The Spanish Didn't Blow Up the U.S.S. Maine, Either

     Today in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, an Iraq War veteran opened fire on airline passengers in the baggage collection area.  Newspeople were careful to apply the grease of neutrality on a guest's statement that the killer's mother said her son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and couldn't get help for it.
     "We're not claiming that he committed this violent act because he was suffering from PTSD.  We're just saying that he's an Iraq War veteran."
     Iraq War veterans know how to use guns.  Iraq War veterans often served multiple tours of duty in a conflict with no evident goal.  Iraq War veterans have been ill-served by the Veterans Administration, a knotty mess of a government agency with a huge backlog of cases, the volume of which is probably at least partially due to the constant warfare our nation has been waging since 2001.  In other words, the people killed in the Florida airport are dead partly because Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and other non-indicted war criminals decided to finish the job started by Bush's father.
     I saw another news story about the posh house where the Obamas will live, starting in late January.  A wall is being constructed around the Washington, D.C., mansion.  It looks like a nice place, except that a man who blew up lots of children will be living in it.
     Trump, meanwhile, criticized in Twitter the "low" ratings received by the opening episode of the new season of Celebrity Apprentice, hosted now by another pretend politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  CNN, Fox, or MSNBC--I can't remember which since they're all seeming the same to me--spent a few minutes with a graphic illustrating the drop in ratings of Celebrity Apprentice since its premiere episode over a decade ago.  It started out "huge," but last season, the final one with Trump hosting, the show seized the attentions of a mere 1.6 million "folks" over last night's episode hosted by "the Terminator," former California governor, son of a Nazi, and ex-Kennedy in-law.  In ratings talk, a million and a half people aren't very many viewers.  A million and a half people dead, wounded, and displaced in Iraq also aren't something worth talking about on American news, either.
     Trump today received a classified briefing about "the Russian hack."  The Russian hack of the American electoral process, which doesn't seem to have had anything to do, ultimately, with who won the election, has become the cause célèbre of the Democratic Party and all news media organizations in sympathy with them.
     "Whether or not the Russian hack actually swung the election in favor of Trump," Ari Melber of MSNBC said this afternoon, "the fact remains that this nation's electoral process was interfered with."
     I don't discount the importance of a foreign power fucking with America, but I'm always aware that America fucks with other countries all the time.  A senatorial panel questioned some intelligence luminaries, including National Intelligence Director James Clapper, a bald, humorless man who has the dour facial expression of someone who knows all about injustices committed by underlings and has no interest in doing anything about it because if he were young and muscular he'd gladly beat an Arab prisoner to death.  Senator John McCain managed a dig at Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, asking James Clapper rhetorically if the statements of Assange about U.S. misdeeds can be trusted.
     "No, they can't," Clapper said, almost chuckling.
     Tearing at Julian Assange's character today was hard for MSNBC hostess Joy Ann Reid to resist.  She dismissed him as "someone hiding out in an Ecuadorian embassy."  She also, a few weeks ago, maligned Jill Stein, the good and moral woman who ran for president against the immoral female Democrat friend of Henry Kissinger and broker of arms deals with Saudi Arabia in exchange for contributions to her husband's entrepreneurial enterprise.
     Why would Assange be in hiding?  Why would he want to avoid being Predator Drone-targeted?  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a strategy meeting asked her staff why they couldn't "just drone Assange?"  Others at the meeting at first thought she was kidding, but she went on about it at length, indicating a real desire to blow up Assange, whose great crime against the United States consists of releasing information about the horrible shit this country sometimes does.
     Clapper, incidentally, a few years ago, perjured himself before Congress, when he said the NSA doesn't gather information about ordinary American citizens.  He suffered no penalty for lying to Congress, as any ordinary American would for doing the same.
     From the tone of this essay, it should be clear that my disgust for the sons of bitches sneered at herein hasn't improved with the new year's arrival.  I don't expect things to improve with the Trump administration.  One of my pet names for him is Crazy Motherfucker.  He does say funny (stupid) things sometimes, like when talking about computers the other day:
     "[I'm paraphrasing] Assange said a fourteen year old could've hacked [John] Podesta's phone.  I have a ten year old son who can do anything with a computer."
     He seems to be implying that the "Russian hack" could've been the work of a little boy.
     Megyn Kelly of Fox News announced that she's leaving that network, supposedly to spend more time with her children.  She signed a multi-million dollar deal with NBC to host a daytime talk show, and a show on Sunday evenings.  The porousness of Fox and NBC (right-wing and left-wing) is here demonstrated, for her views are not dissimilar enough from so-called liberal news outlets to keep one of them from putting her out front, with big bucks and lots of screen time.  MSNBC is now extensively populated with right-wing pundits and commentators.  Mainstream news media outlets cannot be trusted as truth-tellers.  The link between the state and corporations is stronger than ever, a Fascist's wet dream.
     Maybe I'm wrong, but if Vladimir Putin had wanted to really affect the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he would've done a more insidious job of it, so that no one would've found out about it for many years.  As it is, those on the news who have traditionally denigrated "conspiracy buffs," have too readily embraced conspiracy theories about Russian meddling, handed to them by U.S. intelligence agencies, the very organizations so invested in spreading disinformation at the service of the motherfuckers running the show.  War on terrorism in the Reagan era passed into the 1990s, giving way in 2001 to full blown declared war against a technique practiced extensively by first world powers.  Cyberwar, with Russia playing the main enemy, takes on a familiar role--that of a technique practiced extensively by first world powers, with intense new focus on "the Russian hack," the "assault on our democracy" a convenient cover for U.S. spy agency activity using the same methods, for purposes including the subversion of democracy in other countries.
     I make an educated guess at this based on practices long established by the motherfuckers who run things on this planet.  One doesn't have to be Julian Assange or James Clapper to figure this shit out.

                                                                           Vic Neptune