Opinion by Kyle A. Lohmeier
As the Russiagate fairy tale continues to play out with more and more indictments of people who will never see the inside of an American courtroom, I’m left wondering why this fable still has traction.
We are, after all, talking about a hypothesis that a handful of memes made by a few Russian citizens influenced the outcome of the 2016 general election – and the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in making those memes. So far, the only concrete evidence that has come up after more than a year’s worth of investigating is the existence of the memes themselves and their being of Russian origin; the “collusion” between these Russians and the Trump campaign still hasn’t been proven. Likewise, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has maintained repeatedly that the source of the DNC’s “hacked” emails was not Russia. So, all this time and taxpayer money later and all we have to show for it are memes; lame, poorly-translated memes that didn’t move anyone’s needle.
Furthermore, an even barely astute observer of international affairs would have to question why Vladimir Putin would have preferred Trump over Clinton to begin with; and the Russiagate fable hinges upon Putin having a strong enough preference for Trump that dispatched his meme-makers to swing the election Trump’s way. Clinton was essentially running for Obama’s third term. During Obama’s terms, Clinton oversaw the transfer of American uranium mines to Russian control. And, the Obama regime sat idly by as Russia became the first European nation to invade and annex another sovereign European nation since WWII when Russia stole Crimea away from Ukraine.
Given Clinton’s apparent willingness to roll over and give Putin anything he could want; why on Earth would Putin want anyone other than Clinton to be president? Trump is and remains a “known unknown” when it comes to foreign policy as he just sort of blusters and stumbles along, pissing off half the planet and half his own country with every tweet. Clinton was a “known known,” someone whose motivations (irrational greed) Putin had already figured out and could work with. To my mind, it makes no sense at all to even assume Putin had a preference for Trump over his own previous partner in crime, Hillary.
Yet, that “Russia hacked the election” remains as much an article of liberal faith as the ascension of Jesus to heaven is an article of the Christian one. I think I’ve finally figured out why; liberals are trapped in an appeal-to-consequences fallacy.
An appeal-to-consequences fallacy is an argument that seeks to “prove” a point based on the desirability or undesirability of the consequences of said point being true or not. For example, some like to argue that heaven and hell must be real because the notion that good people will be rewarded and evil people punished after they die is the only thing that lets them sleep at night. How well one deals with the inherent injustices of life at bedtime has exactly no bearing upon whether or not there’s an afterlife at all, and even less upon whether or not the Abrahamic faiths describe it accurately.
So, to the orthodox liberal, Russia must have hacked the election, they simply must have. Because, if they didn’t, well, then that means that the government that liberals breathlessly praise and ceaselessly adore is so fundamentally screwed up that it allowed Literally Hitler to become president and implement his policies the way Saint Obama the Generous did. That would mean then that government isn’t perfect; it isn’t infallible. The idea this holy institution could be brought low by the mere men who comprise this sacred order called “government” is too frightening for the orthodox liberal to countenance. So, it became and remains necessary for liberals to cling to this fairy tale that makes reality go away – at least in their minds. The alternative – that us smart-ass voluntarists have been right all along – is just too unbearable for them.
At least in that, the liberals aren’t alone.
Leave a Reply