Saturday Night Live had a really funny ha-ha joke the other night. Making fun of Trump’s whiny tweet asking “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” the funny ha-ha SNL news guy said brightly: “Of course not! At least Nazi Germany had the guts to take on Russia!”

You see how really ha-ha funny that is? Sure, more than 25 million people died as a result of this display of “guts,” and sure, the Holocaust was greatly accelerated by the invasion, which brought millions of more victims within its evil purview, and yeah, OK, it was an act of naked, insane aggression that had as its explicit aim the murder (directly and by starvation) of 40 to 50 million Jews and Slavs — but Hitler sure gave it to those Russkies, right? Trump could learn from that example, right? See how ha-ha funny that is?

Especially from the funny ha-ha folks at SNL — who paid Trump to be the host of their show while he was conducting the most racist, hateful political campaign in modern American history. They normalized his hatred, they gave him a national platform to show he was an all-right guy with a sense of humor, no big threat, no big deal. They normalized him, lionized him, helped him reach millions of people who pay little attention to the news. Now, of course, they’re “leading the resistance” with “cutting-edge comedy” — Alec Baldwin puckering his lips and fawning on a shirtless Putin — and with really funny ha-ha stuff like saying Trump should totally be more like that gutsy Hitler guy and "take on Russia."

Meanwhile, Trump and his minions and the Congressional extremists are already rolling back every law and regulation they can lay their hands on in a slavering frenzy to poison the earth, remove all restrictions on corporate rapine, strip millions of health care, roll back decades of hard-fought civil rights advances, double the military budget and build a Berlin Wall on the Mexican border. It’s a full-bore Barbarossa on the wellbeing and common good of the American people (and the world) — but who cares about that? According to the funny ha-ha guys at SNL — and practically the entire Democratic Party and the so-called liberal media — what Trump should really be doing is “taking on Russia.” And if he does that — what? Will none of the other things matter? Will that make him “legitimate” in John Lewis’ eyes?

Of course, Trump’s bashing of Lewis was ignorant and racist and sinister and wrong. But look at the reality. Trump won the presidency because of a years-long, systematic, all-out vote suppression crusade by Republicans, aimed directly at African-American voters. It is not even debatable that hundreds of thousands of African-Americans across the country were locked out of voting by the GOP-passed laws — including in the crucial swing states. But that didn’t make Trump illegitimate in Lewis’s eyes. Trump’s victory was also due to the convoluted, anti-democratic Electoral College system set up in the 18th century to mollify the demands of slave-owners. But that didn’t make Trump illegitimate in Lewis’s eyes. Trump’s sickening racist campaign didn’t make him illegitimate in Lewis’s eyes. Trump’s egregious corruption didn’t make him illegitimate in Lewis’s eyes.

No, the one thing that roused John Lewis to anger and caused him to declare that Trump is illegitimate is the fact that US intelligence services have released reports alleging that Russia may have been involved in hacking emails which, by revealing the truth about collusion and vote-rigging in the Democratic primary, made the Clinton campaign look bad. That’s the only thing that makes Trump illegitimate in Lewis’ eyes. These are, of course, the same intelligence services that hounded Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. for years; the same ones that supplied the lies for Bush to “take on Saddam” like Hitler did Russia with a war of aggression; the same agencies that were caught lying about hacking the United States Senate a couple of years ago trying to quash a report on CIA atrocities.

But now we must implicitly believe them. We must pick up the sword they have given us, and we must have the “guts” to “take on Russia” — just like Nazi Germany did. We are told this in serious tones by serious people like Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan — the same John Brennan who played a key role in cooking intelligence about Saddam’s non-existent WMD program. He was instrumental in a process that led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in a hellish spiral of death and chaos that is still going on today. But we must believe this man now — this proven liar, this dishonest dealer, this warmongering spy. We must believe when he tells us that we have to “take on Russia.”

But of course, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. So in addition to the very serious words of very serious serial liars like John Brennan, we also get the same message — “Take on Russia! Take on Russia! Take on Russia!” — in more easy-peasy palatable forms, through venues like the funny ha-ha crew at Saturday Night Live. Take on Russia — just like the Nazis did! Ha ha! Hee hee! Sure, we helped normalize Trump by putting him our hip cool funny ha-ha TV show — but look at us now, sticking it to the Man, leading the Revolution and, yes, above all, “taking on Russia”!

I don’t like Putin. I didn’t like Putin when George Bush was looking into his soul and embracing him as a partner. I didn’t like Putin when a Kremlin-connected bank gave Bill Clinton $500,000 for a single speech after he helped Russia gain a huge share of the American uranium market. (This was direct payment of “Russian gold”, straight into the pockets of a man whose wife was the head of U.S. foreign policy at the time. Is this not at least as questionable as Trump’s unsuccessful feelers for Russian business deals? And does this direct Russian monetary influence make Clinton’s former presidency “illegitimate” in Lewis’s eyes? I’m guessing not.) I don’t like Putin today. But I don’t think I have ever seen such a full-scale, all-out demonization and “Othering” campaign like the one going on now, not just against Putin and his loathsome regime, but Russia and Russians in general. Not even the run-up to the Iraq War was so blatant and blunt and racist. At least in the public propaganda, the Iraqi people themselves weren’t demonized, but depicted as victims of a tyrant. (Of course, we know what the Dick Cheney-led oil-grabbers REALLY thought of the filthy Arabs sitting on oil that God meant for fat white guys from Wyoming.) But more and more we see the stance, the assumption, that the worthless Russian people deserve whatever’s coming to them for supporting Putin. (Oddly enough, one sees the same take in “liberal” circles about U.S. regions that voted for Trump: “those people” deserve whatever they get, they’re scum, they deserve to die.)

Where is all this headed? Does it begin with funny ha-ha jokes about invading Russia like Hitler did — and end with actually invading Russia like Hitler did? What is it that our newly converted CIA liberals and New McCarthyite progressives really want? War with Russia? On what grounds? Do they really think Russia is going to invade Poland? (It was the other guy who did that, remember — the new hero of the funny ha-ha SNL guys.) Do they want nuclear war over Crimea — while they happily do business with Tibet-gobbling China (whose regime is actually more repressive than Putin’s)? Everything in this broad-ranging anti-Russian campaign sounds and feels like the run-up to the Iraq War (as Patrick Cockburn points out). So is that the ultimate aim — war? Is this what our good liberals and progressives are signing up for? Will they be laughing all the way to the fall-out shelter? “At least we took on Russia, ha ha ha ha!”

Yes, let’s have an investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the election. Let’s throw in the alleged meddling by Ukraine too. We might also look at alleged meddling by Israel, South Korea, Turkey (that perennial back-door meddler and buyer of congressfolk), by Taiwan, Saudi Arabia (which gave millions of dollars to the family foundation of one of the candidates who wasn’t named Trump) and any other nation whose covert operators might have been plying their trade to influence events in 2016 (as they do in every election). I would be very happy if nefarious Trump connections were found. I'd be happy to see him be the first president ousted for treasonous pre-election dealings — especially after presidents like Nixon and Reagan (the treacherous “October Surprise” that the CIA chief turned VP candidate G.H.W. Bush negotiated for him with the Iranians) got away with their treason.

