Neven nails it. Russia is a distraction.
But for some, a useful distraction. Establishment Democrats hope it will draw attention away for their enslavement to money. And their incompetence in running a flawed and corrupt campaign. And their collusion against the candidate threatening their money supply. And their betrayal of many of their most devoted consituencies. Dear god, how do you lose the unions ?
Then it is also a distraction from oh, so, so many promises broken in the Obama Cesarship, the Nobel Peace Laureate, the Caesar of Peace. At home powerful torturers and plutocratic thieves were shielded. Millions were left unemployed, unhoused in poverty. Rapacious banking houses rescued, their wealth restored and they were nursed carefully back to vigor in criminality. Abroad, drone wars were expanded, several more countries were destabilized, more millions engulfed in war.
In the video with Chomsky linked earlier by Neven, he recalled an early harbinger of our present doom, the 2010 election to succeed Ted Kennedy. Which was won by the Republican candidate in a bastion of the Democratic party and Chomsky pointed out that Democrats lost the unions there too. He actually echoed Sara Palin's quip about hope and change, stating that the voters in Massachusetts had seen none of the second and lost the first. He also seems to agree that Sanders would have won and noted that he is the most popular politician in the country.
There is also a significant investment of identity by many in the candidacy of Hillary Clinton coupled with a visceral disgust at Donald Trump. Easier to believe that Russians stole the election, than that the anointed one could lose to a populist vulgarian. Never mind that the narrative requires belief in discredited intelligence institutions, known to be liars, murderers and torturers. Never mind that putative Russian interference included revelation of of the reality of sabotage by Establishment Democrats of the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Never mind that luminaries like Michael Moore and their own precinct workers in the midwest were sounding the alarm and screaming for help long before the election. Never mind that even morons on the street like me could see this wave of discontent from the Mississippi into Appalachia and beyond merely by passing through those forsaken towns and talking to people.
And it is easier for Establisment democrats if they can avoid blame for running a horrible campaign with a deeply flawed candidate, stay in bed with their donors, keep that sweet, sweet money flowing. "We did nuttn wrong, it was the Russians. Where are you union guys and the rest of you gonna go anyway ? There Is No Alternative except to keep doin things the way we always have." If they can get the rubes to buy that story, why, they don't have to change their ways, can keep sucking that money teat forever.
I think this is a game the Establishment Democrats will lose. The story didn't sell so well the last time. The rubes said, "Fuck you. There is always an Alternative. You may not like it, but it's there."
And I see no evidence that anybody, Republican or Democrat, heard the next sentence: "Next time the Alternative we choose will be even worse than this one."
And that Alternative could be far, far worse than a populist Caesar. Several years ago, after the crash, I had an 84 year old man, old time coal miner but now easily a millionaire, and a local philanthropist, look me in the eye and tell me the way it is in too many small towns across the USA: "My neighbors are starving. They are dying and killing themselves. I do what I can, but this can't go on. Nuttn's gonna change until we go to DC and New York and string some of these people up."
His neighbors are worse off today than they were then.
sidd