The current liberal campaign on Russian Collusion would be all fun and frolic, if it weren't for this.
Back in the day, liberals were absolutely enraged by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and his accusations about Communists in the State Department. Thus "McCarthyism" is to this day almost as important a liberal pejorative as "racism."
Only, of course, there really were Communists in the State Department. Hello Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss.
Now we have liberals from coast to coast fainting in the aisles over the issue of Russian Collusion in the late presidential election.
Earth to liberals: of course there was Russian Collusion in the election. That's what Russians do, starting back back in the good old days of the early Bolshevik Revolution. Mainly, of course, the Russians want to sow conflict and distrust in the fields of American politics, so that the US will be less of a global hegemon. I guess they know what they are doing.
Also, any presidential campaign worth its salt is going to have contacts with foreign powers. Moreover, any businessman like Trump with international interests is going to have foreign contacts, and some of them are likely to be unsavory, because the borderland between government and business is not for the neophyte. After all, government is an agent that gets its money by intimidation and force, kinda like the Mob. You need to be really careful dealing with outfits like that; you need to have intermediaries and deniability.
Anyway, there is nothing that has come up thus far that indicates Russian Collusion in the Trump campaign.
But, of course, there is ample evidence of Russian Collusion in the Clinton campaign. The whole point of the Steele Dossier is that Christopher Steele got his information from Russian contacts, and that the whole Steele Dossier was a operation funded by the Democratic Party and/or the Democratic National Committee.
Wow. Think of that. Dirt on Trump obtained from nameless Russian officials. Imagine! No Collusion there, no sir, not no how.
What is stunning to me in this whole Russian Collusion storm and its corollary, the suborning of the Department of Justice and the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign, is that Democratic partisans -- including the Democratic partisans in the media -- cannot see what is in plain sight.
Hello liberals! The Obama administration was spying on the Trump campaign, using the FBI's counterintelligence apparatus to do it.
Hello liberals! When the government spies on the campaign of the opposing party, it is really bad news.
Hello liberals! Remember Watergate? That issued from a burglary of the Democratic National Committee by a bunch of campaign operatives. But at least they were campaign operatives and not actual government employees. When the Nixon people tried to suborn the FBI and the CIA to cover up their misdeeds the FBI and the CIA refused.
Hello liberals! Do you not see the problem? In 1972 the intelligence community refused to assist the Nixon administration in spying on the opposition. Everyone agreed it was the worst thing since sliced bread. In 2016 the FBI was perfectly willing to assist the party in power with spying on the party out of power. Yet today there seems not to be a liberal in the land that is willing to agree that this is really a problem.
I am reading Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning right now and he is in the middle of explaining the basic human response, that of reacting when you bump into something unexpected. His line is that we run along in our accustomed paths, not paying much attention, just living our lives, until something unexpected happens. But when something unexpected happens then we have to stop our life and reassess the situation. Is the situation nothing in particular, such as bumping into a chair in the hallway, or it is serious, such as: the elevator is out of commission and the door to the stairway is locked and there is no way out of the building?
Right now it seems that my liberal friends have not even realized that something unexpected has happened, let alone that we are facing perhaps the biggest government scandal of our lifetimes.
The point that Jordan B. Peterson is making is that the whole of life really hangs on making a good decision, a good adaption, when something in your life goes wrong, whether it is the trivial business of bumping into a chair in the hallway or the deadly serious experience of losing your job because you have completely misread your role and your relationship with your fellow workers.
The lesson of Trump, and Brexit, and now the Italian election is that something has changed. But the ruling class all over the world is still doing its thing of identity politics and the administrative state as though nothing had changed.
It would be really, really nice if you ruling class chaps and you dutiful liberals raised your eyes from the vital task of hunting down hate speech and look up to see that something is seriously going wrong with your glorious administrative state dynasty.
Because if you don't then I am afraid that things are going to get really mean and nasty.
Back in the day, liberals were absolutely enraged by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and his accusations about Communists in the State Department. Thus "McCarthyism" is to this day almost as important a liberal pejorative as "racism."
Only, of course, there really were Communists in the State Department. Hello Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss.
Now we have liberals from coast to coast fainting in the aisles over the issue of Russian Collusion in the late presidential election.
Earth to liberals: of course there was Russian Collusion in the election. That's what Russians do, starting back back in the good old days of the early Bolshevik Revolution. Mainly, of course, the Russians want to sow conflict and distrust in the fields of American politics, so that the US will be less of a global hegemon. I guess they know what they are doing.
Also, any presidential campaign worth its salt is going to have contacts with foreign powers. Moreover, any businessman like Trump with international interests is going to have foreign contacts, and some of them are likely to be unsavory, because the borderland between government and business is not for the neophyte. After all, government is an agent that gets its money by intimidation and force, kinda like the Mob. You need to be really careful dealing with outfits like that; you need to have intermediaries and deniability.
Anyway, there is nothing that has come up thus far that indicates Russian Collusion in the Trump campaign.
But, of course, there is ample evidence of Russian Collusion in the Clinton campaign. The whole point of the Steele Dossier is that Christopher Steele got his information from Russian contacts, and that the whole Steele Dossier was a operation funded by the Democratic Party and/or the Democratic National Committee.
Wow. Think of that. Dirt on Trump obtained from nameless Russian officials. Imagine! No Collusion there, no sir, not no how.
What is stunning to me in this whole Russian Collusion storm and its corollary, the suborning of the Department of Justice and the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign, is that Democratic partisans -- including the Democratic partisans in the media -- cannot see what is in plain sight.
Hello liberals! The Obama administration was spying on the Trump campaign, using the FBI's counterintelligence apparatus to do it.
Hello liberals! When the government spies on the campaign of the opposing party, it is really bad news.
Hello liberals! Remember Watergate? That issued from a burglary of the Democratic National Committee by a bunch of campaign operatives. But at least they were campaign operatives and not actual government employees. When the Nixon people tried to suborn the FBI and the CIA to cover up their misdeeds the FBI and the CIA refused.
Hello liberals! Do you not see the problem? In 1972 the intelligence community refused to assist the Nixon administration in spying on the opposition. Everyone agreed it was the worst thing since sliced bread. In 2016 the FBI was perfectly willing to assist the party in power with spying on the party out of power. Yet today there seems not to be a liberal in the land that is willing to agree that this is really a problem.
I am reading Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning right now and he is in the middle of explaining the basic human response, that of reacting when you bump into something unexpected. His line is that we run along in our accustomed paths, not paying much attention, just living our lives, until something unexpected happens. But when something unexpected happens then we have to stop our life and reassess the situation. Is the situation nothing in particular, such as bumping into a chair in the hallway, or it is serious, such as: the elevator is out of commission and the door to the stairway is locked and there is no way out of the building?
Right now it seems that my liberal friends have not even realized that something unexpected has happened, let alone that we are facing perhaps the biggest government scandal of our lifetimes.
The point that Jordan B. Peterson is making is that the whole of life really hangs on making a good decision, a good adaption, when something in your life goes wrong, whether it is the trivial business of bumping into a chair in the hallway or the deadly serious experience of losing your job because you have completely misread your role and your relationship with your fellow workers.
The lesson of Trump, and Brexit, and now the Italian election is that something has changed. But the ruling class all over the world is still doing its thing of identity politics and the administrative state as though nothing had changed.
It would be really, really nice if you ruling class chaps and you dutiful liberals raised your eyes from the vital task of hunting down hate speech and look up to see that something is seriously going wrong with your glorious administrative state dynasty.
Because if you don't then I am afraid that things are going to get really mean and nasty.
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