(Originally published 10 February 2018)

To Whom It May Concern:

The story about Russian hackers working on behalf of a coordinated Kremlin intelligence operation, subverting American elections, infiltrating our most sacred political traditions, and propping up their Trump and GOP and media puppets…

Some of you believe this narrative.

This memo is to you.

The Influence Campaign

You believe it was (almost) impossible for Trump to have won the election without some sort of meddling.

Some secret cabal of America’s enemies must have

manipulated voting results? No…

suppressed voter turnout? No…

So what exactly did the Russians do to bring Trump to the White House?

An “Influence campaign!”

From the ardently pro-Democrat, pro-Resistance news outlet AlterNet:

In 2016, Russia’s biggest impact was through propaganda, spreading messaging that pushed American voters’ hot buttons, not tinkering with the machinery.

Those sneaky Russians used their Twitter-bots to hijack Americans’ minds, forcing them against their will, against their better judgment, against what they were planning to do for years, to believe conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and sway enough votes away from her.

It was a calculated effort to influence the American voting public into abandoning Clinton and the Democrats, their natural and obvious preference, the choice of any level-headed non-ideologue.

The Russians used RT and Sputnik, the Russian news agencies, to sow doubt about America’s foreign policy and political integrity…

…because, you know, Democratic voters are naturally supportive of America’s war economy and totally not suspicious of how the corporate elite control the government. But Putin’s influence campaign seduced some of them to a pro-Russian, anti-’murica way of thinking! News outlets like Democracy Now! or The Nation with similar viewpoints must be Russian agents with super deep cover.

The Russians used YouTube to trick us into believing Hillary was hiding health problems…

…because Democratic voters are super concerned with their candidate’s pristine health. That’s why they liked Bernie Sanders so much, cuz he was so healthy.

The Russians used Twitter and Facebook and Wikileaks to spread the Podesta “Pizzagate” emails, the “Clinton Cash” documentary, the “Clinton Body Count” theories, and suspicion about the Clinton Foundation…

…because Democratic voters don’t know how to Google “Clinton Conspiracies Debunked,” and are therefore helpless against this onslaught of obviously-Russian propaganda. Only Putin and our Russian enemies would want to expose Clinton’s embarrassments, because a weak Clinton is a weak ‘murica.

…or because Democratic voters tend to be idealistic and don’t know how to be team players, unable to separate coach Clinton from team Democrat, because the Democrats are the obvious and only serious opposition to Trump and his Republican Apocalypse. Putin exploited this idealism to turn “moderate” into a bad word, a word that somehow meant “comfortable with the status quo.”

The Resistance

You saw this assault on our National Security (NatSec, as they call it). You witnessed Trump’s treason unfold before your eyes and you answered the call of #TheResistance.

You saw the Kremlin plot for what it was: a direct attack on US Sovereignty, on Obama’s legacy of progress, on the credibility of American institutions. Putin, that slimy former KGB agent, was singlehandedly reigniting the Cold War with a brutal psychological attack.

And his success was such that it broke relationships with family and friends. It divided you from voices and perspectives you used to think trustworthy and courageous: Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Kyle Kulinski, and Ed Schultz. These dissenters were weeded out of The Guardian and Huffington Post and had to make up new, pro-Russia news outlets like The Intercept, a billionaire-owned organization so corrupt as to employ people like civil rights activist Shaun King, Dirty Wars documentarian Jeremy Scahill, and, most recently, renowned National Security reporter James Risen (formerly of the New York Times). This team sounds more like deep-state controlled opposition than secret Putinites.

You decided that Rachel Maddow and MSNBC were not leading you down a conspiracy hole. You believed that, at their core, the New York Times, CNN, NBC, PBS, all of them could not be lying about Russian interference, that clearly this was a Russian operation on a massive scale, and there are probably paid KGB agents all over America’s institutions. After all, the more we dig, the more connections we find between powerful Americans and Russian interests (even if most of those powerful Americans are, well, Democrats…).

But savvy, non-mainstream journalists like Cenk Uygur, Louise Mensch, and Trevor Noah put together a narrative showing that Trump and his ilk are not simply co-conspirators with Putin, but deeply indebted to, and controlled by the Kremlin.

That’s what happened, as you see things.

That’s the reality of Election 2016.

That’s how Putin meddled and influence-campaigned and psyop’d his way to a treasonous Trump victory.

And so the only response to what amounts to a literal act of war is to fight back, to be brave in the face of the reborn Communist Empire. Forget Democrats and Republicans, it’s time to unite under the anti-Kremlin banner and save our precious freedoms from the foreign (cyber-)terrorist monsters.

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But maybe you see #Russiagate as a farce.

Maybe you know, deep down, that Hillary’s only chance of winning was convincing people she was preferable enough to vote for, something she and her party failed to do. You know she and the DNC are not innocent victims, but the people who actually sabotaged an electoral process: their own presidential primaries.

