CNN has become the all-Russia, all-the-time network, to the point where if a bomb went off during half-time at the Superbowl it would be the second story up at the top of the hour, after coverage of how a minor functionary in the Trump campaign once had lunch at the Russian Tea Room.
I can understand having a passing interest in what role Russia played in the election; I can understand covering it when significant news of what actually happened breaks. What is less easy to understand is why anyone would want to cover this day in and day out, obsessively, compulsively, in scatological detail, until the most wretched insomniac would be lulled into a coma by it.
Unless, of course, that “anyone” was so demoralized by the outcome of the 2016 election that they would sell their soul for any explanation for it other than their own inability to understand the needs of the American people – and their own stunning incompetence.
Which brings me to back to CNN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee and its devotees, who have been stuck in the “deranged” position since November 8, 2016.
The election had to be rigged, you see. Because the reason Donald J. Trump won the presidency can’t be that the DNC got it wrong.
It can’t be that the people finally got so disgusted with the Democratic Party’s inability to get anything useful done that they just lost faith in it. It can’t be that the Affordable Care Act – which was supposed to make healthcare more affordable – became nothing but a giveaway to Big Pharma and Big Insurance the minute those industries waved money at the DNC. It can’t be that the Democratic Party establishment has backed every trade deal for thirty years regardless of the ruin it’s made of the working class. It can’t be that the latte liberals manning the helm of the party are more interested in the well-being of their stock holdings than they are in the plight of the American middle class.
It can’t be that the people couldn’t trust a candidate joined at the hip to Goldman Sachs to put Main Street first. It can’t be that the party resorted to the sleaziest of sleazy tricks to bounce a candidate who did put working people first in favor of a corporate drone. It can’t be that most Americans care a lot less about politically correct optics than they do about what will feed their families. And it certainly can’t be that thirty years of mouthing sweet nothings about working people while never managing to enact a single policy that actual helped them caused the people to give up.
It can’t be that the party lost its courage years ago, the courage to stand up to corporate corruption and mayhem, and since then does nothing but roll over like a dog that’s been kicked too much; it can’t be that its coddling of so-called “centrist” Democrats – read inert Democrats – has become a religion; it can’t be that the party gave up fighting for the American people a long time and settled for pandering to identity politics and boutique issues instead.
It just can’t be that.
So Donald Trump’s ascendancy has to be a Russian trick, you see; this whole episode must be the result of some wicked interference. It has to be anyone’s fault but their own.
Hence, RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA!!!! That has to be why. Of course it does.
The hierarchy of the party – not its base – has been stuck like this for decades. As fewer and fewer members of the middle class trust the party it’s come to rely on greater and greater support from tech zillionaires, Hollywood moguls and limousine liberals desperate for the pretense of a social conscience. And with every passing year its litany of rationalizations for its shrinking support has grown more cockeyed and elaborate: it’s that the GOP is brainwashing the heartland. No, it’s closet racism. No, it’s that the opposition has more money. No, it’s voter disenfranchisement. Because it has to be anything other than the party’s corruption, hypocrisy and incompetence.
And with Russia scandal, they’ve finally found the Holy Grail of excuses, one that can be used to explain virtually everything they don’t understand on the political landscape.
The leadership of the Democratic Party was so demoralized by the Reagan Revolution they’ve understood nothing since then. And this really isn’t so hard to figure out.
Imagine you’re head of a group that unequivocally opposes racism, sexism, discrimination and corruption; a group that stands for protecting the environment, helping the poor, giving everyone a better education, and bringing decent health to everyone; a group that has forever been the crusader for working people. You feel pretty secure in your sense of moral rectitude, don’t you?
Now imagine the majority of people vote against you in a landslide in two back-to-back elections.
You’d be so confused you wouldn’t know what to do. We stand for everything right, you’d say, so why did this happen? It CAN’T be that racism and discrimination and hurting the poor and destroying the environment are right; so WHY?