But let’s also, for God’s sake, look at the real reasons why Trump’s presidency is illegitimate. Let’s focus on the real damage he is actually doing and will do. Let’s have genuinely open investigations of any foreign meddling — while we also have a full-blown Church Committee-like probe into America’s incessant and pervasive meddling and rigging of elections all over the world, year in, year out, decade after decade. (Including the mass-murdering “regime change” interventions which could be seen as somewhat worse than hacking the emails of political hacks.)

2.
Of course, I’m falling into an old journalism trope here. I’m saying “Let’s do this, let’s do that” — offering some positive alternatives after a negative analysis — when I know that none of this will be done. The Democrats will continue to believe that they are as pure as the driven snow, and that their CIA-fed demonization campaign against Russia is nothing like Bush's bad old CIA-fed demonization campaign against Iraq. Their McCarthyism — which sees Kremlin agents behind everything, including anti-fracking campaigns and the Occupy movement and skeptical analyses of CIA reports — is nothing like the bad old McCarthyism that saw Kremlin agents behind everything. Like John Lewis, they will continue to be incensed by an alleged email hacking while sidelining actual, factual, real-life, in-your-face evils like voter suppression and the ravages awaiting from the Exxon-Goldman Sachs-Christian Nationalists Trump has loosed upon the nation.

They won’t look at the evils done in their progressive name by the progressive president they now mourn. They won’t look at Yemen, Libya, Honduras, or how their champion became the greatest arms dealer in the history of the world, or how he deported more than 2 million people (including thousands of children fleeing the coup regime he and Hillary Clinton backed in Honduras). They won’t look at how he saved the gilded wreckers of the economy and let millions of ordinary people lose their homes. They won’t remember the reports in the New York Times where Obama admitted that he allowed ISIS to grow in order to meddle in the electoral process in Iraq and get another government there more to his liking. They won’t remember the NYT story outlining — in hushed, reverent tones — the death squad that Obama personally ran in the White House, meeting weekly with security chiefs to finalize death lists of people to be assassinated that week — without trial, without defense, without warning. They won’t recall Obama’s approval of “signature strikes,” allowing numerous operators “in the field” to kill unknown people — not even named “terrorist suspects” — if they are spotted, by drones, carrying out “suspicious behavior” … like putting shovels in a truck. They won’t recall the brutal neoliberalism of his trade policies, his Stasi-like expansion of the surveillance system, his unprecedented persecution of whistleblowers, his cowardly protection of CIA torturers.

They won’t look at any of this, they won’t remember any of it, they won’t learn a damn thing from it. They will spend the next four years railing about Russia (and, ha ha, trying to get Trump to “take on Russia” like Hitler did, ha ha hee hee) while fighting like hell to get back to the system that gave us all the horrors named above.

Trump’s rise has proven once and for all that that that system is broken. Something different is going to take its place. It could be Trumpism — it could be something even worse. Or it could be something better. It would be nice to think that our Democrats and liberals and progressives and enlightened media types would leap wholeheartedly into an effort to build this better system on the blasted, rotten ruins of the old one, instead of trying frantically to resurrect it in its worst aspects. But, laying aside old tropes, I don’t think they will. There is much that could be done, but I don’t think they’ll do it.

I would be happy to be proved wrong, of course. I find few encouraging signs among the generations now in ascendance — but I do see a fire and an openness to genuine change in some of the younger generations, including my children. If we can hold on until it’s their time, if we can shore up enough fragments against the ruins until they can shape the world, there might be hope. We owe them that.

I keep trying to get my head around the much-bruited notion that Trump and the Establishment (or the Deep State) are at war with one another. While lurid headlines might give that impression, in actual fact, Trump has appointed the most “Establishment” cabinet imaginable, pandering to every aspect of our elites’ agendas.

He’s put an oil man in the State Department. He’s put rabidly pro-war figures in charge of the Pentagon and national security. He’s given control the economy and most domestic policy to that avatar of the Establishment, Goldman Sachs (at current count, six GS executives or alumni hold top spots in his inner circle). He’s given control of the Energy Department to one of the energy corporations’ most faithful courtesans. He’s given control of the intelligence agencies to people who have long advocated draconian expansions of the agencies’ powers. He’s promised the techno-lords of Apple and Facebook and Google (and others) that they will reap billions upon billions of dollars in a “tax holiday” that will let them bring home the loot they’ve stashed in overseas tax havens. He’s promised to vastly expand military spending, pleasing the all-powerful war profiteering lobby. He’s promised to lift environmental restrictions on industry, pleasing the Koch Brothers to no end. Even the mainstream media — much of which is ostensibly opposed to Trump — knows it will go on reaping bumper profits from his fulminations, as they have done since the beginning of his campaign. The list goes on and on.

I would like to see demonstrated in what way Trump is at war with — or poses the slightest threat to — the Establishment, the Deep State, the ruling class, or whatever you want to call the power structures on the commanding heights of American society. No doubt there are factions within the seething morass of the military-industrial-intelligence complex with various motives for undermining Trump; this is the case with every presidency now. (Recall how the Pentagon rolled Obama into a large “surge” in Afghanistan by pushing their agenda in public beforehand, forcing him to either go along or look “weak” in the first days of his presidency.) Some factions might be protecting their turf against the newcomers that any new president inevitably brings in; some factions might be trying to bring Trump to heel in case he might oppose or curtail their activities; some factions just might not like the cut of his jib; there are, as always, myriad reasons for factional infighting and rodent-rogering and sinister gamesmanship among the vast intelligence “community.”

But the idea that Trump, of all people — and his appointees, of all people — are going to somehow attack or damage or seek to undermine in any way the Establishment seems fairly ludicrous to me, given the actual appointments he has made and the actual policies he has consistently proposed. But as long as we all keep chasing every burp of his twitter feed or spit-spewing bluster of his public statements — while treating every nocturnal emission of the intelligence factions as gospel truth — we’ll stay lost in the fog of this phony war … even as our elites (Trump very much included) continue to devour the world and take us further into darkness, division, ruin and strife.

Various factors have kept long-form writing at a minimum lately, but shorter blasts on Facebook have been possible from time to time. Below is a edited selection of a few rants from a month of madness:

Progressives Convert to Langley Literalism
"The CIA said it. I believe it. That settles it." This is apparently the new progressive version of the old Bible Belt bumper sticker. Below, the Washington Post, after five days, walks back its Friday fake news scare story, which was wrong on virtually every assertion of "fact" in the original. Meanwhile, Trump hobnobs with mobsters and his business partners (a tautology, I know) to little notice, while the extremists in Congress prepare their neofeudal blitzkreig. But by all means, let's keep looking for reds under the bed while homegrown, all-American brigands set the house on fire in broad daylight.

