Caitlin JOHNSTONE
“Mueller isn’t going to find anything in 2017 that these vast, sprawling networks wouldn’t have found in 2016. He’s not going to find anything by ‘following the money’ that couldn’t be found infinitely more efficaciously via Orwellian espionage. The factions within the intelligence community that were working to sabotage the incoming administration last year would have leaked proof of collusion if they’d had it. They did not have it then, and they do not have it now. Mueller will continue finding evidence of corruption throughout his investigation, since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish, but he will not find evidence of collusion to win the 2016 election that will lead to Trump’s impeachment. It will not happen.”
~ Me, last year.
I don’t make predictions very often. Pretty much my entire worldview is premised upon the idea that we are in a wildly unprecedented point in history, that old patterns are breaking down and giving way to novelty, and that, more and more, the only thing we should expect is the unexpected. If I didn’t believe that our species is capable of breaking out of our predictable patterns and pulling off something miraculous from way out of left field, I wouldn’t be bothering with the fight against the omnicidal, ecocidal Orwellian oppression machine that is driving us toward extinction. I’d just make art and hug my kids a lot and wait for the end to come.
The above quote was an exception. It was as glaringly obvious then as it is now that if there were any evidence to be found of Trump conspiring with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election, it would have been picked up by the vast, sprawling surveillance networks of the US-centralized empire and leaked to the Washington Post while Obama was still in office. If it didn’t happen then, it won’t happen at all.
So my prediction has been bearing out comfortably. Since last year Russiagaters have been insisting that various Trump insiders are going to “flip” any minute now, meaning they’ve been put in a position of legal jeopardy which will cause them to finally spill the beans on this massive secret Russia conspiracy in order to save their own hides. They said Flynn’s about to flip. They said Papadopoulos is about to flip. They said Gates is about to flip. They said Cohen is about to flip. They said Manafort is about to flip. So far all Mueller’s investigative team has turned up on Trump’s team is some corruption and process crimes, because DC insiders are corrupt liars. The only flipping that’s been happening is Russiagaters flipping the fuck out as their hopes are dashed to pieces time and time and time again.
Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort was trending yesterday with the usual mainstream anti-Trump fanfare we see whenever Saint Mueller does literally anything, but it didn’t trend for long and their hearts weren’t in it. Hopes that a “flip” was in the mail as news broke that Manafort had taken a plea deal were quickly dashed as people began actually reading the contents of the Mueller indictment for themselves. As noted by Real News’ Aaron Maté (who is in my opinion the most lucid voice on the matter of American Russia hysteria right now), the documents in the indictment disprove a longstanding key Russiagate claim that Manafort was supporting Kremlin interests in Ukraine; Mueller’s own documents prove that Manafort was actually advancing western interests.
Additionally, there doesn’t at this time appear to be any reason to believe Manafort’s plea deal will involve the Trump campaign at all, and can involve any of Manafort’s other corrupt shenanigans which stretch back years. In fact one of the names which keeps coming up in mainstream punditry as a likely target resulting from Manafort’s arrangement is the Clinton-aligned Tony Podesta.
This all fits in with a reliable and consistent pattern which Maté thoroughly documented recently, wherein criminal convictions are being made and plea deals accepted to much manic “BOOM! He’s gonna flip!” celebration among Russiagate conspiracy enthusiasts, but without any part of the actual facts showing any trace of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Russiagaters have been assuring me since the beginning of last year that collusion will be proven, that Trump is going to be impeached and removed from office any minute now and spend the rest of his life behind bars for attacking American democracy and helping a hostile state infiltrate the highest levels of the US government. We are fast approaching the halfway point of this president’s term, and we are not one iota closer to his being removed from office than we were on the day of his inauguration. The BOOMs never bear fruit. The flips never come. All we get is a lot of drama while dangerous escalations between two nuclear superpowers continue to steadily mount with full bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and the full consent of the public.
The collusion narrative is like an old rusty Pinto on cinderblocks that racing enthusiasts keep placing bets on because the NASCAR commentators keep saying it’s going to win. The thing ain’t moving; the bets are fueled by nothing but cultish anti-Trumpism and hope. Without collusion between Trump and the Russian government, all you’ve got is a bunch of CNN liberals freaking out about an icy potato patch they seldom even thought about prior to 2016. That icy potato patch happens to be home to thousands of nuclear missiles and a military which could easily enter into a direct confrontation with the US and its allies in the fog of war as things heat up in Syria. You Russiagaters want your BOOM? There’s your fucking BOOM.
How long are they going to keep this up? How long are they going to keep feeding into this psychotic narrative which never accomplishes anything other than advancing longstanding neoconservative agendas, despite never seeing any actual progress toward impeachment? How long can the propagandists keep the masses fixated on this fake nonsense, ensuring support for imperialist foreign policy while advancing internet censorship and shoring up control of the narrative from dissident alternative media? How many BOOMs and flips have to fizzle before the acolytes of the Cult of Mueller lose faith?
I have nothing but disdain for Trump. But while Democrats are burning their Saint Mueller prayer candles and shrieking about Susan Sarandon, this president is showing zero signs of impending impeachment and spending every single day using the bully pulpit to advance the narrative that he is strengthening the economy and bringing in jobs and putting more money in the pockets of Americans. He is receiving very little pushback against that narrative because of how fixated Democrats are on their Russiagate Hail Mary, and if it remains unchallenged he’s probably going to win in 2020.
If the world isn’t a nuclear wasteland by then, of course.
