Kunstler looks at the news & sees useful idiots on parade

Summary: We can learn much from watching the antics in the media over Assange and RussiaGate. Here James Kunstler gives a fun and insightful look at the festivities.

Useful Idiots on Parade

James Howard Kunstler at his website.
Reposted with his generous permission.

Anyone interested in glimpsing the Wokester media mentality in full intellectual-yet-idiot smuggery might check out Slate’s Political Gabfest (i.e., podcast) from this past Saturday, titled “The Wahoo Edition.” The Gabfest’s three regulars, David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and John Dickerson go after Julian Assange as if they were three college dormitory RAs dissecting the character of an unpopular freshman.

Plotz kicked it off by introducing Mr. Assange as “the eminence greasy of Wikileaks,” a cute twist on the French phrase éminence grise (gray eminence, i.e. an elder statesman, pronounced eminence greez, and he knows it). Bazelon offered her explanation for Ecuador’s eagerness to be rid of Mr. Assange: “He was acting like a big jerk. They were tired of him skateboarding all over the residence and scuffing up the walls and not cleaning his bathroom. He wore out his welcome on hospitality grounds.” Note: Emily Bazelon is a lawyer. No one mentioned the fact that Ecuador was promised debt relief from the US-controlled International Monetary Fund within hours of expelling Mr. Assange. {The loans were announced on February 20.}

Plotz quickly added: “He didn’t clean up after his cat, which, as a cat owner, that is grounds for expulsion.”

Dickerson weighed in: “The big problem is he’s not an appealing man… he’s clearly a narcissist. He’s unpleasant. In addition to messing with our election, he’s basically on Team Russia.”

Plotz said of Wikileaks: “It’s acting as an agent for a foreign governments, as it has with Russia.”

Some people in this sore beset republic get hooked on opiates or crystal meth. Wokesters get hooked on The Narrative: That Russia “stole” the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails, with the collusion of the Trump campaign. The latter point has been authoritatively invalidated by Mr. Mueller, of course, but the Wokester’s cling to their hope that some as-yet-concealed mischief in the Mueller Report will somehow contradict Mr. Mueller’s own conclusions.

As for the alleged hacking per se, you realize of course that neither the FBI nor Mr. Mueller’s “team,” nor anyone in the DOJ before the retirement of Jeff Sessions made any effort to secure and examine the very DNC computer servers at issue. Rather, they relied on a private company called CrowdStrike, hired by Hillary and the DNC itself, to analyze the alleged hacking. Can you imagine anything more arrantly dishonest or more legally irregular?

The Slate Gabfest crew never engages in these dark issues. Nor do they mention the fact that the Mueller “team” (or any other US law enforcement agency) never indicted Mr. Assange for “collusion” with Russia, nor even attempted to interview him and hear what he had to say about it. On his own, Mr. Assange has stated that Russia was not the source of the DNC emails he received and subsequently released to the US news media, including The New York Times, The WashPo, and the Cable TV News networks, who happily ran with the story {see this interview}.

There is a pretty good theory though, advanced by William Binney, a former National Security Agency official-turned-whistleblower, and other Intel Community associates, that the DNC data was “leaked,” not hacked, “by a person with physical access” to the DNC’s computer system. Meaning, someone inside the DNC downloaded the info onto a thumb drive. The data transfer rates prove that, they say. {See this article in The Nation about the pros and cons of this theory.}

There is probably a good reason that US government authorities did not essay to make Mr. Assange a witness on-the-record: because his testimony would have prevented Mr. Mueller from bringing his bullshit charges against the Russian internet trolls he indicted – who will never have to come to trial in the USA in any case, and thus never refute The Narrative so earnestly promoted by the Mueller team – until it all fell apart on March 24.

But these are not terms that the Slate Political Gabfest chose to follow in their analysis of Julian Assange and his activities. Rather we got the following, transcribed verbatim:

Bazelon: “Assange is so detestable it’s really tempting to get as far away from him as possible. One look at him and I feel that way about him.”

Plotz: “Do you think Joe Biden would get a little handsy with him?”

Bazelon: “He’s far creepier.”

Dickerson: “You don’t find that Dickensian beard alluring?”

Bazelon: “It’s awful. But I always thought he was clean-shaven yucky.”