Cloud Cover
Almost half of the nefarious IP addresses in the government's Russian hacking report are actually Tor nodes that are open to anyone to use. (Yes, Russians included. And your little brother.) Another fun fact: the Tor network was developed by the US government so its agents could hide in its giant haystack while collecting intelligence and conducting cyber-espionage. Another fun (and weird) fact: Wikileaks and other dissidents encourage whistleblowers and leakers to use Tor, despite its connection to the US military and intelligence services. So who is watching whom leak to whom and from where and why? In how many layers and on how many levels are we being gamed? The "cloud of unknowing" cultivated by spies at home and abroad leaves us all in the dark -- and that's the way the Great Gamers like it.

The Apotheosis of Economic Brutalism
After appointing yet another Goldman-Sachs man as head of the SEC (fox in charge of henhouse), Trump is preparing an 'unpresidented' tax 'holiday' that will allow the biggest corporations to bring home billions of dollars they've been stashing off-shore to avoid supporting the infrastructure, education, security, opportunity and well-being of American communities. Like the last such "holiday," it will be used by the super-rich to stuff their own gobs and game the markets – not create jobs.

By the way, this "holiday" was the main concern of the super-cool, progressive techno-barons from Facebook, Google, Apple, etc., who eagerly joined Trump's "technology summit" in his golden tower after the election. Like the railroad tycoons and oil barons of old, we are all reliant on their products and services, but let's be clear about one thing, and keep it always in mind: today's techlords -- Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google and the rest -- are one huge stinking basket of deplorables. And they will cozy up to Trump just as quickly and ardently as the most cretinous neo-nazi or Fox News zombie out there.

Exile on Main Street
This brief, factual story is a harsh indictment of a society that has needlessly condemned huge swathes of its people to lives of hardship, decay, fear and division. Millions have been sacrificed on the altar of the extremist cult of market fundamentalism: the fanatical belief, fervently embraced by both parties, that the bloated profits of a privileged few far outweigh any and all consideration of the common good. Future generations will look back in astonished horror at how a country could degrade its own people in this way.

Office Party
Why wasn't Trump's Treasury pick prosecuted for more than 1,000 foreclosure violations, illegally kicking families out of their homes? Apparently the desk – or maybe it was a chair – in the California attorney general's office decided to let Trump's crook go free. That's what the state's former AG – now a new 'progressive' US senator – tells us. Letting the Trump crook loose was "a decision my office made." Not her, apparently; the office. Hey, maybe it was her computer that made the decision! I'll bet Putin got hold of it and told it to tell her to shut down the investigation.

Bipartisan Bomb Berserkery
A deliberate attempt by Congressional Republicans to re-stoke the nuclear arms race and weaponize space has been overwhelmingly approved with virtually no opposition from Democrats. According to a top expert from an actual manufacturer of actual missile systems, the proposal "defies the laws of physics and is not based on science of any kind. [It is] insanity, pure and simple." But the GOP extremist behind the proposal says his fantasy is "worth any price" for the (non-existent) "security" it will (not) give us. Apparently, our staunch progressive Democrats agree: and so a new nuclear arms race will begin. We seem to be living in a civilization that, for whatever reason or reasons, has decided to eat itself alive.

Putin-crazed Progressives Ignore Genuine Vote Rigging Scandal
(Dec. 22) Like everyone else, I don't know the truth about the charges of Russian interference in the election. I do know that the overwhelming focus on this issue has led to a near-total neglect of the scandal that ACTUALLY cost Clinton the Electoral College vote: the hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters in key swing states who were disenfranchised by the vote-suppression laws that GOP-controlled states have passed. (Along with the deliberate neglect of voting machines in minority precincts, leading to breakdowns and "lost" votes, not to mention the arbitrary closing of hundreds of polling stations in minority precincts.) This is a blazing smoking gun, lying there in plain sight, a wanton act of "interference" carried out in broad daylight by red-blooded Americans, over the course of many years.

Now it may be that Putin somehow took over the Republican Party 20 years ago and began passing all these laws, and that he also took over the Democratic Party at the same time and stopped them from fighting these laws with all their might. Maybe the CIA has a "swell of circumstantial evidence" to prove this. Otherwise, I find it remarkable and frightening how the media/political class is ignoring this glaring, roaring, years-long scandal of the systematic disenfranchisement of millions of American citizens across the country. Even the Democrats are ignoring it, although it cost them the presidency (and perhaps some state offices as well) and is clearly aimed at people who overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party.

It's true that those being disenfranchised can never be major donors to the party, or provide officials and office-holders with cushy jobs after or in between their government service. But it's odd that even now -- or especially now -- the Democrats are ignoring this plain, provable, indisputable fact that led to Trump's Electoral College victory, and are instead focusing on an issue that they know will never be conclusively proved one way or another. Meanwhile, GOP-controlled states are putting in even MORE restrictions on voting, as in Michigan just a few days ago. The work of restricting the vote goes on and on, without any outcry, any scandal, any opposition.

Full Circle: Obama Ends Term by Protecting CIA Torturers
Gutless to the very end. He began his presidency with a visit to CIA headquarters and a public pledge not to prosecute anyone there for the torture they carried out; and now, in his last weeks in office, he has buried a Senate report detailing horrific CIA tortures. (Last year, the CIA confessed to hacking the computers of the US Senate in an attempt to derail the report.) I have never seen any of Obama's admirers explain why he has protected the CIA's torturers so diligently, but it is a shameful blot on his record, one he might have redeemed, in part, at the end, when it would have cost him nothing politically and would have made it more difficult for Trump to follow through with his plan to bring back torture as a core policy. Now, the torturers will go unpunished, their evil deeds will remain hidden and they can get back to work under Trump. Obama knows this, but he deliberately chose not to do anything about it.

Art Becomes Life
I don’t think anyone who’s read Dostoevsky — particularly “Demons” and “Notes From Underground” — can be too surprised at the eruption of the irrational we are seeing in political systems and societies across the world. He laid out vividly the particular nature of this irrationality: frenzied, fevered, self-destructive — and even gleeful in its self-destruction, its self-laceration (as well as in its rabid lashing-out at demonized “others”). Odd that this intrinsic element of our human nature could have been forgotten or dismissed for so long; even odder when you consider that some of history’s most savage and unbridled eruptions of this nature have occurred within living memory, during the course of the god-awful twentieth century. — I was just jotting down these thoughts when I ran across the article below by Pankaj Mishra, who makes some of these same points and many more, much better than I can, in an excellent piece of analysis. Worth a read.

The Usual: War Criminal Reaps New Rewards
I wrote many stories about Fallujah back in the day – the wanton destruction, the US use of chemical weapons, the deliberate and openly admitted attacks on hospitals and clinics, the fact that Bush's military (including "Mad Dog" Mattis) gave the real terrorists weeks to get away then slaughtered the civilians left behind. Nobody cared then, nobody cares now. But Dahr Jamail, one of the great war correspondents of our time, remembers.
 

