Editor’s Note: Another Nor’easter coming through Arlington tonight, which probably should spark the motivation for an afternoon trip to the Class Six store to stock up. As to the circus here in the swamp, those who are not career professionals in the Secret World it is perfectly understandable that one could miss the nuance of what was going on. If you know policy and the law, this story was clear from the beginning. It is interesting to see where it is going now. Here is Marlow’s take on this meandering story….

– Vic

Marlow’s note: This is yet another disjointed piece. Man, I promise that I’m going to stop watching this televised festival of fools.

RussianGate Flashbacks

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the Russia’s 2016 election influence operations story has been the way the American press has handled it. What began in the early fall of 2016 as another minor media story about Russian propaganda operations turned into a OMG The Russians Are Here The Russians Are Here bungle-in-the-jungle. As it has developed, it is now probably the most thoroughly and most unprofessionally covered story in the history of American political journalism.

Our overly paid, overly self-esteemed, high-rolling newsmeisters of the national press corps have jabbered blindly among themselves in some stylish sectors of outer reality belts far-removed from the main nerves of what the country really cares about — jobs, take home pay, war and peace. Crime comes in at a distant 5th, but YouTube.com cat videos may displace it further down the list.

This “New Main Story” started as they were all climbing aboard Hillary Clinton’s Victory Special as the sun rose on November 8 2016. These news media porn stars were convinced they were riding the rails towards a privileged, cushy, mid second row seat in the HRC White House press corps briefing room with “the candidate.” These heaviest of the press’s heavyweight wizards were certain that she’d win by at least five percentage points.

Our experience of the news media’s 2016 election campaign savviness did not fill us with any real sense of awe or trust , vis-a-vis its wisdom and prognostication skills.

So, I have remained seriously unnerved that these stupid bastards have had this RussianGate story utterly nailed up to the top of their daily coverage story boards with their above the print fold stories or in the hourly news broadcast ledes day after day, world without end or interruption.

They are bleeding from every extremity to cover its non-details — from the original January 2017 IC report that shoud been entitled “Holy shit! 2016 Russian Election Propaganda — just like the past 90 years — only this time it’s amazingly on the internet!” and subsequent leaked half-truths, trial balloons and assorted inaccuracies, to all their twisted “what-if” editorial details and speculative panel puffery.

For the first time since 1972’s Watergate story, the assorted press camps are working very close to the peak of their awesome and normal one-sided agenda driven potentials. They are like wild-eyed junkies roaming the streets looking to find their next connection or hit. They were badly blitzed on the RussianGate story at first. But by early December 2016 they were scrambling feverishly to find new angles, new connections, new leaks and leads in this story that they have worked hard to make as big and as threatening as they could to the very core of the American way of life. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a cakewalk threat by comparison.

It has been hard on the broadcast and cable TV news media, whose whole machinery is geared to visual action stories, rather than skillfully planted tips from faceless staffer sources and politicians who call reporters on one-time-use drop cellphones and then refuse to say anything at all in front of the cameras or on the record.

Not even the Russian web bots and their ads could make the cut for standard-brand visual action story in a single news cycle. With no plain-clothes cops with drawn guns or even perp walked arrestees the whole deal has been like watching paint dry.

These news doyennes remain surprisingly hungry for stories involving months of dreary news-less investigation, endless panel interview gabfests of experts guessing and mindlessly speculating with minimal camera possibilities while still boiling with feverish indignation over this assault on HRC America.

The RussianGate story began in 2014 and surfaced briefly in October 2016. The presidential campaign horse race kept it backstage until November 9th. Within weeks broadcast/cable TV and print news media had their first teams off of the campaign trail and on the trail of RussianGate.

The crowd that had gathered that night of November 8th to celebrate what became the Great Disaster has been slipping and sliding as it has tried to jangle the nerves of the Tweeter in Chief, his adminstration, inner circle and assorted guests and strap hangers, both invited and uninvited. They have worked hard for death sentence execution and funeral motifs but have settled for a daily minor bummers and limited annoyances.

At the sixteen month waypoint it is clear that these bitter-enders are stone crazy. Their incessant bleatings are some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Their open intellectual dishonesty is magnificent. It’s better than Facebook, Google and Netflix corporate types’ posturing on Capitol Hill after it was discovered that their algorithms had been diddled by the RussianGaters to easily target certain segments of the US population with chaos inducing disinformation.

How can they not see that they are sinking like stones in foul water of their own making. CNN’s Situation Room and FOXNews’ similar programs should be laughingly referred to as The Last Bunker.

What’s so stunning about this is that we have folks on the left and people on the right all shouting: “Our institutions are not to be trusted!” Both are spouting the same rhetoric.

The sole sadness I see is that there is no place in this mess for pragmatists on either side. These Bunkers only have room for ideologues and true believers.

And so much for all that.

* * *

These fixed idea New Story campaigns are sort of like nighttime high-speed road racing on the narrow, twisty, back roads of northwestern and southeastern Washington DC. They come complete with blinking stoplights along big, empty, rain-slicked streets going into corners at 80 miles an hour and doing 180s . . . a sort of Robert Mitchum Thunder Road chase scene, screwing it on in enormously overpowered monster cars from the early 1970s.

This looks to end badly for both sides.

