist dictators, the left couldn’t love it enough. Now, though, in a post-Soviet age when its internationalism has given way to nationalism and Russia is presided over instead by a tough, politically incorrect white man, leftists, like Obama, sound the war drums.
There isn’t much political fallout for a contemporary American politician to fear in talking tough about Putin and Russians.
Third, the Regime (or the Government-Media-Complex) rely upon language—words like “interfere,” “hacking,” “intelligence agencies,” and, most typically, “the Russians”—that, by design, is sorely lacking in precision. The merchants of the narrative count upon the public conflating these terms and drawing inferences that haven’t even come close to being substantiated.
For example, “interfere” is so broad as to mean virtually anything that the user of the term wants for it to mean. Is a foreign head of state who speaks critically of another head of state or prospective head of state, particularly during a time at which the latter is up for election, say, guilty of “interfering” in the affairs of another country? At the very least, “interference” is far from synonymous with “hacking.”
As for our “intelligence agencies,” they constitute a multifaceted tapestry of vastly intricate bureaucratic organizations that are as divided internally as they are with respect to one another. When it is stated that “our intelligence agencies” have concluded one thing or another, the implication is that there is some unanimity of judgment on the subject at hand. Yet there is anything but a consensus amongst those in the intelligence “community” as to what, if any, role “the Russians” played in the presidential election of 2016.
This is another specimen of slippery language, for while “the Russians” are meant to implicate Putin and his government, there is no necessary connection between the two.
Fourth, as investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald—a gay man who has written for The Guardian and who is no admirer of Republicans generally and Trump specifically—has blasted away at the Democrat Party and its proxies in Big Media for cooking the case against Russia. Greenwald notes, for starters, that even those “anonymous” intelligence officials who allegedly remarked in a “secret assessment” that “Russia” hacked DNC emails also admitted that it had absolutely zero evidence to link any of this with the Kremlin.
In other words, there is as much available evidence that Putin had anything to do with hacking DNC emails as there is evidence that Superman or Mickey Mouse were the culprits.
Moreover, even according to Democrat-friendly media, publications like the Washington Post, there is little evidence to defend pointing the finger at any Russians. “Anonymous” sources and “secret assessments” are no grounds for doing so. And even within this “secret assessment,” the Post was forced to (eventually) concede, there were “minor disagreements” between CIA members.
Tellingly, as to what these disagreements were, the Post coverage refuses to divulge.
While some anonymous CIA officials allegedly think that Russia hacked and arranged for Julian Asange to leak DNC emails so as to insure a Trump victory, the FBI has maintained that this position remains wholly unsubstantiated.
Fifth, if the Putin government had hacked away at the DNC email, wouldn’t a man who is supposed to be as big of a thug as everyone says Putin is want to exploit all of that information to blackmail Hillary Clinton and her party? It would have made eminently good sense for a master conniver like Putin to help Clinton win so that he could exert control over the American presidency for the next four or eight years.
On the other hand, if, as Democrats like Obama assure us, the hacked emails were “boring,” then why would a heavy-hitter like Putin even waste his time with them? If they were so unremarkable, then how did they manage to undermine trust in the Democrats and tilt the election in favor of Trump?
The Democrats can’t have it both ways here: If the DNC/Hillary emails were dull, then there would’ve been no point for the Russians, or anyone else, to have hacked them, for no one is going to care about dull emails. If, though, the Russians or anyone else went through the trouble of hacking and releasing these emails with an eye toward catapulting to victory a candidate who was the Underdog of all underdogs, and if this strategy worked, then the content of those emails must have been anything but “boring.”
As per usual, the Dems are trying to square a circle.