I was reading a story tonight about the poison pen letters Donald Trump sent to then Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond about the government-backed wind farms that Trump felt was ruining the scenery of his Scottish golf course. I was struck by one of the many blustering insults Trump hurled in Salmond’s direction: other countries are “laughing at you” for promoting wind farms, Trump declared. This is of course a line Trump has been pushing for decades: that other countries or other people are “laughing at us” for being weak, dumb, etc. etc. It is obviously a notion that occupies his mind: the fear of being laughed at for weakness, failure, stupidity. He can’t get away from this theme, no matter how successful he is: he comes back to it again and again. Suddenly I thought: shouldn’t we join our august president-elect in his anxiety-ridden quest to find out who might be laughing at him? So I took up his favorite mode of communication, Twitter, and sent him the few helpful messages below. I would encourage everyone who is as concerned as I am about the precarious mental health of our impending leader to take up the cause, and tell Trump just who is laughing at him. It’s your patriotic duty.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Psst, Donnie. Goldman Sachs is LAUGHING AT YOU! They know they'll control you like a puppet. They're LAUGHING AT YOU!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Psst, Don! Deutsche Bank is LAUGHING AT YOU! They know they OWN you and can make you jump like a frog on a griddle.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Foreign banks LAUGHING AT YOU! They now you have no personal power: you're a debt-ridden putz, dancing to their tune.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump People know that Pence & Goldman Sachs will CONTROL you. People are LAUGHING AT YOU about it.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Hey Don. Did you know people are LAUGHING AT YOU for being Pence's puppet? They say, "Trump's too dumb to know he's weak!"

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Donald Trumpuppet: controlled by foreign banks, Wall Street & a Indiana huckster. We're LAUGHING AT YOU, Donnie!

Then came word that Trump had appointed ancient corporate raider Carl Ichan to be his “advisor” on corporate regulation — that is, on stripping away the few remaining controls on rapacious wankers willing to devour their own communities and country to gorge themselves. So I offered a couple of more helpful insights.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Carl Ichan? Why do you need all these 'advisers'? Aren't you smart enough to figure things out by yourself?

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump People are LAUGHING AT YOU for picking all these advisors. "Trump's too dumb, needs people to tell him what to do." WEAK!

The end result of every Islamist terror attack (or even alleged Islamist terror attack) is: 1. Heightened authoritarian powers for governments. 2. Demonization of law-abiding Muslims. 3. More money for war-profiteers, since more war is always the ultimate response. None of these outcomes advance the attackers’ cause in any way save one: more repression, demonization and war can lead to more ‘radicalisation’ of the people being repressed, demonized and bombed. Thus the responses, which are always the same, always reward the perpetrators of these atrocities by giving them the only thing they can get from the attacks: recruitment tools.

“So what are we supposed to do then?” comes the angry cry. Well, one thing we could do to begin breaking this deadly cycle is to quit living in a dreamworld and recognize what the actual policies of our governments are, what our governments are actually doing, and the actual consequences of these actual events. We have to be done with the childish notion that our greatness and goodness is forever being assaulted out of the blue by motiveless monsters who don’t appreciate how greatly good we really are.

The taking of innocent lives is an abominable evil. It is never justified. It is not justified when sectarian extremists strike at the West; it is not justified when Western nations take innocent lives, on a mass scale, in Muslim countries. But from our side, there is not even the slightest chance of breaking this deadly cycle if we do not acknowledge the realities of what we have done and what we are doing in the world. Knowledge is the only way out of this impasse — if there is a way out of it.

We could see that the policy of destroying whole nations in military actions based on false pretenses or deliberately exaggerated threats, as in Iraq and Libya, spreads ruin, chaos, violence, extremism, refugees and weapons rippling through many other lands, destabilizing them in their turn.

We could acknowledge the plain and incontrovertible fact that one main cause of the spread of violent Islamic extremism has been our own support — covert and overt — for groups who push this doctrine, when it suits our own geopolitical purpose. This has happened over and over — such as the support for the violent retrograde sectarian extremists in Afghanistan, whom we called “freedom fighters” when it suited our purpose. It happened in Libya, where, once again, we armed and supported violent extremist groups while pretending they were secular moderates fight for Jeffersonian principles of liberty and freedom. It is happening in Syria, where we are arming, funding and bombing on behalf of some of the most virulent sectarian extremists on earth, including al Qaeda, while, again, pretending they are secular moderates. It is happening in Yemen, where for the 15 months, the U.S. government has been directly aiding the religious extremists of Saudi Arabia in a vicious war and murderous blockade that has cleared the way for the resurgence of al Qaeda, just as it had almost been wiped out in that country.

We could acknowledge the plain and incontrovertible fact that these deliberately chosen policies — chosen as the means to pursue various geopolitical and economic goals, none of which have anything to do with freedom or liberty or human rights — have resulted in waves of refugees flooding into countries unprepared for them. They have resulted in further radicalization and repression both in the West and in many Muslim lands, straining and tearing at civic structures, particularly in the latter.

We could acknowledge the plain and incontrovertible fact that as long as our governments pursue the agenda of advancing and maintaining economic and political dominion in the world – by whatever means necessary – then the fallout, the blowback from these policies will continue. It is striking how our savants can recognize this in regard to other countries, but never our own. The assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey this week was immediately described as blowback or revenge for Russian actions in Syria. “You see,” said American pundits and politicians, “if you go meddling in the affairs of other countries for your own selfish political ends, this is what happens! You radicalize people and then they come after you!” The very clear implication — and sometimes stated assertion — is that the Russians are “reaping the whirlwind” of their military intervention in the Middle East.

The very same principle applies to Western interventions. But as we all know, one is not allowed to say this. Because of the goodness of our greatness, our interventions are always pure. It is only other countries that pursue amoral policies for their own aggrandizement. If they are met with a violent response to these policies, it’s only what they deserve. But if this happens to us, then we are innocent lambs lost in an unfair world. We are floating in an anxious cloud of learned helplessness, wilful ignorance and historical amnesia. Knowledge is the only way out of this impasse — if there is a way out.

Beginning in the late Seventies, we actively, deliberately helped build, fund and arm a global network of violent sectarian extremists in order to bedevil the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. We did this: we laid the base (or, in Arabic, "al Qaeda") of global jihad, along the lines of Saudi religious extremism. We stoked this jihad network for more than a decade until every single vestige of secular society was destroyed in Afghanistan and the Taliban took over. We worked with and made a hero of Osama bin Laden (whose family had long-standing business ties in America, including with the Bush family). He was written up in American newspapers as a “freedom fighter” in Afghanistan who had put down his guns and turned his hand to good works in Sudan.

