“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

This phrase has become very useful in our current political environment. It’s a line from one of those Shakespeare plays where everyone dies in the end, and its use has become a way of pointing out when someone’s frantic resistance to something reveals a lot more about their true agendas than they intended to let on. When you know that your government is lying to you and the media is helping them, such things can often be a useful way of figuring out exactly what’s going on.

Take for example the way corporate media, proven by WikiLeaks to be pervasively controlled by the Clintons and their allies far more than we ever knew, has continued to run smear pieces on Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, even while they assure everyone that Hillary has an insurmountable lead over Donald Trump.

.@DrJillStein Straight Up Butchers The Daily Beast - the rag with Chelsea Clinton on its board.https://t.co/MTwi97G7vp #JillNotHill — Kiran ⚡ #NoDAPL (@KiranOpal) October 28, 2016

Attack editorials and smear pieces about Stein have been churned out by Clinton-allied media like cheap t-shirts at a Bangladeshi sweat shop since well before the Green Party convention, but lately, the frenzied attacks are getting even louder and more desperate. Last week John Oliver, whose employer HBO is owned by heavyweight Clinton contributor Time Warner, dedicated an entire rant to punching down on third parties and their supporters. Yesterday the Daily Beast, whose owner IAC is co-directed by Chelsea Clinton herself, ran a hit piece on the good doctor hilariously accusing her of having a “conflict of interest” because she has a standard investment portfolio.

I’m just going to type that out again because it makes my smug parts light up with glee: a publication, controlled by Hillary Clinton’s daughter, ran a hit piece on Jill Stein, for having a conflict of interest.

My God that’s good. I need a cigarette.

Jill Stein, if you haven’t been following, is the only candidate on the ballot who has never been a Republican, the only candidate on the ballot who doesn’t hate progressives, and the only candidate on the ballot pushing an actual progressive agenda. That means she’s going to be pulling votes from people who would otherwise support Hillary “candidates must have a public position and a private position” Clinton, who is currently pretending to care about progressives so they’ll give her the power to privatize social security and start a war with Russia.

Oh, but Hillary doesn’t need those votes, does she? The official narrative all over corporate media is that Clinton is now a shoe-in. ESPN’s monolithic poll-crunching juggernaut FiveThirtyEight has Clinton as a very heavy favorite to win the election, its editor-in-chief Nate Silver reassuring us that “Trump’s chances of winning the election haven’t improved very much in our forecast.” You will remember Nate Silver as the inventor of the specious argument that Bernie Sanders is basically the same as Hillary Clinton because they “voted together 93% of the time when in Congress together,” which is an incredibly disingenuous manipulation of the data, as Counterpunch reports. You may also remember Silver as the man whose Clinton-favoring system incorrectly predicted Hillary winning a number of the states she ended up losing to Bernie Sanders in the primary.

Could it be that these folks are not nearly as confident in the results as they pretend to be? Are the Democrats’ weighted polling practices as reported by Zero Hedge still being employed to discourage Trump voters and paint Clinton as an unstoppable force? If Hillary’s lead has swelled to insurmountability, why have the attacks on Jill Stein increased instead of decreased? Is she taking far more votes from Clinton than the Nate Silvers are letting us know?

I remember reading this when Caitlin wrote it in early Aug. Very prophetic knowing what we now know:https://t.co/I3fTad5o56 — Darin (@SeahawksBMX) October 28, 2016

Or is it broader than that? Is it simply that in this era of WikiLeaks, alternative media, and widespread internet access, too many people are opening their eyes and looking toward true rebels like Jill Stein? Are they so desperate to keep the progressives from taking over their party or replacing it that they need to grasp at straws by sponsoring hit pieces attacking her for having a standard investment portfolio?

How obnoxious is that, by the way? Jill Stein is trending on Facebook. That would usually fill me with happiness, but no, she’s trending because of that stupid Chelsea Clinton smear piece. I can’t believe this is getting traction at all. So this gets traction, but the email revealing Bill Clinton having “500 conflicts of interest” holds no interest for people? The same people who were outraged about Bernie’s little retirement house are banging on about this too, but you never hear them get outraged about Hillary’s $12 million appearance fee or Bill’s million dollar “gift” from head chopping warlords.

The stupid is killing us. The stupid will kill us all.

People have a really screwed up sense of equivalency. In the minds of many, apparently, Jill’s mutual fund having a few oil shares in it is the same as hundreds of millions in actual corporate conflicts of interest where political favors are being bought and sold for money? How do people even compute it that way?

But it’s always the same people, have you noticed that? The most amoral people are having a field day with this as if morals have any meaning for them at all. With the Clintons, any amount of criminality is just normal everyday stuff to them, they don’t understand why anybody’s making a fuss, in fact, the proof that she’s such a great criminal makes them like her more. These same people suddenly become more pernickety and pious than your churchy Aunt Pearl when it comes to Jill Stein. Doesn’t matter that Hillary actively sells fracking, Jill raising a few questions about the safety of GMO cucumbers is a deal-breaker. Doesn’t matter that Hillary is blatantly shoving us headlong into war with Russia, Jill had some concerns about vaccines in her capacity as a doctor once. And now this.

She probably drives a car, you know. Good god, she probably uses gas for her cooking.

No, you’re right Hillary people, she should definitely not fight the oil companies that are destroying our species while she’s still using an iPhone.

In fact, we should all shut up about the impending climate apocalypse until we’ve rid our own person completely of oil and plastics.

At the end of the day, I’m so glad we’re shutting down the only candidate in the race who is speaking up for the environment because her managed fund has some oil shares in it, just like pretty much everyone else’s does. That’s a really good, moral decision. Right? Let’s spend all our intelligence defending the share portfolios of billionaires by smothering the presidential campaign of the only progressive candidate on the ballot. The only candidate who hasn’t been a Republican. The only one who has a comprehensive plan for climate change.

Good thinking, humans. You’re really hitting that one out of the park.

Ugh. I’m going to go lie down. Remember, dear reader, ignore their stories and watch their actions. Forget their narrative about what’s happening, and watch what really makes them squeal. When it comes to Jill Stein, they protest too much. Keep your bright eyes right there.

[Featured Image by D. Ross Cameron/AP Images]