I’ve come to realize that Gore Vidal seriously underestimated the amnesia of the American public. Especially New York Times reading, MSNBC watching, liberals, who’ve come to resemble “Moonies” handing out literature at the airport. To them I say–you can’t accuse Trump of treason for 4 years, call for his assassination then act as if the dangerous escalation in poisonous rhetoric and protest are all his fault.

Liberals freaking out about the Instagram Insurrection seem to have completely forgotten the protests and #Resistance following Trump’s surprise election in 2016, where they believed the claims of voter fraud and of the election being stolen from Hillary Clinton. Trump’s inauguration was met with massive protests that saw police arrest 234 people. Immediate vows of insurrection and protest were issued by not only liberals and members in good standing in the DNC, but, more ominously, by the corporate media and the deep state, who were alarmed at Trump’s vow to end America’s forever wars and reset relations with Russia.

Trump was demonized because he was correctly perceived by the deep state and corporate media as a threat to the Establishment. Trump’s election surprised the Establishment. They thought that control over the corporate media guaranteed their power and were astonished to realize that enough American voters saw through their lies and propaganda to elect a non-establishment figure. Indeed, the corporate media and DNC engaged in probably the most hysterical candidate bashing propaganda operation in history only to find out that the “deplorables” did not vote as they were told to, they voted for “Trump The New Hitler” instead.

Personally, I think the result was a vote against Hillary Clinton and moreover a giant fuck-you to the Establishment from the American people as much as support for Trump.

Russia-gate was the immediate response to the challenge Trump represented. Indeed, the reasons for Russia-gate were spelled out from the beginning. A journalistic insider’s account of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Shattered, revealed that “in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss.” Her top advisers were summoned the following day, according to the book, “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up … Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

Going further, it was a coup, initiated by British intelligence agencies and carried forward by the CIA and FBI. It is extraordinary that anyone could have fallen for the Establishment’s story that Trump conspired with Putin to steal the election from Hillary, but so many did. The Establishment could not permit the realization that the American Establishment had been rejected by the American people in the 2016 election. Using the CIA and FBI the Establishment went to work on Trump. His entire four years was used in fighting orchestrated Russia-gate investigations and an orchestrated impeachment.

As Trump leaves office, voluminous public records – including investigative reports from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Congress and the Justice Department’s inspector general – have established that Trump and his associates were targeted with a baseless Russian collusion allegation. The fraudulent claim originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign, was fueled by a torrent of false or deceptive intelligence leaks, and was improperly investigated by the FBI, potentially to the point of being criminal.

A just released memo confirms what was already known. ““In late July 2016, US intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the DNC.”

The allegation that the Russian hacked the DNC servers has also likewise been shredded. Beginning back in January 2017,- Person X received information from Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, that one of his sources had received information from an FBI report stating that Seth Rich had leaked emails to Wikileaks, requested payment and made copies of the emails as a precautionary measure.

Public comments from former intelligence officials, with their false insinuations about a Trump-Russia connection, followed a longstanding pattern. In the early months of Trump’s presidency, anonymously sourced stories fueled collusion innuendo, helped oust Michael Flynn on false pretenses, and built momentum for Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. Key among them was a February 2017 report in the New York Times asserting that U.S. investigators had obtained “phone records and intercepted calls” showing that members of Trump’s campaign and other associates “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” Four months later, James Comey testified that the story was “not true.”

More evidence of Russia-gate nefariousness can found: here, here, here, and here.

In the aftermath of the Capital protests, it’s hard not to notice the double standard the political class and corporate media have imposed. Not only was the raid declared to be a coup regardless of the fact that at no point was there any risk of the United States government being toppled, but there was also the cry for immediate censorship of social media here in the US. This call for censorship of social media is, of course, completely different from the reaction to other countries targeted by the US, like Iran, Venezuela, Ukraine, etc., where the governments are castigated for censoring social media. Thus the Capital protests were a coup but the events in the countries the US is attempting to overthrow using a “color revolution” are just heroic citizens expressing their democratic yearnings. The dirty little secret, kept on the down-low by the corporate media, is that America is the world leader in coups. America overthrows governments regularly, including democratic ones.

Because the Capitol riot story feeds into partisan narratives and manufactures consent for authoritarian domestic terrorism laws, while overthrowing governments the US doesn’t approve of is bi-partisan foreign policy, this double standard passes unnoticed. In fact, it’s a good example of the propaganda function of the corporate media, where they keep the America people focused on demonizing the unworthy victims while lionizing the worthy ones.

It’s no wonder that the corporate media has lost credibility over many years from the prevalent lies they have told concerning false pretexts for foreign wars, and, in the past four years, regarding the whole baseless Russia-gate scandal embroiling Trump. Nevertheless, America at large seems to have become mired in conspiratorial thinking that is bordering on mass delusional, preventing normal cognitive function and rationale dialogue based on any consensus around objective reality.

I’ve worked for the last 5 years debunking Russia-gate and at this point it’s tiresome. Along the way I’ve come to realize that liberals with their Trump Derangement Syndrome, have so much invested in the smear precisely because they can’t come out and admit that all the policies and candidates that they cheered on led directly to the election of Donald Trump. It’s much better for their psychological well being to blame it all on a demonizable villain like Vladimir Putin. As an added bonus, Russia-gate with its incessant valorizing of security and intelligence officials and general atmosphere of emergency, turbo-charged liberal support for a new Cold War with Russia. Now, it is not just the right-wing which is a gullible audience for such psychological warfare regarding Russia but credulous Western liberals.

If all this sounds like a defense of Trump, it’s not. I’m not a Republican or a Democrat but a critical thinker who has become alarmed at the hateful rhetoric on both sides. None of us who remain silent and impassive in the face of evil, racism, extreme materialism, meanness, intolerance, cruelty, injustice, propaganda and ignorance get a free pass.

Unfortunately the Capital protests and aftermath have made clear that many Americans have lost faith in our political and economic systems and are at loggerheads, where one side believes the election was stolen while the other insists what happened Wednesday was a coup.

And, as long as Congress and the rest of the Establishment continue to ignore ordinary Americans’ interests and serve only their own, the anger and the desperation in the land will explode, rendering Wednesday’s events merely a dress rehearsal for what may well turn into a full-blown insurrection.

Update: Too funny.

Aaron Maté@aaronjmate·Jan 13 Overlooked irony: this time Trump is being rightly impeached for inciting a violent far-right mob. Last time Trump was impeached for, in part, briefly pausing weapons that were aiding far-right Ukrainian forces in a violent proxy war incited by the US.