Mueller, Russia, and Oil Politics

I didn’t have the same reaction you did. Counter-punch has become unreadable for me. Their approach to things pretty much amounts to policing the left for positions different from their own and then getting into highly personalized, innuendo driven moral indictments. It’s like they encapsulate the one tendency of the left that bothers me the most about leftists.

I start out with the assumption that our surveillance, intel and law and order systems are primarily concerned with protecting the capitalist system, especially private property, and especially the private property of the super-rich. I start out deeply skeptical about all of it, and it always should be questioned. All authority should be, 24/7. But when we dig down into human motivations — for the rank and file, especially, individual human motivations, things get much more complicated.

The author of this article allows for no such complexity. He roars right past all of that. His world is strictly black and white, Manichean, almost inhuman, and almost entirely beyond redemption.

He’s made up his mind that a large part of the American government is irremediably, diabolically sinister, from top to bottom, and we shouldn’t even consider that there may be one or two humans in the mix who are doing their jobs for the right reasons. Paint them all with pitch.

Ironically, while talking about the lack of evidence to support the Russian probe, he provides no evidence to support his sweeping condemnation of the probe and its supposedly all sinister, all corrupt, all Orwellian aims. None. Zilch. Zero. Basically, IMO, he plays the flip side to those who want to paint the surveillance state, the intel community and law and order sectors as perfectly innocent, saintly and awesomely patriotic. His vision of the above is just the other side of the moon.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is “innocence” and ten is “diabolically sinister,” the author keeps the meter at eleven.

Life aint that simple. Dime store thrillers are. But not life.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

He’s made up his mind that a large part of the American government is irremediably, diabolically sinister, from top to bottom, and we shouldn’t even consider that there may be one or two humans in the mix who are doing their jobs for the right reasons. Paint them all with pitch.
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I really dont know what that means, BT.

There are good people working for Exxon and Monsanto and BP and there are good people working in the Fracking fields — but so what. We dont say Fracking is “complicated” because there are people doing it “for the right reasons”. (to feed their children, etc)

Doesnt matter to me if there are good people in the CIA “doing things for the right reasons” — Thats a different article. This article is about Oil/Gas and the deep-state-motives.

Btw, i do agree the author paints with a broad brush and doesnt analyze nuances and layers, and a gazillion other things, but for me thats just nit-picking. I forgive all that stuff. I see it too, but it just doesnt bother me.

w
v

I probably didn’t express my thoughts very well. It’s not really the “banality of evil” stuff for me in this case, though that’s an issue too. What I meant to say is that I think the author jumps to wild conclusions about what Mueller is really doing, and why, and for whom, etc . . . based upon past actions by the FBI, CIA, etc. etc. And, yes, those things happened.

Yes, our surveillance, intel and law and order sectors have horrifically ugly records. Yes, we had COINTELPRO and much, much more. But, at the same time those things took place, we also had top level officials directing legit probes into legit dangers — not just made up shit — that saved American lives. It wasn’t all propaganda.

A side issue here: I hate that I feel the need to bring up these other “sides.” Someone in the media recently talked about a “hippy conundrum.” I feel that. I honestly do. I feel this horrible tug at my heart and my moral compass, when it comes to ANY kind of assertion, even indirectly, that maybe, just maybe, stuff like the Mueller probe is legit, and I think it is. If I were younger, I’d be joking with myself that my — at the time — long, freak-flag hair would all fall out because of this. Fast forward to last Friday and it has (over the last few days), but I’m pretty sure that’s cuz of the chemo.

;>)

I went last night to Sports Clips and went full Kojak, resigned to the inevitable.

Anyway . . . will break this up and add some more thoughts in the next post.

For me, this isn’t about “legitimacy.” This is about someone breaking all kinds of laws in order to steal the election. This is about someone with a history of lying, screwing over workers, business partners, women and never, ever paying the price. I want him to finally pay the price for all he’s done — before the election and during his presidency. And his going down will take down the GOP, whose odious, massively destructive policies he keeps signing into law.

Again, I honestly don’t get all the energy devoted by some on the left to all but defend him and Russia. It baffles the hell out of me.

Last word:

The left has a tradition of going to bat for the powerless, minorities, the poor, the outcast. We have a history of fighting the good fight for the working class on down. The battle royale, in this case, isn’t about the working class versus the ruling class. When lefties go to bat for Trump and Russia they’re going to bat for a corrupt American billionaire and Putin, who, by most estimates, is worth 200 billion — all of that made while supposedly being a public servant. They’re going to bat for an American plutocrat and a Russian oligarch, who may as well be called a super-plutocrat at this point.

What’s in that for the American working class? Or the working class anywhere in the world, for that matter?