Such are the Deep Thoughts of America’s leading Wokester political analysts. One also might ask why Mr. Assange has not been charged by the US with espionage, if that’s what their beef with him really is. In the meantime, behold the disgraceful episode of American journalists pimping for the leviathan state’s privilege to suppress the free flow of news and their own freedom of the press. Imagine them subjecting Daniel Ellsberg to such a hazing.

———————————

Editor’s note

“Sleazeball”, “whippersnapper”, and “narcissist!” But these were from 2013. Metz refers to Edwards Snowden, not Assange. Six years later, different guy, same reaction.

The attacks on Assange are not a response to him, but to all challengers to the State. Slate’s wokesters are just unknowing agents – true useful idiots. For example, Snowden, Manning, and Assange all were bombarded by schoolyard insults – combined with journalists’ lies about them (e.g., here).

Another favorite tactic of the State’s defenders is to contest, even mock, the obvious. It deflects those difficult questions.

“Just out of curiosity, is there any evidence  that Assange would be extradited to the US if he went to Sweden?”
— Michael Cohen – ‏@speechboy71 in 2012.

The most powerful strength of the State’s defenders is their absolute certainty. No matter how flimsy or non-existent the evidence, they parrot the narrative as if it were Gospel. Even when it is obviously false.

“There’s really no question about Trump/Putin collusion, and Trump in fact continues to act like Putin’s puppet.”
— Paul Krugman on 17 November 2017.

Keith Olbermann on GQ.com, 12 December 2012.

“Permitting Donald Trump to assume the office of president reduces the chance that we will have any future elections! The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread, and the military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum! Who are beholden to scum! Russian scum! As things are today, January 20th will not be an inauguration, but rather the end of the United States as an independent country.”

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler (Wikipedia) worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, before working as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he began writing books on a full-time basis. Kunstler is the author of 12 novels and has been a regular contributor to many major media, writing about environmental and economic issues. He is a leading supporter of the movement known as “New Urbanism.”

He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, and many other colleges. He has written five non-fiction books. See more about the most recent one below.

• The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (1993),
• Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century (1996),
• The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition (2001),
• The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Cent (2005),
• Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation (2012).

See some of his recent posts about America. They’re all well worth reading!

• Oscar Bytes – About the Oscar ceremonies.
• Marching to Gilead – About our detente with North Korea.
• Sunset Boulevard with Chimp – About Michael Jackson.
• The Blind Leading the Deaf and Dumb – about the resistance.

For More Information

Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about leakers, about Wikileaks, and about Juliana Assange, especially these…

1. The Affair Assange rips off the veil concealing the face of modern journalism.
2. America’s wise men defend the government’s surveillance programs.
3. The Empire Strikes Back: The Demonization of Snowden Begins.
4. America’s courtiers rush to defend the government – from us.
5. Will a wave of leakers undercut America’s national security?
6. Julian Assange trapped & smeared. Wikileaks weakened. Mission accomplished for CIA?
7. A new and revolutionary force has appeared in US politics: truth!

About Kunstler’s most recent book

Too Much Magic:
Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation.

From the publisher …

“Kunstler’s critically acclaimed and best-selling The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (2005) quickly became a grassroots hit, going into nine printings in hardcover. Kunstler’s shocking vision of our post-oil future caught the attention of environmentalists and business leaders alike, and stimulated widespread discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels and our dysfunctional financial and government institutions. Kunstler has since become a key commentator on the future, profiled in The New Yorker and invited to speak at TED and other events.

In Too Much Magic, Kunstler evaluates what has changed in the last seven years and shows us that in a post-financial-crisis world, his ideas are more relevant than ever.

“‘Too Much Magic’ is what Kunstler sees in the bright visions of a future world dreamed up by overly optimistic souls who believe technology will solve all our problems. Their visions remind him of the flying cars and robot maids that were the dominant images of the future in the 1950s. Kunstler’s idea of the future is much more sober: he analyzes the various technologies (vertical farms, fracking, corn ethanol) suggested as overnight solutions to the energy crisis and finds none that he thinks will work long-term to cure a society dependent on gas-guzzling cars, in love with an inefficient ideal of suburbia, and unwilling to fundamentally change its high-energy lifestyle. Kunstler also offers concrete ideas as to how we can help ourselves adjust to a society where the oil tap is running dry.

“With vision, clarity of thought, and a pragmatic worldview, Kunstler argues that the time for magical thinking and hoping for miracles is over and that the time to begin preparing for the long emergency has begun.”