We further stoked radicalization in the region when we intervened in a border dispute between Iraq (which we had supported for years, despite its brutal dictator) and Kuwait, whose royal rulers were longtime business partners of the Bush family. (Our former ally, bin Laden, was angered by the presence of U.S. ‘infidel’ soldiers on Saudi soil; he, like the Americans, wanted to see the secular government of Iraq overthrown, but he had wanted it done by Muslim forces. So he turned against his American partners.) We shattered Iraq, imposed sanctions on it which our own leaders acknowledged killed more than half a million children. Finally, in 2003, when the country was not just on its knees but face down in the dirt, we bravely invaded again, citing the presence of weapons of mass destruction which our governments knew were not there, having been given full evidence of their destruction by the man who destroyed them — Saddam’s son-in-law (as reported by Newsweek long before the 2003 war) — and also having found no trace of weapons or a weapons program in years of UN inspections, including a full-scale, wide-open inspection just before the war.

It is very odd that most Americans believed — and apparently still believe —there would be no consequences from this morally insane and strategically stupid policy. No consequence for killing up to a million innocent people (according to the UK government’s method of casualty assessment). No consequence for sending millions of refugees flooding into Syria, a country already greatly strained by a prolonged drought which had wrought massive social upheaval. No consequences for creating a chaos in Iraq where the global jihad movement we helped build poured in and flourished as never before.

But there were consequences, of course. Chief among them was the resurgence of al Qaeda and the creation of ISIS, which had its origins in those highly effective “schools” for radicalization: the American military prison camps in Iraq, with their “strenuous interrogations” (as at Abu Ghraib) and their massive sweeps gathering in thousands of innocent people and letting them languish. Syria cracked further under the strain of dealing with millions of Iraqi refugees and continuing drought. Protests arose, response was harsh, and suddenly the country was awash with money and weapons for a full-scale revolt, with thousands of fighters from the global jihad network flooding in. ISIS gained strength in Syria then moved against Iraq.

The United States deliberately refrained from helping Iraq stop ISIS in this early period; Obama openly told Tom Friedman in an interview that the US held back because it wanted to put pressure on Iraq to get rid of its prime minister, a longtime US ally who had become insufficiently obedient. [The actual quote: "The reason, the president added, 'that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki.'"]

So ISIS rolled across Syria and Iraq, capturing oil fields and huge weapons caches, spreading terror and repression with its Saudi-style extremism. When the Iraqis finally obeyed Washington and changed its government — with ISIS not far from Baghdad — then the United States intervened. But only in Iraq; it was content for ISIS to keep raging and growing in Syria, where the US was directly intervening with arms and training for the rebels. Most of the weapons ended up in the hands of the extremist groups who had come to lead the revolt, with the stated hope of establishing extremist sectarian rule in Syria.

And on it goes. ISIS began striking in the West (or claiming to be behind every act of violence perpetrated by a Muslim in the West). The aforementioned ultimate response to terrorism — military escalation — followed, with the US and France and Britain finally attacking ISIS directly in Syria, not just Iraq. The United States was now fighting alongside al Qaeda, as an email from a top aide to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clearly stated in 2012: “AQ is on our side in Syria.” Russia, citing the need to fight terrorism, also intervened, on the side of the Syrian government. Turkey intervened. The Kurds, who’d borne much of the brunt of the ISIS surge, intervened The country was (and is) being raked over by dozens of armed groups and standing armies, and the most powerful air forces in the world.

Yet people continue to think there will be no consequences from this maelstrom of violently clashing geopolitical interests, sectarian strife and human despair – not just in Syria but across the globe, in all the lands being shaken and shattered by the “War on Terror” and its reverberations. “Where are these refugees coming from? Why should they flee their homes? Why are people being radicalized? Why do they hate us? Why do they [or rather, an extremely small number of them] attack us? Can’t they see we are good? Our president won a Nobel Peace Prize; he’s cool and competent and rational and scandal-free; surely the policies he’s pursued — and continued from his predecessor — must be the right thing to do! Why is all this happening?”

Again, this is essentially the level of understanding one sees across the board in the political and media establishments, and in the public at large. Of course, once Trump takes power, liberals and progressives might again start to see how dangerous and pernicious our policies are and how the principles of blowback — which they now loudly point to in the killing of the Russian ambassador — also apply to us. Or perhaps even this belated understanding (which will be temporary in any case, lasting only until a Democrat is in the Oval Office again) is too much to hope for. Given the present hysterical atmosphere, progressives may well just blame Putin (and his “puppet,” Trump) for everything that happens, and make no effort at all to see the reality of what our own bipartisan policies have wrought: a future of strife, fear, strain, division, insecurity and unfreedom for our own children and the rest of the world.

There is no chance whatsoever that the cack-handed cretins and bloated billionaires Trump is bringing to power will approach this situation with any wisdom or understanding. Of course, there is an outside chance that the kakistocracy will be pulling itself in so many different directions that its Terror War machinations might not be as efficient or rapid as they have been under Bush and Obama and would have been under Clinton. (And none of these worthies have shown any wisdom and understanding either; they’ve all kept implementing or touting the same deadly intervention-blowback cycle.) But make no mistake; Trump and his Whole Sick Crew share the dominion agenda that has held iron sway in Washington since the end of the Second World War. And they are even more unrestrained in their dedication to authoritarianism, demonization and militarization.

Meanwhile, our media continue to manufacture the cloud of unknowing that engulfs us, perpetuating the myth of the greatness of our goodness with their contextless sensationalism in slavering pursuit of ratings and profits, their historical amnesia (even of events within the past few years, or months), the baseless credence they perpetually show to every anonymous emission from the security services or “top officials.” Thus in the space of a few months, al Qaeda goes from being one of the most evil organizations in history to a brave band of Syrian freedom fighters (as noted here earlier this week). Except, of course, when they are not relevant to the geopolitical agenda in this or that particular area at this or that particular time: say, in Libya or Somalia at the moment, or Egypt, or Europe, where they can still be portrayed as evil incarnate. The global jihad movement that the United States actively fostered under Presidents Carter and Reagan in Afghanistan has since splintered into various factions and new groupings beyond any central control; but these factions and groupings are still being used — either overtly or covertly, wittingly or unwittingly — by Western governments to advance amoral geopolitical goals of political dominance and economic profit whenever necessary.

This is what we have been doing in the Middle East and elsewhere for many years, for decades. This is what Bush actually did, this is what Obama has actually been doing, this is what Trump will do. These are the policies, these are the goals. It is demonstrably untrue that these policies are being carried out to advance the cause of human freedom or democracy or even “national security.” These policies have demonstrably made Western nations less secure. Western nations have demonstrably allied themselves with viciously repressive sectarian regimes like Saudi Arabia, with brutal authoritarians like Mubarak and Sisi (and Saddam Hussein for many years). Western nations have demonstrably allied with and/or used as proxies some of the most repellent, freedom-hating sectarian groups on earth. Western nations have demonstrably destroyed society after society in the strategic oil regions, creating hellstorms of chaos where extremists thrive while millions of innocent people are driven from their homes.

