by
Caitlin Johnstone
In an
otherwise fine video response to the last night’s vapid,
flag-waving State of the Union address, Bernie Sanders once again
promoted the neocon think tank-generated and unproven claim that
Russia interfered in America’s 2016 elections via “cyberwarfare”,
and repeated the completely baseless insinuation that they colluded
with Trump to do so.
“How
can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare,
interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering in democratic
elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director
will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections that we will be
holding?” asked the Vermont Senator. “How do you not talk
about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr.
Putin?”
This is
not an exception to the rule for Sanders, but one more addition to an
already consistent and deliberate pattern. In February of last year
Sanders delivered a widely viewed video message to his massive online
audience solely geared at promoting the Russiagate narrative. At the
end of March, he did it again. In May, he did it again. Over and over
and over again, month after month after month, Sanders has been using
his immense platform as the most popular and trusted politician in
America to sell these world-threatening cold war escalations to the
millions of Americans who adore him.
This is
a big deal. This is not some petty quibble with Sanders’ policies
like disagreeing with the specifics of his stance on free trade or
fracking. This is not some minor detail which can be dismissed with
accusations of purism and impracticality and “Hey, no politician is
perfect.” This is the single most pressing issue of our time, and
Bernie Sanders is currently, actively marching our world in the exact
opposite direction of where it needs to be heading. There is no
threat to our species more imminent and dangerous than the threat of
annihilation in a nuclear holocaust, and Sanders is helping to
manufacture consent for escalations which make that possibility more
and more likely. This is a huge problem, and we need to talk about it
right now.
I keep
getting shushed and dismissed by American progressives whenever I try
to bring this up, and that pushback is getting a lot more heated now
that Sanders is preparing for the possibility of a 2020 presidential
run. As an aggressive promoter of Bernie-or-Bust in the Democratic
primary contests, I must say that some of the “DO YOU WANT TRUMP TO
WIN??” responses I’ve been getting have been giving me
flashbacks, and they aren’t coming from the direction I’m used
to.
I sit in
a weird space on the political left with regard to Senator Sanders
because I have never been one of the nasty, vituperative lefties who
constantly shit on Bernie and call him a “sheepdog” or anything
like that, but I also haven’t been able to look past his dangerous
capitulations to the establishment, so I tend to catch flak from both
sides of the debate. I recognize how pervasively toxic the US
political climate is and how sane Sanders is in comparison, but at
the same time his relentless promotion of a blatant psyop designed to
manipulate the public into consenting to geopolitical agendas which
have been in place since long before Russiagate is a very big problem
that needs to be addressed.
It’s
like if you found the perfect boyfriend with a great personality, a
rockin’ bod, and an amazing lifestyle… who also happens to murder
a prostitute once in a while. All the other truthful and undeniable
things Sanders said in his State of the Union response were eclipsed
by his promotion of an extremely dangerous agenda like a tiny piece
of cat poo on an expensive French cuisine. It’s absolutely
unforgivable, and it should be loudly and aggressively resisted by
every clear-eyed rebel on earth.
I’m
not even saying I’ll oppose Bernie’s presidential run if it comes
down to that in 2020. If that’s the direction the American people
want to take this thing as part of the awkward two-steps-forward,
one-step-back shuffling movement that any shove toward freedom will
necessarily look like, I don’t imagine that I will try and stop
them. As horrible as Sanders’ foreign policy is I understand that
Americans are in an abusive relationship with oligarchy, and if they
genuinely feel he’s their best shot at sane domestic policy and a
real healthcare system I don’t at this time think it’s my place
as an Australian to tell them not to go that route to escape the
abuse.
I can
however promise that I will never, ever stop aggressively fighting
the Russiagate establishment propaganda that Sanders has been
consistently promoting. The further into cold war escalations we get,
the more likely it is that a nuclear weapon could be discharged in
the chaos and confusion. There are too many small moving parts to be
able to predict and control how these escalations will unfold, which
is why we came within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation on
more than one occasion in the last Cold War.
Stephen
Cohen is easily the leading expert on US-Russian relations in
America, and he recently sounded his ongoing alarm in an interview
with Jimmy Dore that everyone should watch. Cohen is not a Trump
supporter, not a conspiracy kook, and not a Russian agent, but a
gifted and learned scholar who says that the political pressures
being placed on Trump by the Russiagate narrative have placed us in a
uniquely dangerous place in our species’ history which we may very
well not make it past. He makes a very solid argument, and I strongly
encourage everyone to heed his warning.
Make no
mistake: our species absolutely has the freedom to fail this test. We
absolutely have the freedom to fail as a species and go the way of
the dinosaurs. There is no divine hand shielding us from this fate
enabling us to behave as unconsciously and recklessly as our
still-evolving primate brains desire without the natural consequences
that come with it. Our biggest and most trusted voices should be
pointing us toward life, not toward extinction. We must all do
better, and we must all demand better.
Friends
don’t let friends Russiagate, Bernie. Do better. Be better.
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