Booman has a very strong, very interesting post up about the Russian influence in this recent election. There are many good comments as well.
Wanker of the Day: David Harsanyi
I agree with much of what he says and I also agree with some others there who disagree with portions of his post.
But…as usual…I have different take on what has happened. We…the entire U.S. public…are to blame for this fiasco, because we have taken our hands off the wheel and made believe that this nation is some kind of self-driving automobile.
It’s not.
I posted a lengthy comment about this on Booman’s post.
Now I’m posting it here.
Read on.
The strongest statements in this whole thread lie in Tarheel’s comment above:
If nothing is true, then anything is possible.
and
Putin’s Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality.
I wrote a piece here recently that deals with this whole problem:
An excerpt:
JoelDanWalls:
I fully appreciate your skepticism regarding the hacking claims. What I wonder about is what you would consider proof. Even if it were possible to get, say, transcripts of NSA intercepts, I doubt you would be satisfied, and would claim those transcripts were themselves bogus. If an NSA analyst swore under oath that the transcripts were correct, would you accept that, or claim the analyst was a liar? Seriously, what is your standard of proof?
This got me to thinking about what…if any… “standards of proof” we have left in these here United States of Omertica. And I wrote a reply to JDW.
I think it stands alone very well, so I am reprinting it here.
Standard of proof???
In a false news world, there is no “proof” available.
We are living in a post-factual world now, JDW.
All of the things that we used to think we knew? The things that we accpted as “true” due to our upbringing?
Our social programming?
Our schooling, our media brainwashing, etc.?
Gone down the rabbit hole.
Here’s when the truth about the truth finally came all the way out of the closet.
Until then, only a few people really understood how much “the truth” had been perverted in this country since at least Clinton I’s barefaced statement that he “…did not have sexual relations with that woman…” Go further back, to the assassination years. That’s when it started to get really heavy, this false news, postfactual, truthiness world.
And still, only a few people out of our many millions began to call out the lies.
Later on, only a few saw Watergate for what it was…a contest between liars.
The better liars won.
Duh.
On to this year…
Suddenly the truth about the lies…the lies about what and who Obama really was (A slick, neoliberal frontman, nothing more and nothing less) , the lies about neolib rule, the lies about goddamned near everything that our government says it is…began to penetrate the thick skulls of the hoi polloi.
The result?
Trump.
He called the lies out, one by one. No matter that he too was lying…at least he was telling the truth about previous lies. His first big breakthrough? That line about Hillary Clinton, the money he gave her and her subsequent requisite appearance at his daughter’s wedding. He told the truth about the lies that lay behind what we had almost all been misedumacated into believing to be the way our system worked. It was like he threw a shrapnel grenade into the whole system. The splinters flew out, decimating all the liars with reach. Including…eventually…Trump himself.
And now? Now it is rapidly getting to the point where nobody believes nuthin’!!! And well they shouldn’t. The whole curtain of lies has been torn down, revealing the one fact that we are all beginning to be able to see.
Our Grand Societal Wizards have no clothes on. They are just naked little hustlers, hiding behind a curtain of lying tailors.
Each and every one.
Will I once again be accused of being some sort of a nihilist here?
Maybe, but this is a positive development as far as I can see.
Recovery only really begins once you realize that you are sick.
Watch.
Physicians…heal thyselves!!!
Booman’s ongoing argument here is that Russia massively influenced this election with propaganda disseminated through the internet.
I agree. It did.
But the real problem…worse by far than the results of the election…the overarching problem is that our entire news system has been totally “nuked.” Not by Russians but by our own corporate system. People have become so immured to lying media that they can longer tell truth from fiction. Worse, they don’t even try to do so anymore. They just tune into whatever lying media they most enjoy, flop down on the couch and trance out.
And here we are now, finally reaping the whirlwind of lies that started when JFK was assassinated.
The Russians didn’t destroy the concept of truth in America, the CIA did way back in 1963.
Sure, we need to find out who did what in this election. But more importantly, we need to reinstate the concept of “truth” in this country. When an entity like James Clapper can:
1-Barefecedly and publicly lie to the U. S. Senate
2-Have his lies proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be lies
and
3-Remain on the national stage as some kind of authority on anything except brazen lying “in the national interest”
Then our goose is totally cooked.
We can trust no one.
We are living in a PostFactual world.
“Nothing is true; everything is permitted.”-Hassan-i-Sabbah, The Old Man of the Mountain, the person who founded the sect know as “The Assassins.”
We see madmen loose in the streets, guns in hand.
We see massive numbers of Americans, their lives lost to opioids.
We see millions of people being forced to choose between two serial liars in a presidential contest and millions more throwing up their hands in surrender, saying “Why vote? It’s all bullshit.”
We see all of this and so much more.
We see a “Peace President” waging drone wars on civilians.
A so-called “liberal” presidential candidate calling a large part of the population “deplorables” and asserting her right to lie to us by stating that politicians must have contradicting “public and private” positions.
We see urban areas in riot mode over police actions that are inexcusable and…simultaneously…hundreds of news stories excusing those police.
Truth has been thrown out the window.
Instead of gabbling on about whether “them Russkies” did us in or not, le’s get down to brass tacks.
We have done ourselves in by surrendering to a media system that is based on lies, a media system that was totally corrupted by the professional liars at the CIA 60+ years ago in Operation Mockingbird. Putin didn’t pull strings to make HRC say the things she said…it’s her job to prevaricate. He didn’t take over Obama’s mind and make him a baby killer, nor did he somehow infiltrate the DNC and cause it to hustle Bernie Sanders out of the picture. We surrendered our disbelief in the face of massive lying campaigns from the onset of the Dulles years right on through to today.
We “nuked” ourselves!!!
And now we are paying the piper.
Sure…establish who/what/where/when regarding this administration’s dealings with Russia, and punish the hustlers.
But if you want the real truth?
Look within.
Walt Kelly knew, 40+ years ago.
Bet on it.
Look within.
AG