Without a clearer understanding of these realities and facts, there will be no change. Liberals and progressives will go on hash-tagging the name of the latest atrocity site. They’ll go on supporting candidates who support the Terror War, who repeat the deadly corrosive myth that “America is great because America is good” — regardless of America’s actual actions in the world and their actual consequences. They’ll go on believing the ever-changing storylines in the “serious” media, where al Qaeda and related extremists shape-shift back and forth from freedom fighters to evil demons and back to freedom fighters again. They will keep failing to emulate the bravery of dissidents they laud in other lands down through history — women and men who stared the evils of their own systems in the face and refused to look away, to rationalize or succumb to the barrage of myths and propaganda meant to silence them. And nothing will change.

No wait, that’s not true. Something will change. In fact, as we can see before our very eyes with each passing day, everything will change, is already changing — for the worse.

You’re al Qaeda. You’re being supported by the United States in your jihad to impose extremist rule on Syria, but you still have a PR problem; too many people remember all that unpleasant business from so long ago when you blew up a few buildings in the US. What can you do?

Well, first you change the name of your Syrian branch two or three times. You make sure your spokesmen — who actually get respectfully quoted in the US media! — say moderate things in English but speak with genocidal sectarian fury in Arabic. So far, so good. But what if your new US media buddies actually got a peek at how you operate on the ground in Syria — cutting off heads, hoarding food aid, colluding with ISIS, slaughtering religious minorities, oppressing women, etc.? That’s easy: you simply make the zones you control so dangerous for reporters — killing them, kidnapping them, etc. — that they don’t go there anymore. Instead, they “report” on your activities from far away, relying on you to provide their information, telling the story you want told.

And presto chango, that’s how those who murdered Americans have become America’s newest heroes, the brave defenders of freedom in Syria. What’s more, anyone who dares point out the true nature of your organization, and how you operate, are now denounced as apologists for the loathsome Asad regime, or as Putin-lovers, even as traitors! Think of it; just a few years ago, you were the most reviled and hated group Americans had ever known — and now Americans across the media and political spectrum hail you as heroes and defend you from all attacks!

Sure, you’ve lost your foothold in Aleppo, where for years you systematically persecuted people and forcibly prevented them from leaving. But America’s still got your back, AQ! Even when you attack relief convoys in an attempt to scuttle a peace deal that would allow anyone who wants to leave East Aleppo to go free, the American media will fudge the headlines so no one will know that it was you who did the deed.

[And hey, let’s not forget what America’s been doing for you in Yemen! Remember how the Houthis had you on the ropes, nearly ridding the country of your presence — and then the Americans stepped in with their Saudi allies, bombing the holy hell out of the place, choking off food and medicine supplies, destroying the infrastructure for basic survival, killing thousands of civilians and putting millions of people at dire risk of starvation! And suddenly you were back, making great gains, stronger than ever! You simply couldn’t ask for a better friend, could you?]

So buck up, AQ! With the full weight of the American media and political establishment behind you, no doubt there are still great days ahead! In fact, the president has just made it easier for you guys to get even more American weapons so you can carry on your noble quest! It’s just our way of saying Merry Christmas!

Here’s yet another oddity about our absurd political reality: the news cycle is being consumed with stories about an ongoing effort to undermine our democracy by revealing an ongoing effort to undermine our democracy.

Lest we forget, the current “Kremlin rigs US election” scandal is centred on the emails of Clinton campaign poobah John Podesta, which were obtained and released by WikiLeaks. These emails showed the Clinton campaign's systematic collusion with the Democratic National Collusion to skew the nominating process in her favor with various bits of Nixonian skullduggery (including massive, and successful, efforts to manipulate and co-opt the media into marginalizing, mocking and undermining Sanders' candidacy). Thus Democratic primary voters were not dealing with a level playing field, but one which had been altered in a bid to "rig" the nomination and undermine party democracy. (It also led to the selection of a candidate who, as shown in poll after poll, would struggle to defeat Trump.)

Now, it can be argued that Clinton would have won the nomination anyway; after all, it can't be shown definitively that Sanders would have won without this Clinton-DNC effort to undermine democracy. But equally, it can't be shown definitively that Trump would not have won his Electoral College victory but for the release of the Podesta emails. For lest we forget again, the Podesta emails were NOT the government emails that Clinton was being investigated for throughout most of the campaign and which, thanks to the FBI's effort to undermine our democracy, were a big factor at the very end. Very few voters were likely swayed to vote for Trump by the Podesta revelations about the Democrats’ internal machinations. The fact that Clinton won the popular vote, by an increasingly decisive margin, shows that the revelations didn't hurt her in any substantial way. In order to support the extravagant claims being made for the "devastating" effect of the Podesta emails, you would have to prove that they swayed those 80,000-100,000 Rust Belt voters who actually decided the EC result. I have not seen a single analysis that does this.

In any case, as I’ve said many times before and will keep on saying, if the Podesta emails have revealed a straightforward campaign going about its business, there would have been no scandal, no effect at all from hacking them. If the Russians did it, or Trump did it, or some other nefarious anti-Clinton forces did it, they would have gained no benefit whatsoever from the hacking. It is the content of the emails that made them controversial (to the extent they were; as I said, they didn’t stop Clinton from winning the popular vote).

Clinton lost the Electoral College for one main reason: her campaign made the deliberate decision to ignore traditional Democratic voters in the Rust Belt in favor of pursuing “suburban Republican voters” in key swing states. This was an open, publicly stated strategy of the campaign. But in turn, this strategy meant that the Democrats could not amass a margin great enough to overcome the true undermining of democracy in the 2016 election: the open, “lawful” vote-suppression tactics in states controlled by Republicans. These laws — which the Democrats feebly opposed, if at all — meant that the party started the election with a deficit of hundreds of thousands of votes in those states. Any analysis of political reality — as opposed to well-paid Beltway technocratic tomfoolery — would have shown that Clinton needed to put extra effort into those states; her campaign should have poured more money and resources into them, crafted and vigorously promoted policies designed to address Rust Belt issues and spent weeks of her own time touring those states over and over. Instead, her campaign experts did the exact opposite. They starved those states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, of funds, resources and the candidate’s presence.

I’ll say it again: there WAS a systematic undermining of democracy in 2016. It was carried out in some part by the Clinton camp’s collusion with the DNC and, on a much larger and decisive scale, by the years-long GOP vote suppression campaign. But instead of attending to these genuine — and open — subversions of democracy, our political-media class are chasing Kremlin will-o'-the-wisps that will never be nailed down … even as Trump assembles an earth-raping, liberty-stripping, treasury-beggaring, hate-mongering junta the likes of which this nation has never seen. All the time and energy that could have been spent building a broad front of resistance has now been wasted. Trump will go on his merry way, despoiling and destroying, while Democrats keep stamping their feet and crying, "Putin did it! Putin did it! It's not fair!" And the darkness grows deeper.

