President Trump’s tweets, albeit often confusing, increasingly dominate America’s information and political landscape and have inadvertently helped to shed light on a deeper problem within American politics, a sort of hysteria in the American media and political apparatus.
A Frankenstein-like patchwork has made its way home, one of our own making, developed to influence foreign governments and/or to weaken societal fabric of nations abroad.
It entails a mix of propagandized media, surreptitious influence of government institutions, and the always obligatory elected official influenced by money, contributed indirectly, from abroad. It also involves U.S. embassies in local political processes, including elections. Further, add political NGOs, specifically created to oppose existing regimes and sponsoring domestic political parties abroad, and one gets a most treacherous picture.
Conjecture presented as fact, unsourced quotes, rumor, and unsubstantiated information rule the day. No longer is fact-based journalism the norm in America. Not just indicative of the random blogger or “fake news” but of the mainstream media. Media outlets attack or laud individuals based on their politics in relation to that of the media outlet and, incredibly, the media attack one another.
In addition, the mainstream media takes as fact the activist and hacktivist coopted, taxpayer-funded propaganda machines like Radio Liberty and Voice of America. With little or no oversight from Congress, they largely offer uninformed, biased, poorly sourced reporting produced to fit a particular political agenda. Their furtherance of negative stereotypes abroad has also been a dangerous staple.
Counterintuitively, the political establishment was unprepared to deal with this “arrangement,” when applied domestically and presumably at the hands of the Russians.
So, when a mix of fake reporting, leaks, hacks, and political operatives engaging in personal attacks hit U.S. shores, it produced deep social division and a much weaker society. In short, the political establishment has produced another Frankenstein and, as always, it doesn’t know how to deal with it.
Congressional Democrats, who not long ago wouldn’t hesitate to meet with Assad and who cheered the deal with Iran’s radical Mullahs, are now more concerned with AG Sessions’ meeting with the Russian Ambassador, the same Russian diplomat whom the Obama Administration courted during the “Reset-era.” As a side note: The job of each foreign ambassador is to meet with members of Congress — period.
Suspiciously, amongst the most vocal voices attacking Trump’s loyalists for links to Russia are House Democrats Adam Schiff and Jackie Speier. Both seem to be in Russia’s corner. Both are fervent advocates of the illegal occupation of pro-western Azerbaijan by Moscow’s satellite and regional proxy Armenia.
Interestingly, the occupation by Armenia is made possible with Russia’s direct backing, both Democrats are major recipients of donations from the Armenian lobby organizations, which are well known to represent Russian interests and channel Kremlin money into American politics. Schiff and Speier have no qualms about meeting with Armenia’s Consul General in Los Angeles, who, rather transparently, is a Russian citizen and an oligarch with close ties to Kremlin.
There is, most definitely, a pattern.
To boot, these self-appointed guardians of truth in the media have hyped their own hysteria to the point that the President of the United States, however theatrical his antics may be, is accused several times a day of being a Russian agent by long-time Russia sympathizers.
This coupled with an unsubstantiated story in the New Yorker that was screamed from the rafters by the always deeply depressing Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and apparently produced by the same opposition research firm as the now-famed report published by BuzzFeed accused Trump of colluding with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The same supporters of Obama’s appeasement of Mullahs and his direct transfer of billions to the Iranian regime, decided that because a minor project — some $2.5 million — on a hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan, never materialized, there must be a sinister connection. A convoluted web of rumors and insinuations attempted to link a former minister — the article doesn’t even mention that he was fired — to Trump and through even more convoluted rumors to the Iranians.
Perhaps, the authors hoped that the mystique of the name Azerbaijan and the magazine readers’ dislike for Trump would obscure the facts that Azerbaijan is Israel’s ally and best friend in the Muslim world and has a very tense relationship with Iran. Putting Azerbaijan and the Revolutionary Guard of Iran in the same headline is as counter-factual as accusing Trump of colluding with the Iranians.
So, while the mainstream media and Congress indulge in the monster of their own making, their hysteria and questionable campaign contributions by Schiff, Speier, and others, Russia is winning because American society is so pre-occupied with self-destruction, Moscow can go about its business unopposed.
