The Deep State Speaketh

 *2/16 Update Below.

The first Deep State leg of the punishing journey that Senator Chuck Schumer called "six ways from Sunday" is now complete. The Intelligence Community has officially begun its vendetta against Donald J. Trump. 

Not that we should mourn the newly deposed General Mike Flynn, of course. The man was not just a loose cannon in a whole cabinet full of them, he was a human cluster bomb. A ground war with Iran on his watch was never a question of if, but of when. Flynn was practically salivating blood in his hateful haste to kill as many Muslims as possible. So good riddance to him.

 I have just a few thoughts on what could possibly be going on with the Consensuals of the Washington establishment.

1. They just really, viscerally hate Donald Trump's guts, as well as his unfiltered Queens-accented voice speaking uncomfortable truths about the Military Industrial Complex and American imperialism. Above all, they just hate that he is ruining their long-held plans for at least a warming of the cold war with Russia. They don't want all those troops in Norway and Estonia and Poland just going to waste. If there is a true peace with Putin, the American-based oil cartels might have to negotiate nicely with Russia over all that oil lurking in the Bering Sea. And they don't want to share.

2. The Establishment needs a Crisis in order to push through more bipartisan cuts to the social safety net. That crisis is Donald Trump himself. The Democrats, especially, are desperate for a platform to attract voters to their party. Since they are unwilling to suggest such nice things as universal health care, a guaranteed national income or living wage, a federal jobs program, progressive tax rates, a tax on high-speed trades, student loan forgiveness and free public college tuition, they'll go into default mode. They'll conduct multiple investigations into the Trump-Putin connection to redirect our attention into the more desirable realm of fear and trembling. We'll hear day after day that Trump is a traitor. We may never get to see proof in the way of his easily obtainable income tax returns. The Consensuals will never direct their friends in the Intelligence Community to hack into the IRS database, of course, because that would be as illegal as eavesdropping on Mike Flynn's phone calls with the Russkies.

3. The timing of Flynn's fall, on Valentine's Day, is heart-breakingly exquisite. It (perhaps inadvertently) makes us recall mob wars and massacres past. Still, it deflects public attention from the nearly simultaneous confirmation of Robber Baron Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, and the fact that a Democratic administration never prosecuted his fraudclosure scheme when it had the opportunity. It had something to do with campaign contributions.

4. If the Establishment is so concerned about the possible infiltration of Russia into our precious democratic system, why then was Putin pal Rex Tillerson so readily confirmed as Secretary of State? Could it be that the Senate loves Exxon-Mobil more than it hates Trump?

5. If the Obama administration was so fully aware of Trump's dangerous treachery, at least since last summer, why then did it complacently sit on its hands? They are either cynical self-dealers, or just plain stupid and inept.

 I have no way of knowing whether Trump is actually a Russian stooge or a Trojan horse or a traitor. But what is obvious is that mainstream media outlets are acting as Deep State mouthpieces. Reading the New York Times story linking Trump and his minions to Russia, I could almost envision a CIA agent or two dictating the copy to reporters as they typed feverishly away.

As in all previous churnalism which has sought to drum up Russophobia (which they now seek to integrate into #Resistance, Inc.)  the propaganda and the weasel-wording are blatant. The "current and past" government sources are all anonymous.

The Times article, for example, takes a sarcastic off-the-cuff remark about Hillary's emails made by Trump last summer and then clumsily links it to concurrent conversations that some of his associates were having with some unnamed Russians:

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

The dismissal of Mike Flynn is all of a piece with the shocking "news" that a bunch of American plutocrats were doing business with a bunch of Russian plutocrats, as if this were a new state of affairs and not the decades-long result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US welcome mat being put out for the new Russian oligarchy to invest in everything from New York luxury real estate to oil pipelines to uranium mines in the American west.

 The Times piece smarmily concludes:

 The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself.

The Washington establishment doing battle with Satan himself still wouldn't negate the fact that they are using the slimy McCarthyite (and Stalinesque) tactic of guilt by association.

We the people must not be sucked in to this elite war as unwitting co-propagandists. We should be asking them "where's the meat?" at the same time that we relentlessly question why they are so hell-bent on permanent war, unconstitutional surveillance on ordinary citizens as well as powerful generals, and what, exactly, their power struggle has got to do with the rest of us.

Their struggle is not our struggle. Their prize is not our prize. Not by a long shot.

Update, 2/16: The Democratic Party's veal pen organizations are already asking for money for #TheResistance based primarily on the Trump administration's alleged Russia connection. The goal is for impeachment; social and economic justice issues are taking a back seat. In other words, we are supposed to put all our cash and our hopes into Congressional investigations rather than taking matters into our own hands by getting out on the streets. After all, the Consensuals don't want us to get too much of a taste for direct action, lest we start demanding pie in the sky like single payer, universal health coverage. And the worst part is that the Democratic Party wants us to align ourselves with the unaccountable right-wing Deep State to achieve "progressive" goals.
 
Concomitant with the New York Times "scoop" referenced above, these appeals began flying in to my inbox.

MoveOn.Org --  "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

That's what we all need to ask—and what Congress must investigate—in the wake of revelations that Trump knew for weeks about Michael Flynn's secret and likely illegal conversations with Russian officials.

People's Action (describes itself as a consortium of "grassroots" organizing groups headquartered in Chicago) --  "Until an investigation is completed, Trump's mandate is suspect.... We will not let a potentially illegitimate president cut Medicare, privatize Social Security, repeal the Affordable Care Act and deport millions of our neighbors without a fight.

(The wording of this is clumsy, if not itself a bit suspect. So, it would be O.K. with them for a "legitimate" president to cut the social safety net and deport millions of our neighbors, as Obama has already done?)

Color of Change --  "While Trump is lying about millions of voter fraud cases, the real threat to our democracy is  Putin's involvement in our election and Russia's illicit ties to Trump and his administration. But even more threatening is Congress' refusal to do anything about it. Black people have fought to make our democracy real and we won't stand for any threats, foreign or domestic, to our ability to participate in free and fair elections."

A further indication that Democratic Party leaders are scared that the rabble will go beyond its appointed duties and attack them as well as Republicans at town halls is Chuck Schumer's appeal for help from Bernie Sanders. It is now Sanders's duty to make all the activists sit down and shut up.

According to the Washington Post, the Wall Street-friendly senator was shaken when protesters had the gall to demonstrate outside his own private residence recently. What gives? This was supposed to be a resistance against Trump and nothing but Trump, and now the agitators are converging on blue states. Oh, the horror.

They basically explained to Bernie, it looks like you could be the person that could calm down and make sure their energy and all this enthusiasm is directed in all the right proper channels,” (West Virginia Senator Joe) Manchin said. “Bernie has a voice, and if [protesters] want to be active, then direct them to where the problem may be or where they anticipate a problem.”

While Sanders is staying mum on the request, he has not, thus far, formally requested that his supporters stay mum about anything.