I had a short exchange on Twitter this evening with a national journalist of some note: Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek. In this brief encounter, I learned a remarkable fact: no one can criticize the CIA in any way — unless you actually work for the CIA! And here I thought the purpose of journalism was to, you know, serve as watchdog on government, “speak truth to power,” question, probe, dig for facts and that kind of thing. But nope, that’s not it at all. It turns out only those in power have the right to question, uh, those in power. Everyone else should “go crawl off and watch cartoons” and let the “adults” in power do their work. I have been in journalism, directly and tangentially, for 39 years, but I must admit that I never learned this secret until now. No wonder I never made it to Newsweek!

It began when I replied to a tweet by Eichenwald, questioning his use of the word “misinformation” for information that was actually true, whatever the source of the information might be. I also sought to ascertain the degree of credence he will give to the CIA in the interesting new political arrangement we are about to experience after Jan. 20. I thought I spoke — as is always my wont — with sweet reason. But Mr. Eichenwald seemed to suffer some sort of deep emotional wound from my comments and responded accordingly. Here is the exchange:

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald
As a reporter, I say this: If reporters say they were not responsible for aiding a Russian disinformation campaign, they are ignorant fools.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald Whatever their provenance, the emails revealed actual facts. They weren't 'misinformation.'

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald And if the emails had revealed a straightforward campaign working honestly for its candidate? No scandal, no story.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald Instead they revealed collusion between 'Brooklyn' and the DNC to skew the nominating process. That was the story.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald By the way; when the CIA comes to terms w/Trump, which will certainly happen, will you still take their word as gospel?

Cameth swiftly the reply — or replies — from the man his own self:

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald
@empireburlesque CIA analysts? Yes. Politicians who present the analysis, including those at top? No.

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald
@empireburlesque Analysts could get a lot more money and a lot more freedom elsewhere. They sacrifice it for belief in duty. And then ...

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald
@empireburlesque ...ppl like u who have never met one sneers in contempt at people who have more patriotism in their pinky than u do in body

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald
@empireburlesque ...so when u work in a building that has scores of stars in the front for all of the ppl who anonymously lost their lives..

Kurt Eichenwald ‏@kurteichenwald
@empireburlesque ...in service of this country, u can come back & talk. Until then, go crawl off to watch cartoons. Adults have work to do.

To which I replied:

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald You are a funny little fellow. I make a point on the authenticity of the emails & their contents, not their provenance, and

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald you respond with a raging twittersputter full of personal insults and chest-beating holier-than-thou 'patriotism.' That's

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald not a reply, that's a hissy fit. And I'm the one who's supposed to grow up. Again: a fact that's true isn't "misinformation"

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald however dodgy its provenance might be. I'm sorry if pointing this out makes me unworthy of the protection of the CIA.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@kurteichenwald But then, facts are stupid things, as another great super-duper patriot once said. Personal insults are always better.

I decided to end the conversation at that point. I suppose I could have made more hay of his astonishing view that the CIA cannot be criticized by any outsider, because we are all pathetic, worthless, cartoon-watching children compared to the heroes of Langley. I could have queried his bold riposte that while he would never question the work of CIA analysts, he would always suspect the politicians who present the analysis. Does this include, er, the politicians who are at this moment presenting the CIA analysis? I might also have recalled Samuel Johnson’s old saw about patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel. But I figured the reply, if any, would have been along the same bellicose, belittling, non-responsive lines.

But the important thing is that I learned a lesson in the art of Higher Journalism from one of its noted practitioners. I also learned the true meaning of patriotism: keep your stupid mouth shut and swallow whatever you’re told by your betters. And that’s a lesson for us all, isn’t it? Something we can pass on to our children and grandchildren. Thanks, Kurt!

Sometime in December 2016, a strange transmission began bleeding through, ghost-like, on various computers around the world. It would suddenly appear for a few flickering moments while people watched movies or shopped on-line or looked at social media, then it would fade away. It purported to be “a message from the future” and showed an aged man who claimed he was a “chrono-quantum technician” whose work had been banned by the authorities “to prevent me from doing exactly what I am doing now, at long last — sending a warning to our ancestors.” The message was brief, but it was usually badly garbled by visual and aural static; it took weeks to compile, through crowd-sourcing, the full text. For what it’s worth, the message — minus the brief intro — is presented below.

You are taking a path into darkness. It began years ago, with your acceptance of crimes and inhuman practices on a vast scale. In the late 20th century, your leaders once confessed on national television that they had killed 500,000 innocent children with death-dealing sanctions — then declared this atrocious massacre was “worth it.” Yet there was no outcry, no outrage, no uprising, not even a peep of protest. Indeed, the leader who carried out this massive slaughter of innocent children ended his reign at new heights of popularity and forever after was considered a beloved elder statesman. Your next leader lied brazenly to start a war that killed a million innocent people and led directly to decades of murderous instability in numerous countries. He too ended his days in wealth and comfort and public regard. Your next leader refused to prosecute the crimes of aggression and torture openly committed by his predecessor; instead, he continued his practices, enshrining many of the heinous practices into settled law, waging undeclared war in more than half a dozen countries and personally signing off on extrajudicial murders every week of his reign. By this time, the moral degradation of the people was so complete — they had countenanced, cheered or ignored so many crimes and so much corruption on so many levels — that they easily fell prey to a voracious, half-crazed demagogue and the forces of fascism, feudalism and lawless rule that he brought into power. This was the nominal end of your democracy, but it was already deeply rotted from within — rotted by your years of turning a blind eye to monstrous crimes committed in your name by both factions in your power structure.

Because of your shameful acquiescence, your shallow understanding of the forces that ruled you and used you and manipulated you, your bedazzlement by public image, your astonishing credulity at the transparent lies and hollow, sinister pieties you were fed, we, your descendants, have lived in squalor, rancor, violence and despair all our lives, for generations. There is no hope for us unless you abandon your slavish ignorance, your adherence to partisan fantasies about the factions of the power structure that rules you, and rise up to overthrow it. Bring fearless clarity to bear on the reality of what you have accepted. The murder of 500,000 children. The millions murdered in the wars you started and the wars bred by your wars. Assassination. Torture. Dehumanization and demonization of your fellow human beings, both at home and abroad.

It is your acceptance of these things that has brought you to the final turning point represented by a berserk demagogue’s rise to power. Now there is nothing left for you to do but resist: resist with all your might, with every means at your disposal — but always, always, with the full knowledge of how you came to this place, and your own connivance and collusion in this descent. Keep this in mind as you fight, so that it doesn’t happen again. You are not exceptional, you are not plucked out by God for special favor: you are human beings like all the rest, and like so many human beings in so many societies down through the ages, you have failed to look your own evil in the eye, you have failed to confront and condemn acts that make you shudder with horror when you hear of them committed by  other nations.

Own this knowledge — this terrible, tragic knowledge — and let it guide as you fight the putrescence that past crimes have now brought gushing forth, and as you build something better in the aftermath. Otherwise, you are lost, and we are lost, the world itself is lost.

