Debating proponents of the Russiagate conspiracy theory is always a bit surreal. Mostly it’s just outraged sputtering from people accustomed to only interacting with folks inside their echo chamber, who simply cannot believe that it’s not completely obvious to you that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

If you can push past that point and move things into an actual conversation, it quickly becomes apparent that they’re having a very difficult time substantiating their claims with hard facts. There’s something about listening to Bill Maher talk about Russiagate like it’s a real thing and watching Rachel Maddow “connect the dots” using confident-sounding assertions in an authoritative tone of voice month after month that creates the illusion that hard evidence has been provided for Trump-Russia collusion, when it has not been. But one hard fact they never fail to provide is Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower, where he’d hoped to receive dirt on the Clinton campaign.

There’s no question that this meeting took place; Trump Jr. has admitted to it, saying he met with Natalia Veselnitskaya in the hope that she’d make good on her claim of having damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Because it is an undeniably real thing that did happen between a Trump and a Russian national, the meeting has remained loudly front and center in all Trump-Russia collusion narratives since July, despite the fact that Veselnitskaya did not provide any useful information. Due to the lack of solid evidence for things like hacking or vote manipulation, or even any specifics on how exactly Trump is supposed to have colluded with Russia to rig the election, the Trump Jr. meeting has remained a crucial part of all Russiagate claims.

So why, then, are Clintonists suddenly claiming that the sort of opposition research Trump Jr. did is perfectly normal and acceptable?

Every one of these people made a big deal about the Don Jr. meeting at Trump Tower, but you have to do some very impressive mental gymnastics to make what the Trump campaign did last year worse than what the Clinton campaign did. Clintonists have been attempting to spin the new revelation that the Clinton campaign was directly involved in funding the notoriously error-riddled and unverified Christopher Steele “Pissgate” dossier as old news or insignificant, but this is indeed new information and it is indeed newsworthy.

Back in July, long before the specifics of who paid for the Steele dossier were known, journalist Robert Parry pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of criticizing Trump Jr. for doing opposition research with Russia when it was known that Democrats had been funding Steele. “But the Steele dossier is a more immediate and direct example of close Hillary Clinton supporters going outside the United States for dirt on Trump and collaborating with foreign nationals to dig it up — allegedly from Kremlin insiders,” Parry wrote. “Although it is still not clear exactly who footed the bill for the Steele dossier and how much money was spread around to the Russian contacts, it is clear that Clinton supporters paid for the opposition research and then flacked the material to American journalists.”

So to recap, Democrats paid for opposition research with Russian insiders, but doing opposition research with Russians was not a big deal. Then Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, and suddenly doing oppo research with Russians was a big deal. And now that we’ve learned that the Democrats who paid Steele were not just Clinton supporters but Clinton campaign staff, we’re back to opposition research with Russians being no big deal again.

Speaking for myself, I don’t care that the Clinton campaign did opposition research with Russians. Nor do I care that the Trump campaign did opposition research with Russians. I don’t even really care that the Clintonists are being total hypocrites about this pernicious psyop they keep shoving down everyone’s throats. I don’t care about Robert Mueller, I don’t care about Susan Rice, and I don’t care if they ever “lock her up”. I just want these awful Russiagate lies to end, because they’re being used to manufacture support for new cold war escalations and to leverage the current administration into taking a more hawkish position toward Moscow. These things could end the world, and that’s infinitely more important than any partisan grudge against corrupt Democrats.

The real reason these ridiculous Russia narratives are being promoted so aggressively has nothing to do with dossiers, hackers, peeing prostitutes or Pokémon propaganda. It’s ultimately nothing to do with Trump, either. The real reason these anti-Russia narratives are being forced into our consciousness day after day is because China poses an immense threat to American global dominance, and it’s using Russia as its right arm while it grows in power and influence. To take out China, America’s unelected power establishment is going to have to break its right arm, hence the new cold war. As Gilbert Doctorow writes for Consortium News:

Russia is essential to China because of Moscow’s long experience managing global relations going back to the period of the Cold War and because of its willingness and ability today to stand up directly to the American hegemon, whereas China, with its heavy dependence on its vast exports to the U.S., cannot do so without endangering vital interests. Moreover, since the Western establishment sees China as the long-term challenge to its supremacy, it is best for Beijing to exercise its influence through another power, which today is Russia.

Ordinary human beings have been given no say in whether or not we want our world threatened by nuclear holocaust in order for the US power structure to remain dominant on a global scale. We get no say in the course of the direction our species is taking on this planet or what our future will look like. All we get is lies to chew on so we’ll stay out of the way of the ruling elites who are choking our world to death.

The Democratic party goon squad is just one leg of the lie machine these monsters lull us to sleep with, but I see them as one of the most toxic. The way the “Resistance” has successfully been used to co-opt the spirit of last year’s progressive revolution and twist it back into establishment subservience is typical of the way the Democratic party has always been used; its primary function is to hijack the movements which arise in response to the more overt oligarchic manipulations and render them impotent. For this reason I see their head propagandists as the primary obstacles to a meaningful revolution from the political left against the ruling elites who are killing us. I for one will keep speaking out against the evils they’re inflicting upon us for as long as anyone’s listening.

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