Excuse me, but at what point during all these protests and identity politics parades did we forget that the Hillary Clinton campaign hand-picked Donald Trump to be her Republican opponent? Is anybody going to pause in the midst of their social media demonstrations of self-righteous outrage to recall that the Pied Piper email released by WikiLeaks clearly shows Clinton campaign staff conspiring with the DNC to use their media leverage to elevate Trump above the other candidates? Are we at some point going to take a breath and acknowledge the fact that, after manipulating the primaries of both parties to ensure a Clinton vs. Trump ticket, the Hillary campaign then started literally paying people to make the public terrified of Trump and his supporters, and that we’re seeing the effects of that fearmongering playing out right now? Or are we still going to try and blame Berners and bigotry for this mess that Hillary Clinton and her goons are solely responsible for creating?

Clinton's Pied Piper Strategy (use media contacts to promote Trump) has backfired spectacularly. PDF of our leak: https://t.co/DAmWNq9K0f pic.twitter.com/R49V3TfMXC — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 9, 2016

In a memo attached to the aforementioned document, staff are seen discussing a plan to “tell the press” to focus on the most extreme candidates in the Republican primary and take them seriously rather than marginalize them, in order to hurt the campaigns of the more moderate candidates with a better chance to win. The candidates they listed, called “Pied Piper Candidates” in the memo, are Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump.

Clearly, as evidenced by the highly disproportionate amount of coverage he received in the Republican primaries in comparison to the other candidates, they went with Donald Trump.

As crazy as it is that the Clinton campaign is seen sending memos to the Committee responsible for ensuring unbiased Democratic primaries in April of 2015, and as shocking as it is to see a candidate’s campaign staff casually mentioning how they’ll instruct members of the press on how to cover the candidacies of the opposing party, the real bombshell when this email came out was the knowledge that the elites of the Democratic party didn’t just rig their own primary, they rigged the Republican one as well. They planned to use their appalling but well-documented amount of leverage over the media to elevate Trump above all the other candidates in order to undermine the campaigns of the moderates, and it worked. Trump won as a direct result of this.

The Clinton campaign then went to work making sure that the American public is as terrified of Donald Trump as possible. The staff of the New York Times (former crown jewel of the Fourth Estate, now shameless neoliberal shill rag) was shown in another Wikileaks release scheming with Clinton campaign staff on a “story” (read: full-page campaign ad) they wanted to do on how Clinton and her supporters view Donald Trump. In this email, they said the following:

“We’re told that President Clinton (like Mrs. Clinton and some other Dems) thinks that Trump would be a formidable opponent in the general election, and that Dems are in a form of denial if they dismiss Trump as a joke who would be easily defeated in November. President Clinton, like others, thinks that Trump has his finger on the pulse of the electorate’s mood and that only a well-financed, concerted campaign portrayed [sic] him as dangerous and bigoted will win what both Clintons believe will be a close November election.”

So we know they were planning a fear-based campaign from the beginning. But then you have another sycophantic fake news organization in CNN showing Van Jones tearfully decrying the fact that children all over the country are now terrified of the impending Trump presidency.

Of course they’re terrified, you monsters! You made them that way! On purpose!

The Project Veritas videos feature Democratic operatives telling an undercover reporter with a hidden camera how they’re paid by the Clinton campaign to disrupt and instigate violence at Trump rallies in front of news cameras to help paint Trump supporters as violent. They paid people to do this.

The fearmongering campaign of the online shills employed by Clinton super PAC Correct the Record was even worse because they could circulate tremendous amounts of disinformation with no accountability whatsoever. So much of the horror stories that entered into public perception about the Republican candidate were the product of the sustained efforts of paid campaigners posing as real Clinton supporters in online discussion forums, who were able to lie and deceive and guilt and gaslight with no reason to reign it in or stay loyal to truth to any extent at all.

The narrative of Trump and his supporters being dangerous and violent was the brainchild of neoliberal think tanks and Clinton campaign officials, who used CTR shills and their sway over the media to pummel the American psyche with this manufactured propaganda, month after month after month, about a candidate they hand-picked to oppose Clinton in the first place. And everyone’s still suffering from that trauma these disgusting parasites inflicted upon them. They got Trump nominated, then made us all afraid of him, then ran a horrible campaign with a horrible candidate, then lost. And now we’re all suffering the consequences.

You were duped, America, and not by Donald Trump. If you’re going to be outraged, then put your outrage where it belongs.

[Featured Image by Ted S. Warren/AP Images]