I’ve written before about how our political process is like a ratchet, where the Republicans apply rightward force, while the Democrats allow this rightward movement but whenever there’s a lull, they lock into place and prevent any movement back to the left.

“The American political system, since at least 1968, has been operating like a ratchet, and both parties — Republicans and Democrats — play crucial, mutually reinforcing roles in its operation. The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward. The Democrats’ role is a little less obvious. The Democrats are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Democrats click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left.”

After observing our corporate media in the pre and aftermath coverage of Trump’s surprising victory, I’ve come to believe that there is a similar dynamic at work.

Within the corporate media the right/left dichotomy resembles the Republican/Democratic one. Fox News, of course, would be on the right, while MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR operate from a left that is much more centric, similar to the role the Democrats play in our political process. Fox, and the other conservative media consistently churn out a right-wing message, whether pertaining to domestic policy where there is a relentless focus on tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations they control, or foreign policy where the focus is on maintaining an all-American corporate empire. The so-called left media allows this right-wing message to go unchallenged, even joining it by incorporating conservative journalists as part of their ongoing effort to mitigate the constant accusation of liberal bias, however, when there is a brief lull, they lock into place and ensure that a authentic leftist challenge is blocked.

For example, during the 2016 presidential campaign coverage of Bernie Sanders was uniformly negative, and as the Wikileaks files demonstrated, actual collusion between the DNC and so-called left media to suppress any positive coverage of the socialist senator from Vermont.

And, now in the aftermath of Trump’s surprising win, the so-called left media has been in full attack mode, with many liberals gleefully cheering them on. But, what has been the focus of all the fury directed at Trump? Why Russia, of course, with hysterical coverage reminiscent of the early Cold War, in the process creating a sort of new McCarthyism.

Investigative journalist Robert Parry says that, “…given the determination of many key figures in the Establishment to get rid of Trump, it should come as no surprise that no one seems to care that no actual government-verified evidence has been revealed publicly to support any of the Russia-gate allegations.

There’s not even any public evidence from U.S. government agencies that Russia did “meddle” in the 2016 election or – even if Russia did slip Democratic emails to WikiLeaks (which WikiLeaks denies) – there has been zero evidence that the scheme resulted from collusion with Trump’s campaign.

The FBI has been investigating these suspicions for at least nine months, even reportedly securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against Carter Page, an American whom Trump briefly claimed as a foreign policy adviser when Trump was under fire for not having any foreign policy advisers.

One of Page’s alleged offenses was that he gave a speech to an academic conference in Moscow in July 2016 that was mildly critical of how the U.S. treated countries from the former Soviet Union. He also once lived in Russia and met with a Russian diplomat who – apparently unbeknownst to Page – had been identified by the U.S. government as a Russian intelligence officer.

It appears that is enough, in these days of our New McCarthyism, to get an American put under a powerful counter-intelligence investigation.”

Understanding this media hysteria, it’s always important to look past the barrage of propaganda, and focus on the big picture.

Trump for all the negatives had actually proposed some very constructive steps towards improving our relations with nuclear-armed Russia, and reining in some of the excesses of  our all-American empire with his trenchant critique of NATO, which operates as an integral arm of Uncle Sam.

Ask yourself why, instead of  critiquing Trump for all the horrible policies that will harm average Americans, the corporate media is focussed like a laser on Trump’s relations with Russia?

In my opinion, it’s because Russia has challenged the US corporate empire and is seriously interfering with US plans for control over Eurasia. Even though our foreign policy is sold to gullible Americans as the never-ending war on terror while magically spreading democracy, the truth of the matter is that Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle-East, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most important region of the world. It’s The Great Game all over again, only this time it’s the US vs Russia and China in a struggle for all the marbles.

The anti-Russia hysteria in the media is equal to the pain the neocons who control US foreign policy are currently experiencing. Their global strategy of regime change and meddling in the affairs of nations around the world has met a roadblock. The real beef with Russia is that they will not let the US topple the Syrian and Ukrainian governments and install their own puppet regimes.

Of course, the corporate media can’t come out and tell the American people this uncomfortable truth, so the Russians are meddling in our elections.

We have clearly moved past of point of satire.

Update: Even Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein admits that there is zero evidence of Russian interference.

From Moon Over Alabama….

“But the political dimension of the dismissal is not about the Clinton email affair at all. It is about the “Russia interfered with the election” nonsense Clinton invented as excuse for her self-inflicted loss of the vote. The whole anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign run by neocons and “Resistance” democrats, is designed to block the foreign policy – detente with Russia – for which Trump was elected. The anti-Russia inquisition is dangerous groupthink.

There is no evidence – none at all – that Russia “interfered” with the U.S. election. There is no evidence – none at all – that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign. The Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who sits on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, recently confirmed that publicly (vid) immediately after she had again been briefed by the CIA:

“Blitzer mentioned that Feinstein and other colleagues from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had visited CIA headquarters on Tuesday to be briefed on the investigation. He then asked Feinstein whether she had evidence, without disclosing any classified information, that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“’Not at this time,’ Feinstein said.”