Tip Jar

2/17/2018

I don't know...But


I love conspiracy theories, even when I do not believe them. I enjoy conspiracies the same way I enjoy good mystery stories. I believe it has something to do with the suspense of the unknown, that hidden jewel just under the surface, waiting to be exposed. The titillation of curiosity.

I have been following the Russian / Trump collusion story rather closely from the very beginning and to be honest, the longer it has gone on, the more it has grasped me.

There is a very good reason for this, the story has not only had many little twists to it but now has turned totally on its head. The hunter so to speak has become the hunted. This development is not new and is still not widely or objectively reported but the momentum has definitely switched direction.

This may be a several part series so I guess the best way to proceed is at the beginning, my beginning anyway. My beginning begins with the simple question that few people ever seem to ask, but which to me is pretty much the only starting point there is. The question is:

What did Trump collude with the Russians to do?

The most often and basic answer to that simple question is that Trump colluded with the Russians to "influence" the elections.

Oh.... OK? How exactly did they do that? What did the Russians give Trump or what did Trump give the Russians to "influence" the elections.

First we must point out that for decades the Russians have been interfering in our elections and generally trying to sow discord in the American political system, as we have done to them. But specifically who, where, what, how was this collusion manifested in real terms?

Not to mention illegal terms.

So the Russians hacked into some state's voter registration systems. By the way without apparently altering anything. So did Trump or some associate of his provide the key for the Russians to accomplish this totally irrelevant to the actual election, event? Did Trump or his people in any way have anything to do with this?

Obviously not, the Russians did that all on their own. Trump did not help the Russians hack our voting systems and as Obama assured us there was nothing wrong with the election process:
"With respect to response, my principal goal leading up to the election was making sure that the election itself went off without a hitch, that it was not tarnished, and that it did not feed any sense in the public that somehow tampering had taken place with the actual process of voting. And we accomplished that."
At this point, over a year later, absolutely nobody has officially or credibly claimed that the voting process was altered to change the results of the election. Not as a whole or in any jurisdiction in the nation.

More importantly, nobody has shown that Trump or anyone associated with him even attempted to do so. With or without Russian collusion.

So that brings us to the next possible way in which an election might be influenced. Through the manipulation of the electorate.

First we must remember what this actually means. Not an ambiguous narrative but the specifics.

It would mean that somehow this Trump / Russian collusion apparatus manipulated the thought processes of every day Americans to vote in a way that they not otherwise would have. Not only this but they did it in sufficient numbers as to sway the election.

But it goes deeper than this. This manipulation would have to be so targeted or pervasive as to assure that certain blocks of voters in particular states "the battleground states" would be so influenced.

What is being foggily aledged is that a very large number of Americans, the ones after all that actually vote, could have their minds changed by some propaganda or disinformation campaign.

For what it's worth. It has been my experience and observation and over the years studies have shown, people who vote are more politically informed than Americans who don't. Informed people generally make informed choices. Whether we agree with any ones particular beliefs and choices does not matter.

In addition a person that is a political partisan is not going to change and turn on a dime.

The idea that a large number of Hillary supporters read or heard something that would influence them to vote for Trump is almost laughable. The reverse is also true.

So that leaves us with those people that were undecided. Those who could possibly be swayed.
Trump won voters who decided in the last week of the campaign by a 59-30 margin in Wisconsin, 55-38 in Florida, 54-37 in Pennsylvania and 50-39 in Michigan, according to exit polls, which was enough to flip the outcome of those four states and their 75 combined electoral votes.
If anything this points towards Clinton and her allies first excuse for losing the election, "it was Comey's fault."

After all the only big news event leading up to the last week of the election was that FBI Director James Comey was reopening the investigation into Hillary's illicit server. He did this because of Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner's lap top.

There is much to say about this and later we will look at this more closely, but for now two points.

Point one is that nobody, not even Trump, was responsible for all the bad media brought on by Hillary's server misadventures. She and she alone through her actions brought it all on herself.

Point two, and more relevant to the present discussion, unless Comey is somehow tied into the Trump / Russia collusion conspiracy, there is no there, there. Barring convincing evidence we must assume that the FBI is not now a branch of the The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.

But there are other items we must take into consideration when trying to figure out how Trump / Russia covertly manipulated the public into voting in Trump. Well other than this statement:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said on Friday that despite Russian attempts to undermine the presidential election, it has concluded that the results “accurately reflect the will of the American people.
We also must remember that it was not Hillary that was being hammered by the media leading up to the general election, it was Trump.

Often times it was legitimately due to his own past and his own statements. The fact is though, that in the months leading up to the election there was a constant drum beat of negative reporting aimed at Trump, not Hillary.

Some examples, The Trump University scandal, Sex scandals galore, shady business dealings, mafia ties and that barely touches the surface, but the hits kept on coming.  A candidate could not possibly have worse media coverage, most of it deserved in my opinion, then came the Access Holywood Tape revelations.

The question should never have been how did Trump win, it is how did Hillary possibly lose? Or as she famously whined before the election, "Why am I not 50 points ahead?"

So whatever amount of negative public information was being put out to "influence" the public against Hillary, it was at least threefold against Trump.

There is little doubt that Trump and Hillary represented the two most flawed candidates the nation has ever had to choose between.

Given this, the idea that some additional negative information or publicity would alter the outcome is really quite silly.

Perhaps even sillier than this is The Trump Jr meeting with the Russians. Admittedly I have no idea what was actually discussed other than what everyone who attended from the Trump side has testified under oath says happened. Also the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has also been interviewed and given her take. But for all I know they are all lying. But....

What we do know is the reason for the meeting. Trump Jr. was told that the Russian's had dirt on Hillary and that they were ready to share. This was all revealed when Junior turned over the email exchanges with the guy who set the whole thing up, just before The New York Times was about to release them anyway.

The media makes a big deal of this as if talking to a Russian to get dirt on a political opponent is just ...well... treacherous.

Of course we now know the proper way to do it. You hire a lawyer to hire an opposition research firm who hires the wife of a DOJ Assistant Attorney General and a former British spy, who hires some people in Russia to find dirt on your opponent, who gives it to media outlets and the Assistant Attorney General who gives it to the FBI who gets a warrant to spy on your political opponents campaign. Simple.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The real question, again never asked, why would the Russians want to give any dirt they had to Trump? If you are Putin are you giving dirt on Hillary to Trump to help him win the election, or are you holding onto that dirt in case she does win?

 Let's remember, there was little doubt that Hillary was the odds on favorite to win the election. At the time of the "meeting" Clinton was ahead in all the polls from between 5 and 10 points.

Any information the Russians might give Trump that would help him win an election could easily be released by the Russians without involving Trump. More importantly why would you give that information away when you could use it to...I don't know, blackmail or embarrass a future U.S. President?

The very same reason given for why Trump was colluding with Russians, "because they had something on him"  works just as well to explain why the Russians would not give Trump dirt on Hillary.

Which brings me to another point to ponder. Why would Putin choose Trump over Hillary anyway?

(to be continued)

No comments:

Post a Comment