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Pay no attention to the ongoing palace intrigue. Mueller’s investigation will at most act as a speed bump of sorts. Don’t mistake symptoms for the disease. Should the President or one of his minions be dismissed they will almost certainly be replaced by another donor class proxy. There’s no shortage of political mercenaries (in either party) willing to ply us with carefully crafted distortion.

Despite internecine squabbles the majority of lawmakers in congress can all agree on more military spending, more surveillance, more money for corporate executives… and less for everyone else. And so a parade of talking heads trot out the usual pleasant fiction about trickle-down economics. And it is fiction. Corporate leaders have openly conceded they have no intention of creating jobs or raising wages with money attained through tax cuts. They’re simply going to take it and pass it on to their shareholders.

This is what happens when business interests call the shots. Society ends up in a place where three oligarchs own as much as the bottom half of society and allegations of Russian “interference” somehow overshadow the reality of a billion dollar presidential race which is funded heavily by concentrated sources of private power.

Make no mistake, what these elite groups are doing isn’t just interference, it’s flat out political subversion and it dwarfs anything that Putin and his Kremlin spy chiefs have cooked up. That the media has worked people into a lather about Flynn and Russian hacking is a miracle of modern propaganda. Never mind American-financed regime changes in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

“Assad must go,” does that sound like political meddling to you? Any thoughts Mrs. Clinton?

Of course CounterPunch readers saw this coming. The economic betrayal of the working class voters who cast their ballot for a reality TV celebrity was inevitable. Just keep in mind that it’s a mistake to reflexively dismiss all Trump supporters as fascists. To do so would be to fall into the extremist trap of out-group homogeneity bias.

A significant number of Trump voters are simply naïve and desperate. Engaged in a misguided spasm of rebellion. When people are being crushed by the status quo they will opt for anything other than the status quo. Even if doing so entails what psychologists refer to as “magical thinking.” Hillary Clinton, who defines the status quo, worked diligently with her corporate allies in the press to both eliminate the perception of alternatives on the left and also to elevate Trump.

Is there a path that offers escape from the downward spiral towards greater economic efficiencies? Your author is not necessarily optimistic. The Mighty Wurlitzer is a potent instrument and as the process of wealth extraction accelerates the media’s public relations apparatus has been cranked up to full throttle. Though mainstream outlets might decry “fake news” the public record reveals that these same outlets have been more than happy to give an open mic to the Pentagon and tender lies about imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Hence, things will likely need to get worse before they get better. Fighting the donor class will require mass mobilization and as things stand now the social fabric is unravelling into hundreds of millions of dyads: one person and one smart phone.