A fascinating twist in the world of Russian collusion has just happened from the oddest of sources, the Mueller investigation. After a year of bizarre back and forth with the likes of CNN and the NYTimes in one corner painting Trump as the antichrist and conservative media returning fire at Hillary, Obama and other targets on the left, the special counsel surprises everyone. What did Mueller and Company do? They indicted 13 alleged Russian internet trolls that used social media to influence American elections and politics. In fact Rod Rosentstein went into pretty deep detail of exactly what they did and how they did it. Of course these folks are living in Russia so we can’t get at them but at least we have established and verified the nature of the problem and can proceed from there.
So now the left can scream “See Mr. Trump?? There was Russian interference!!” While Mr. Trump can scream “See CNN?? we didn’t do it”. Which goes to show you how utterly silly this whole affair is. Nobody wins this game except perhaps Mueller, who takes himself out of the crosshairs at least for a while as he throws a bone to both sides without fingering any Americans. Actually that’s a brilliant strategy to keep himself in the game while not incurring an overabundance of wrath from either side. At the same time he might well be serving American democracy, a novel idea at that, by identifying the real culprit and establishing the Russians as the common enemy.
This shouldn’t have come as a surprise – after all, Russian collusion should involve Russia, right? But lately this concept has been obfuscated by partisan sniping, big time, with CNN drooling for Mueller to indict the next liar. And so it is now written in stone for the world to see – its about the Russians, stupid. So we can put aside the side issues of Flynn and Manafort who really should be small potatoes in this thing anyway, especially since all of the real crimes are in the Hillary camp.
But the real takeaway from the ordeal was the revelation that the Facebook Ruskies orchestrated protests on all sides just to be a nuisance. They hardly even knew who they were rooting for. They were apparently pitching for Bernie, and yet, as Laura Ingrham quips “they were no match for the DNC”, So the Mueller contribution is to point out to the American people that we have been flailing away at each other while the trolls sit back and laugh. But it got worse that that. They had us at each others throats.
The intense reach of social media enabled the trolls to incite protests and rile up the public. Conservative media blamed this on George Soros and his many attack foundations and pacs. But it actually doesn’t matter who drummed up all the protests it matters that the American people understand what is happening. To the extent that the Russians have had any impact at all, no not in the election but in the undermining of our democracy, we should realize we are being played. Maybe Obama should have stopped this nonsense in 2014, but now it came through loud and clear from the special counsel. The Russians are messing with our heads, and, judging from all the hate mongering from the media, it is working.
So put aside your left or right wing agendas and your distaste for whoever is in the White House and remember you are an American. As soon as we stopped debating the issues and started weaponizing them, we stopped getting anything done and played right into their hands. And the trolls will keep on doing it. So when you see some self serving propaganda on Facebook from a fringe outfit you never heard of make the assumption that it is un-American and isn’t worth the time to read it. In fact it was probably published by a collection of back room internet losers from the other side of the world who aren’t even sure what their message is.