You know that Democrats’ ties to Russia are as deep, if not deeper, than any Republicans.

You remember Obama’s “reset” with Russia, and how the Republicans would always try to blame sneaky Kremlin tactics whenever they needed cover for their crimes or smears against their opponents.

You understand geopolitics well enough to recognize who does the actual colluding, and why Russia — rather than Israel, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia — is being targeted by this particular scandal narrative.

Maybe you’ve just decided that it’s more important to support the anti-Trump narrative, even if it’s based on lies, because bringing down Trump is ultimately in the world’s best interests.

I hear you. I disagree, though.

Dirty tricks to bring down a monster? I mean, he is a monster, so of course we should stop him however we can. He’s got weapons of mass destruction, he’s got Supreme Court picks and executive orders and eminent domain and an entire branch of government. He needs to be stopped before he starts a reckless, catastrophic war.

But we don’t need to resort to the ridiculous Russiagate joke to bring him down. Instead of producing evidence of a coordinated plot, we have anecdote here, coincidence there.

Corruption, certainly, and this type of behavior should never be tolerated.

But neither should be militant regime change, assassination by death squad and drone, or deliberate Rogue-State-ification of entire nations. Neither should quid pro quo or weapons trafficking, all part of Hillary and Obama’s pristine records.

Dissent is Russian

But everywhere, instead of focusing on the organized crimes and sociopathic lunacy of Don Trump, we have suspicion of dissent.

Dissenting from the mainstream #Russiagate narrative means you’re part of the Russian psyop, or at least you’ve been duped by it. This is an establishment narrative, crossing party lines, though the Democrats have adopted it as a litmus test.

And everytime you even point out that this narrative is stifling dissent, you are putting US NatSec at risk!

That’s what we learned from the Nunes memo, right?

Releasing it would damage NatSec, they said.

It would compromise sources and methods,

it would disrupt an ongoing investigation,

it would instill long-term doubt in our hallowed institutions, the FBI and DoJ, whose reputations would otherwise be above reproach.

…because, of course, Democratic voters don’t have all these anti-statist beliefs like the Republican base. Only Koch propagandists talk about corruption in government, and only as a way of fueling some secret prejudice: heteronormativity, racism, elitism, religious dominionism. That’s why the Bernie Bros voted for Trump, because they were really only looking out for the “Straight, White, Christian Working Class.”

and because real Democrats are smart enough to trust the experts, to reject the Fox News, anti-science, TEA Party conspiracies, and to assume that Mother Jones and MoveOn and WaPo are telling basically the whole truthful story.

So there’s no need to question the motivation behind #Russiagate just like there’s no need to question US military presence around the world or domestic spying programs or FISA courts or militarized police.

If there was a serious concern in one of these areas, Rachel Maddow would have done a whole chalkboard on it by now!

If there had been a better option than the American Global Order, Obama would have told us about it.

Conclusions

If you are of either of these minds -

That #Russiagate is a real depiction of history, or

that it’s a worthwhile deception to bring down a monster -

then consider what that means about your political allegiance:

1. You do not substantially object to the Post-War American global order

After World War II, the world organized itself around two poles of power: those allied with the US and those allied with the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet Union fell, the US established itself as the single world superpower, the guarantor of stability against the chaos left in the withdrawal of the USSR from its satellites. You agree that this state of affairs is preferable as human experience becomes global and digital, that US interests around the world are not just matters of its own National Security, but for global stability.

2. You agree in principal with what American hegemony represents

Maybe you believe America’s global order is the closest thing the world could have to peace. Free Enterprise, as long as it’s coupled with labor protections, is the best utopia we can hope for. And even if America is behind Europe in terms of progressive social values, we are at least on the same trajectory, the same ideological trail. The world could do a lot worse than the American Empire, and we know that nothing can ever overcome Capitalism without resorting to nihilistic terror.

Since this is the case, you should continue supporting and voting for Democrats.

You should obviously never vote for the Republicans. We all know what happened to them, from the Southern Strategy to Reagan to Bush II.

The unstable Republican Party has been a threat to decent human survival since 9/11 and the codification of permanent war and the surveillance state. Backed by the military and its contractors, as well as by the massive fossil fuel and agriculture industries, the GOP represents the worst kind of corporate-military alliance, and control of an institution as powerful as the US government desperately needs to be ripped from their hands.

But since the Democrats are uninterested in dismantling the dangerous, oppressive, (unconstitutional,) and manipulative elements of that government,

since they appear, on the other hand, to be excited to expand the surveillance state and violently enforce the imperial American global order using all of the tools they disparaged under Bush II,

You should not be surprised when people like me start warning you:

The Democrats are the new Republicans, and we all know what happened to the Republicans.

I dissent from the Republicans and the Democrats using their tactics.

And I dissent from #Russiagate.