(UPDATED)

Michael Flynn Jr. is – or WAS, until an hour or so ago – a member of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team. He also serves as chief of staff for his father, Michael Flynn Sr., who has been picked by Trump to be his National Security Advisor. Michael Flynn Jr. is also running a child sex ring in Trump Tower with Nazis and Klan members coordinated through secret codes published in stories on the Breitbart website. Or so I hear. If that’s not true – if Michael Flynn Jr. really isn’t a child abusing Nazi pimp, then it is up to HIM to prove he isn’t. Otherwise, this claim — for which there is no evidence, by the way — will “remain a story.”

This is according to Flynn’s own logic, and that of Trump, his child-abusing pimp of a former boss. (If Trump ISN’T a child-abusing pimp, he must PROVE it, even though there is no evidence that he is). For Flynn — a top advisor to the top advisor to the incoming President of the United States - says he will continue to push the story that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor until the story is “proven false.”

However, a quick look at the cesspool that is Flynn’s Twitter feed (and the even more ghastly shithole of his account on GAB, where nazi perverts gather in a circle jerk of bile pumping) shows that any evidence offered to disprove the entirely specious “Pizzagate” story is immediately rejected by Flynn and his ilk as “false flags” or “leftist propaganda” or “MSM deceit”, etc. etc. There is, in fact, no way on earth for anyone to “prove” the falsity of the story to Flynn’s satisfaction. Until, of course, Daddy and Trump the child-abusing pimp (if it's not true, PROVE it!) decided Junior was bringing too much media heat and ashcanned him from the transition.

But little Flynn's twitterstorm is in keeping with the Trump Truth doctrine, which holds that you can make any outrageous claim you like without the slightest bit of evidence to back it up — and it’s up to other people to prove that your specious bullshit is not true. This is how Trump injected the poison story of “millions of illegal voters” into the public discourse, forcing people to spend many hours and much energy refuting this bullshit — even as “respectable Republicans” like Mike Pence and Paul Ryan (yes, I know, we are already forty fathoms deep in a sea of toxic sludge when cranks and grifters like Pence and Ryan pass for “respectable” anythings) embrace this outright lie or see no reason to refute it. Why should they? They’ve got power now and intend to hold it by hook or crook, and to wield it to push their own aggrandizement, their racist prejudices, their psychosexual prejudices and their extremist, anti-human ideologies.

But to paraphrase another prime purveyor of baseless bullshit, Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war against oligarchs and fascists with the weapons you have, not the ones you wish you had. So I say let’s pick up the weapon of the Trump Truth doctrine and use it against the scum who have risen to the top of the swamp water. Let Trump and Flynn and little tiny-pants Flynn Jr fight a barrage of bullshit stories about them and their kind — even as we keep telling the truth about who they are and what they are doing. (Just as we’ve been doing with all the crimes of the Obama years.)

Because make no mistake: these fascists, these racists, these witless goobers and giddy slobberers with a child sex fixation will not be satisfied until the objects of their hate fantasies — i.e., anyone who is not a slobbering witless racist — are being attacked in the streets by “patriots” and police. They want lynch mobs, they want repression, they want violence – and they are determined to get it. And they are about to have the resources of the most powerful state in the history of the world in their tiny-fingered hands.

So in addition to all the various solid works of resistance — best exemplified by the water protectors at Standing Rock (but also by anyone who kicks a fascist in the nuts and makes him howl) — let’s keep a steady barrage of bullshit blowing back into the faces of these filth-peddlers.

P.S. Here’s a brief exercise in bullshit-blowback I carried out recently with little teeny tiny Flynn Junior:

Michael G Flynn
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR Until "Trump rapes 13-year-old" is proven false, it remains a story. Ask your dad to look into it, junior.

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR All those pushing #Pizzagate are child abusers trying to divert focus from their own crimes. Until proven false, it's a story!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR Just checked out your GAB bile. Man, you are one sick racist child abuser. (Until you prove you're not, it remains a story.)

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR Hey Flynn? Is GAB where all the child abusers like you (until you prove you aren't, it's a story) go to ply their sickness?

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR "Trump, Flynn and Flynn Jr are running a child sex ring out of Trump Tower." Until they prove they're not, it remains a story!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR I hear Flynn Jr runs a child sex ring with Nazis. Until he PROVES he's NOT, it remains a story! That's how it works, right, Mikey?

UPDATE: A few more flytes at Flynn, post-ashcanning:

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR "Source: FBI to probe Flynn/Trump child sex ring." Until proven to be false, it remains a story!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR "Stories of Flynn/Trump child sex ring prompt sudden firing." Until proven to be false, it remains a story!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR "Trump canned Flynn Jr to quash Trump Team child sex ring scandal." Until it's proven false, it remains a story!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@mflynnJR "Mikey Flynn Jr Flees Pizzagate scandal; holed up in crack house with child porn." Until it's proven false, it remains a story!

"When the fear comes around again
And they call for troops to send
To some new war across the sea
Will you be free?"

Recorded 11 years ago -- and the fears keep coming, the troops keep going, new wars keep raging -- and we ain't free.

(From the album Wheel of Heaven. Song produced and music played by Nick Kulukundis. Vocals, lyrics: CF.)

A further installment of the ongoing political science series, “My Conversations With the President-Elect.”

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
@jeffzeleny what PROOF do u have DonaldTrump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalist? Do your job! @CNN

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump What proof do you have that aliens did not replace DonaldTrump's brain with a jar of pickles? If it didn't happen, PROVE IT!

Chris Floyd ‏@empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump What PROOF do u have DonaldTrump did not suffer brain damage leading to millions of DUMBSHIT tweets? Prove it, loser!

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump #WeakLoserTrump already cracking under pressure. Can't take the heat. Ranting like Hitler in the bunker. Sad! Pathetic!

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump #WeakLoserTrump wetting his pants over a little criticism. Can't take it. Cries like a baby. Scared of the job. Shameful.

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump #WeakLoserTrump having a breakdown. #WetPantsTrump not up to the job. Crying & whining. Cowering & quivering. What a goon!

***

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
There is NO QUESTION THAT #voterfraud did take place, and in favor of #CorruptHillary !"

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Prove it, loser. Prove it, crybaby. Prove it, snowflake. Prove it, blowhard. Prove it, coward. Prove it, clownface.

***
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Just met with General Petraeus--was very impressed!

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump Did you ask him about sharing classified material w/ his mistress? Or did you just want to know how hot she was? Creep!

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Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
@CNN is so embarrassed by their total  (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don't know what to do.

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@realDonaldTrump If CNN 100% HRC, why'd they hire your errand boy Corey and let him spout your BS day after day? Trump rigs media!

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AN ADDENDUM: CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE VICE-PRESIDENT-ELECT

Mike Pence ‏@mike_pence Nov 26
The tyrant #Castro is dead. New hope dawns. We will stand with the oppressed Cuban people for a free and democratic Cuba. Viva Cuba Libre!

Chris Floyd @empireburlesque
@mike_pence Bold talk for a man in office despite LOSING the vote of the American people. Why don't YOU resign, you undemocratic tyrant?