If you didn’t understand why the people did what they did you’d begin (subconsciously) to wonder about them. Oh, hell, you’d almost have to assume they were either stupid or brainwashed. You’d begin to a have a creeping sense of contempt for them, begin to believe that maybe they really all are backwards racist inbreds; you’d distance yourself from them, mentally and physically.
You’d wind up on a smug little island, convinced you were right and the majority of people just didn’t get it.
You’d start equating all opposition to immigration with xenophobia, because of course you believe in brotherhood and they just don’t get it; you’d start equating all opposition to regulation with corporate-sponsored mesmerism; you’d start equating all opposition to government fixes to a variety of problems with Conservative brainwashing.
If you got really desperate you might resort to those two old standby explanations for such behavior: they’re chained to stupidity by a repressive Church or their minds are crippled by militant parochialism. After all, how enlightened can a farmer from Iowa or a truck driver from Ohio really be?
(In actuality, you’d be surprised. Unless, of course, you were getting your ideas of farmers and truck drivers from television, Great Purveyor of Crass Stereotypes, in which case you’d definitely be referencing Ma and Pa Kettle. This is what’s called in psychiatric circles a self-reinforcing delusion – one in which you, the mainstream media, keep creating stereotypical portraits of non-urban America – and then point to those stereotypes as proof they really are all like Ma and Pa Kettle.)
If you were defensive enough it would not occur to you that there just might be explanations for these positions that didn’t result from stupidity or brainwashing — that maybe immigration policy would have to be weighed against the needs and rights of the citizenry (and that that isn’t bigoted, just sensible); that maybe, just maybe, a certain amount of hostility to regulation comes from regulations so often being written in a slapdash fashion that causes more problems than it solves (a form in triplicate and a 75$ permit to put a doghouse in your own backyard?); and maybe, just maybe, people are wary of government fixes to certain problems because the programs thus created are a bureaucratic nightmare of inefficiency, waste, and nonsense.
If that did occur to you the answer would then simply be that you’d need to put more thought into your policies on immigration, regulation, and government programs. And that wouldn’t be so hard…
…unless, in a desperate bid to maintain your sense of self-righteousness, you’d managed to label everyone outside your circle stupid and brainwashed.
Then you couldn’t figure it out. You’d just keep defending the same old tired positions, because it wouldn’t be about serving the people; it would be about your need to prove that you were right and that all the things you believe are good actually are.
Even if the matter at hand really had nothing to do with that, but simply how to advocate for the needs and rights of the American people.
If this went on for a while – say, a couple of decades – you’d arrive at where we are now.
And when this group of people finally, completely lost control of the ball and the people once again elected someone who seemed to them to be the utter antithesis of everything they believed was good…
You’d get Russia Derangement Syndrome.
So now CNN – and every other media outlet joined at the hip to the DNC – is a 24/7 purveyor of How It’s All Russia’s Fault, that liberally seasoned with The Other Guys are the Crooks, Not Us.
It’s like listening to someone scream 24/7 it has to be a mistake, you see! It has to be a trick! He’s a bad person! Can’t you see that he’s a bad person? Let me give you detail after innuendo after sound bite after aspersion all to prove he’s a BAD GUY! See? See? See? He’s a bad guy and it has to be a trick because WE HAVE TO BE RIGHT!
Yes, and what do you propose to do instead of what’s he doing? Tell me about your plan to put Main Street before Wall Street, to get the corruption out of our politics, to fix everything that’s broken; tell me about your plan to end crushing debt and bring wages up and bring a decent standard of living back to the working people of this country. Then tell me how you plan to actually get it done, not just talk about it.
Silence.
A party’s entire platform cannot be the other guys are bad. A party’s entire message cannot be simply pointing at various things and going that’s bad without the slightest viable option for changing anything. And a party’s entire claim to virtue cannot be we’re in bed with Goldman Sachs too but we’re slightly nicer than the other guys.
But if it that’s all you had and all you were and you had an endless, compulsive need to justify yourself without ever examining what you were doing wrong, if you were in fact terrified to examine your own culpability, if you were desperate to rationalize the consequences of your own actions by blaming them on someone else, well, then, you’d get…
Russia Derangement Syndrome.
Next 