Fox News is all-in on the Seth Rich nonsense.
So are the Russians.
So are silly, debunked, I-wish-to-hell-they'd-just-go-away conspiracy sites--Breitbart, Drudge, ZeroHedge, etc.
Meanwhile, there's a dead son, a murdered brother, brokenhearted friends, a grieving family--and a bunch of desperate folks politicizing his death to get the spotlight off of TrumpCo's treason.
Despicable. Disgusting. But par for the course.
I agree. I can only speak for myself and that is that I'm not interested in that for political reasons, as I'm against Trump, the Republicans, the Corporate Democrats, Putin, etc. I sincerely hope that Seth Rich didn't leak the DNC mails to Wikileaks, because if he did and it gets known, things will get very, very messy. I'm also surprised that there is no attention for this from mainstream media whatsoever, and I don't mean the latest BS from Fox and that silly attention-craving private investigator, but I mean, the story in general. Although surprised isn't the right word.
That's my biggest fear with this all-out war on Trump and 'Russia'. That it takes too long and backfires.
In a simplisitc, back-and-white world, certainly Democrats would have but two choices:
A) See how deeply Trump worked with a hostile foreign state to subvert our democracy, and just let everything else go to hell; or...
B) Focus solely on internal problems, and surrender our democracy to Americans who invite hostile outsiders to influence the electorate, keeping our fingers crossed that those hostile outsiders will change their minds next time and let free elections take place so progressives can attain and retain positions of power so we can deal with those issues.
I don't know about the foreign hostile state, but Trump is definitely in bed with Russian oligarch money. Like most American politicians are in one way or another. There still is very little hard evidence - at least shared with us, the people - about that meddling in the elections.
If it is so easy to sway the American elections, and you believe that, you also believe that the American people is stupid. And if the American people is that stupid apparently you can only sway their minds by employing the same tactics, right? That's a cul-de-sac. That won't solve anything and more importantly, you're not winning anyone over this way, except liberal know-it-alls.
There is so much bloodthirsty intensity in all this that I fear that to a lot of people this will look like a subversion of democracy and Trump is the victim. That's how it would look to me, if I didn't know any better. But you need those people on your side if you really want to change things! A lot of those people aren't evil or dumb, they're desperate!
Fortunately, the world is neither so simplistic nor so black-and-white. There are at this moment tens of millions of smart people fully capable of simultaneously walking and chewing gum; these people know that we can both investigate Trump's aiding and abetting of Putin AND work on the dozens of issues facing Americans today. We can look into whether and how deeply Flynn's and Manafort's criminal actions extend into the White House AND show Americans that liberals (and not conservatives) have given America most of those things it cherishes most.
But, Jim, almost all the attention goes out to this Trump-Russia-thing. To me and my limited perspective here in Europe with almost only the ASIF and Youtube as my resources, it looks as if this is all-consuming, feeding on itself, especially on Democrat websites. I've checked a few in the past few days and all they're about is Trump-Russia-Trump-Russia-Trump-Russia.
Where is the attention to all that stuff that is going to be needed to sway enough American people so that real change can come about? Does that only come into play after Trump is gone? What if it takes months and months, or even up to the next presidential election? Is there any strategy to this? Why not let Trump and the GOP f**k up some more together so that they get wiped out in the next elections, and focus all the energy on breaking the hold of Corporatist politicians on the Democratic Party? The primary reason that Trump is president, is because of the massive mistake of letting Clinton run and the way her campaign was run. The Democrats need to own that mistake and learn from it, instead of going on a witch-hunt, rightly or not.
The election simply hasn't stopped, and it won't be over until everyone has chosen the lesser evil. But it's really important there is a third choice before people get to choose again. And that's why it's so important to get priorities straightened out.
You say both can be done at the same time, but to me it looks like one thing needs to be done first and then the other can be done. I think that's a strategic mistake. Get your own house in order while the other house destroys itself. Because it will.
Those consuming only right wing media--or at least living on a diet consisting primarily of it--can be easily misled into thinking there's nothing to see, no "there" there; Fox barely mentions Russia, and conservative talk radio is working overtime trying to fool its listeners into thinking this is all a witch hunt and an effort to delegitimize Trump. But this isn't nothing. Far from it. And if the steadily increasing drip-drip-DRIP of denial and obfuscation from Washington doesn't illustrate that, the multiple grand juries looking into things certainly should.
I agree with you, but a lot of what I see from the rest of mainstream media, isn't all that better. It seems everyone has an agenda, and we ain't in it. It's all about pushing ratings and ideologies.
On another note: there is absolutely no way that Trump gets eight years out of this. People with favorability ratings in the 30s simply don't get re-elected. In fact, people with ratings in the 30s are prone to getting primaried. And Trump has absolutely NOTHING up his sleeve that will reverse those terrible numbers. The emperor has no clothes--and very few are afraid to tell him that.
I hope you're right, and I hope this isn't done in a way that lets the GOP nutters get at the helm.
What a mess...
And what Terry says.