* * *

The House and Senate RussianGate hearings — a potential daily fix on TV like the Watergate hearings were during the summer of 1973 — have been an epic failure. People from all over the country have posted, texted and emailed news organizations demanding that these snorefests be jerked off the air. They are bored by the spectacle of the RussianGate hearings. The plot is confusing, they say; the characters are dull, and the repetitive dialogue is repulsive.

The network and cable TV folks agreed and clipped their live camera feeds, only showing random clips that supported whatever the daily narrative needed to advance.

* * *

Many of these post Watergate era reporters have been waiting a long time for this. Maybe not as long as Christians have awaited the Second Coming . . . . but most never really thought such a story would happen to tell the truth. But here it is, and by God, it’s almost too good to be true.

The question is: what do they stand for, and what’s next for them? Book deal? Regular, nationwide, primetime TV news program host? Bob Woodward was finally successful for the same type of story they are now chasing. Bob has kept pushing, pushing, and pushing the same stuff for almot 50 years now and has shown conclusively that one can never push a story too far.

What are the connections?

* * *
It is hard to grasp that our dim, black, flat widescreens jutting out from our living room walls are bringing us every uncensored detail and rumor 24 hours everyday from the musty corridors and hearing rooms on Capitol Hill to the stark TV studio sets of a story that is beginning to look like it could have only one incredible ending — the impeachment of the third sitting President of the United States in 2019.

* * *

Billy Graham’s death was announced on all print and TV media channels last week. But what? What was happening here? Another flashback? A time warp? I thought he had died long ago.

Strange . . . just a week or so ago, the private preacher of the past 12 presidents but not the current one was being huzzahed off the Great American Stage. Graham was such a wild Charleton Heston type in his televised fighting stances against Evil and for Gawd. Graham’s act was extremely subtle; he softly threatened his weeping crowds of sinners — Redemption Thru Fear!

Alas, today’s national press corps is much the same.

* * *

White House taping system display at the Richard Nixon Museum

Another flashback. This RussianGate story needs no Watergate-style Alexander Butterfield and his elaborate taping machine system. They are now ubiqutous throughout our society with internetted appliances, security cameras, personal smart phones, laptops and large screen TV cameras and microphones, apps and American business and governement recording and analyzing our every expression, click, thought and deed. We are now our own official buggers — we are our own NSA and FBI plumbers.

With Amazon’s Alexa like devices and apps in our homes and cars it is a great deal easier for those in power to follow in real time what’s going on everywhere all the time.

We install these devices personally without a care for the outcome. Why? To record things for posterity? Nope. To share what we ate last night with the world. Hey, look at me!

With the iPhone X’s improved camera app, we can Instagram photos around that look like they were taken by famous portrait artists. Only those in the know will realize that we are still just bumpkins who are hoping to get rich off our lucky lotto numbers or scoring early on just the right crypto currency.

Where are the NY Times and Washington Post headlines: US BUGS SELF (full page)?

* * *

21st century conspirator’s lament — today’s technology doesn’t allow for mysterious courthouse evidence room fires now and then.

* * *
21st century reporter’s lament — no really decent enemies list with unexplainable names listed. It’s easy to understand in today’s world why such lists are kept.

* * *

21st century cable and broadcast TV executive producer’s lament — no crowded bars and restaurants of people watching the televised hearing coverage like they did twenty some odd years ago of the OJ trial. Not even smartphone streamed podcasts enticed today’s public to watch today’s crap hearings.

Lord, how they miss each side’s fans cheering their home team.

* * *

Weird truth #1: Washington DC is the only place in the country where the RussianGate story is not dull. How can they not get bored and depressed by this? After the first three or four days of this scam, there was really no point in following this story until evidence of collusion appeared. So far, after over a year plus – nada.

RussianGate’s “dirty tricks” were not the colorful, shocking and essentially minor ones that we saw on the 1972 American presidentail campaign trail. Nor were they the market savvy ones the Russians used to diddle American social media audiences — American businesses have been doing that for years to the world’s consumers. No, 2016’s tricks were contained in a less than forthright, Top Secret FBI/DOJ request to surveil a US citizen. Ironic, yes. Almost Nixonian in its “Ends Justifies Means” approach.

* * *

Even with all of our modern surveillance systems, there doesn’t yet seem to be a smoking gun or a set of taped chats or transcripts thereof. No, all we have is daily 10 minute doses of legal cynicism — what-iffing that bubbles up at some midnight moment at the beginning of each day’s news cycle.

Gotta love these legendary legal minds.

The conventional wisdom says these arguments should be backed up by what would normally be considered “good evidence” or at least reliable leaks from the Hill committees or Special Prosecutor.

* * *

There’s an old legal principle that says that “a (US) court has a right to any man’s evidence.” Which would seem to include what the FBI/DOJ knew and when it knew it regarding the Steele dossier in its FISA submission.

* * *

Given a choice between launching a half-mad war in the middle East and resigning for the good of the nation, Richard Nixon did not opt for his half-mad war. I note that some are considering a similar issue with Trump and the far East.

* * *

So the “constitutional crisis” over the dossier is not so much a matter of what the documents actually said or didn’t say, but a question of the executive branch of government of “withholding evidence” about the dossier to get what it wanted from the mushrooms of the judicial branch.

* * *
There is a sense of deja vu that is almost frightening: Will the fat spill into the fire? I dunno, but there is no ignoring the general drift of things.

Copyright © 2018 From My Isle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com