Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
When I was a young man in the 1990s, I remember watching the senate hearings on the Waco massacre, where the BATF, under orders of then Attorney General Janet Reno, murdered 76 American citizens inside a church near Waco, Texas. That the ATF and federal government were guilty of mass-murder was undeniable. I watched, waiting to see Reno taken away in cuffs.
Of course, it never happened. I now cringe reflecting up on the ignorance of my youth, the idea that the government could ever, would ever, police itself. Today, many young leftists are waking up to that same realization after watching the giant nothing-show that was Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday.
What we’d all been sold by the mainstream media hype machine was that the testimony was going to be appointment viewing. If C-Span had a Pay-per-View channel, it would have been on it. And, like so many over-hyped events, this one was a total fizzle. The smoking gun that proves Trump had Russia “hack the election” at his behest didn’t materialize – largely because the whole idea is asinine, but the Left does cling tenaciously to its narratives.
Immediately before, during and after Comey’s testimony, the depictions of what was being said varied depending on who you asked. Conservative news outlets tended to downplay or just straight report the testimony with minimal spin, Lefty sites tended to inflate the importance of each one of Comey’s statements. When it was all over, however, even CNN found little to crow about.
“The good news for Trump? Legally speaking it may be tough to prove obstruction of justice because, as several Republican senators noted during Comey’s testimony, saying you ‘hope’ an investigation gets dropped and actually telling the FBI director to drop the investigation aren’t the same thing. But, that’s about it in terms of good news. Comey repeatedly cast Trump as a liar, insisting that a number of claims made by the President about their interactions were totally false. He also said, with no equivocation, that Trump saying he hoped Comey could find a way to end the Flynn investigation amounted to a ‘directive’ from the President of the United States. There was no smoking gun here. But, if this investigation ultimately comes down to Comey’s word versus Trump’s, the FBI director helped his credibility on Thursday — meaning that Trump’s took a hit.”
That’s not much of a consolation prize for a network and a viewership that were waiting to see Trump’s presidency ruined yesterday.
The real takeaway here is that the government isn’t ever going to actually police itself. Whether a campaign has inappropriate contacts with a foreign government or the federal government itself murders 76 men, women and children with tanks, grenade launchers, anti-materiel weapons and, ultimately, fire, it doesn’t matter. To be government is to act with impunity. We see it every time a police officer evades charges for gunning down an unarmed suspect after other government officials investigate him and decide the government did nothing wrong. We saw it every time one of Mr. Obama’s drones murdered innocent men, women and children overseas, we see it every time one of Mr. Trump’s drones continues the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s legacy.
The government exists to serve its own interests and, by extension, those of the oligarchs. The oligarchy was prepared for a Hillary Clinton presidency, with plenty more war and cronyism. The unexpected election of Donald Trump required some quick, behind-the-scenes scrambling to make sure the president-elect knew how the game works; all of which would have been unnecessary had Clinton won as she’s been playing the game for decades now. That’s why Trump, just like Obama before him, found his laundry list of lofty campaign promises quickly pared back and brought down to earth. The oligarchs only give the elected figureheads so much leash.
Now that the oligarchs have just finished up fixing the disruption that was Trump’s election, the last thing they want is the massive disruption an impeachment, and the even-less-likely recall of Trump, would bring. So, even if we were to pretend that there was some way for the Russians to physically “hack” an election involving tens of millions of people across a continent and beyond, and even if we were to pretend that is what happened, and even if we were to pretend that it happened because Trump asked Putin to do it and we had that conversation on tape – Trump would still be president. That’s how government works.
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