“OK, I’m just a peace guy. I am not an Alex “no-conspiracy-too-nutty-for-me” Jones (like Trump is, for godsakes)…”
Tom H. Hastings
Published in: Bainbridge Island Review, Counterpunch, Nation of Change, Hastings on Nonviolence, Sierra County Prospect, LA Progressive, The Russophile Blog, Nonviolent Action Network
Date: December 31,2017, January 3,4,2018
729 Words
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You want an infowar, fine
729 Words
By Tom H. Hastings
OK, I’m just a peace guy. I am not an Alex “no-conspiracy-too-nutty-for-me” Jones (like Trump is, for godsakes). In fact, when I edited The PeaceWorker for a few years, there were sincere attempts to have me fired for refusing to print the Dick-Cheney-did-it 9.11.01 conspiracy theories. I wanted some red meat–well, as a vegetarian, I guess I wanted some seared tofu–on my plate. Never got it. (Yes, I see the eager hands go up, I’m just saying there were no real journalists who had significant evidence published and those of us who have been activists for a few decades know from burnt finger regret not to make half-baked claims because they will damage one’s credibility.)
I also never claimed that Paul Wellstone was assassinated by the same CheneyRumsfeldBush cabal, despite enormous circumstantial evidence, including how amazingly handy it was for that flock of vultures right at that time. There were just too few real pieces of evidence.
So I am not much of a conspiracy guy (which, to real hardcore tinfoiler devotees, seals my fate and positively makes me a part of the conspiracy. I am aware.).
Now, however, I do subscribe to the notion that Russia interfered with the US election on Trump’s behalf. It passes all of my sniff tests. It does not move the BS needle on my Truthometer. Putin put Trump in office. All the meetings, the indictments, the lies from Trump and his family and so much more are overwhelming. It’s Mueller Time, as they say.
Yes, Hillary conspired, unwittingly, with her own iniquitous collusion to bump off Bernie and with her bloodstained foreign policy record. Like so many, I voted for her as a purely defensive and highly emetic act.
As expected, Trump is drastically worse in virtually every way, from health care-as-privilege domestic to oinker-in-the-China-shop foreign policy. A rhinoceros has more sensitivity and finesse. A salad roll has thicker skin.
The notion that Vladimir Putin interfered massively in our election is hardly out of character for that autocratic murderous charlatan and anyone who denies this is sadly sliding into his useful idiot bin. God, he has collected many.
Does understanding that Putin has hijacked the White House make us more likely to go to nuclear war?
Oh for Pete’s sake! Wake up, lefties. Smell the sovereignty–Trump gave it away and we need it back. Putin is hardly going to press the End-Life-On-Earth button because he has been busted for effing up our election. Name the meddlesome crime of collaboration with foreign election tampering and impeach this imposter, this embarrassment, this pimple on the hindparts of democracy. Putin will just watch Trump implode, laugh, and say it was a good tryski. We won’t go down in thermonuclear omnicide (well, we might, but not due to this), but failure to see this external interference is a failure to hitch it up to our work to take back our democracy (yes, again, I see the hands shoot up to remind us that the US has done worse than merely interfere with democracy elsewhere–it has overturned it in places like Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Chile and so forth, but that is part of the point, friends).
Do not doubt that our democracy is hovering in the balance. It needs you or it is through. In my nearly 70 years on this amazing Earth I have never witnessed a more dire, urgent, immediate threat to what we are rightly enculturated to love, the freedom of the USA, even with all its warts, its flaws, nefarious chapters, its lack of perfection.
I’m the first to resist our national terrible policy and I have the arrest record to prove it, but this is still my country and yours too, and we have a greedhead fake president who took foreign help to steal the highest office in our land. It is time to act. Impeach. And keep impeaching until we get an executive branch that hasn’t sold out democracy.
To paraphrase and tweak Malcolm X, we need to fix this “by any [nonviolent] means at our command,” and to note the quotable Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. I dare you to try to find another sentence quoting those two together, but this is a real emergency! Saddle up, Americans.
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Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.
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