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.
How can Trump 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? #BernieResponds
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 31, 2018
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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54 responses to “Bernie Keeps Promoting The New Cold War, And Yes, We Need To Talk About It”
I guess the fact the Mueller brought 12 indictments against Russians for meddling in our election last week kinda blows your theory that is fake and your criticism of Bernie out of the water doesn’t it?
Unproven indictments that’ll never be proven. Are irrelevant considering Mueller’s bias witch hunt. It blows nothing out of the water except in the minds angry Hillary voters. Nunes is currently interrogating the IC analysts about the DNC hacking claims. About what evidence they made their assertions on. Russiagate could be unraveling soon.
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You had me until the end. I normally devour your articles because they are among the rare journalistic pieces courageous enough to constantly tell the truth about the warmongering powers-that-be, and risk the wrath of left and right demagogues and their supporters. The fact that your articles are also well-written is a major plus, as well.
So, you can imagine my annoyance when you felt the need to completely flout journalistic standards in order to jab religious/spiritual readers with your atheistic worldview. I had hoped that as a professional you would refrain from this kind of thing. Whether or not you believe there is a divine hand at work or not, it remains your belief and such a tangent is not only not germane to the points at hand, but alienating to readers who are already struggling to comprehend how they’ve been exploited, indoctrinated and enslaved by the plutocrats or our American Oligarchy. If you truly want to help people see the truth, as I believe you do, you would do well to keep such pointlessly inflammatory, opinion-based statements out of otherwise excellent articles.
Interesting post. Don’t understand your insistence on “Russiagate”; Congress voted overwhelmingly to impose stiffer sanctions on Russia as a result of their claimed meddling in the election, yet you seem to take it as given that the story is BS. I would like to understand. Glenn Greenwald has expressed similar but less forceful doubts, and I will go to the Intercept to look around, but I wonder where you’re getting your POV.
Thank you.
Oops. Maybe I should have checked the links within the post?
My face is red. Sorry.
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I read the first sentence and decided you’re so full of shit it would be a waste of time to read the rest. GFY
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I wish I had all my money back I sent old Bernie. He keeps emailing begging for more. But he has insulted my intelligence with his parroting the “Russia stole the election” lie. I wouldn’t even vote for the old fraud now.
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Hello Caitlin,
I think you are underestimating the CIA’s role. The CIA originally promoted the Russia narrative too. It has now gone silent – not just because it is controlled by the generals, who are firmly behind the neocons’ terrifying vision and execution of US world dominance. But also because the CIA knows there is some truth both to collusion (whether the ridiculous Trump Tower episode, perfectly usable for prosecution; or the more targeted social media / data sharing activity involving Cambridge Analytics; or some of the details in the Steele report – Steele was a top UK spy and a Russia specialist) and to Russian mafia money-laundering, which does fall inside Mueller’s brief. This enables the CIA / generals to control Trump by saving his skin and destroying the FBI investigation. At the same time, the CIA gets to weaken the FBI, whose relative independence and law enforcement role it has always resented, particularly when the FBI’s activities are at odds with its own strategic and tactical goals.
One of Eisenhower’s greatest regrets was Suez, where at the behest of his SecState John Dulles the US sided with Egypt. Dulles’ brother Allen was CIA director. Eisenhower later came to realize the depths to which he had been manipulated generally, hence the terrifying military-industrial complex warning in his January 1961 farewell speech.
JFK – who inherited Allen Dulles – felt manipulated too, this time over the Bay of Pigs invasion. But – and this is what is interesting re Bernie Sanders – JFK had committed himself to invading Cuba in his campaign in order to defuse Nixon. The CIA / military wanted to invade Cuba. JFK hoped to finesse his position at least publicly by leaving the invasion to Cuban exiles without providing fully-fledged US military support which the CIA / military believed JFK would have to deliver when the plan fell apart (which they knew it would). JFK – who made his own cryptic warnings about “secret societies” in a very weird speech 10 days after the “invasion” – fired Allen Dulles that year and tried to restructure the CIA… and to stop the troop buildup in Vietnam…
Nixon… we now know that the CIA deliberately sucked him in and set him up with Watergate, in which some of the same players linked to the JFK assassination have popped up. Like JFK, Nixon wanted to pull US troops out of Vietnam – having previously sabotaged the erstwhile warmongering LBJ’s own peace process for his own political gain. Nixon pulled out in 1973. And guess what Trump’s generals regret above all else… Vietnam withdrawal.
CIA director William Casey 1981: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false”
9/11.
Don’t be too hard on Obama – he had no power inside the machine.
Bernie is playing a very dangerous game but like others, perhaps he feels he has no choice politically. I guarantee you his Russia position would change were he to be elected. He too would switch discourse – and he might figure that at his age, if he pays the price, that is ok…
Sorry for the lengthy comment and keep up the good work!
You are so right. I supported Bernie’s run for the Democratic nomination, even before he declared. However, I have become more and more dismayed over the things he have said regarding Clinton, other Democrat actions and, most importantly, Russiagate.
There are things of relative insignificance with which I disagree with him. but this Russiagate nonsense is clearly the most dangerous, for the natural consequences of it are one form or another of war.
As such, though people keep trying me to take one position or another, to back one candidate or another, I refuse to let their pressures determine my behavior. We are three years away from the next presidential election and more than two years from the primaries. there is no reason for me to decide what I want or who I will vote for, when I do not truly know what any individual stands for, nor what changes might happen both domestically and globally.
One thing, however, is a certainty. If Bernie Sanders continues to push the Russiagate narrative form of mind control nonsense, he will not get my vote should he choose to run.
Of course, it goes without saying that I have never liked Trump; for decades I have found even his voice and manner of speech to be repulsive -s so much so that, even if I agreed with him, which I o not, I could never vote for him.
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I think we must pull the blinders from our eyes and realize Bernie is a Democrat, more of one than we want to believe. Any attempt to woo him from the arms of the established electoral process will meet with failure, I’m afraid. No one should waste their time. You are absolutely correct, Caitlin, that most of his policies are what this nation desperately needs. I would probably eat the slop and vote for him if he were running against the standard criminals we see coming at us. But his undoing as a President would be exactly this weakness – in fact, foreign policy would be hijacked by those Dems willing to “volunteer” help to him so he could concentrate on domestic policy, and we know which spring blesses them with ideas… My fear is that the Left cannot, or will not, unify enough to field a media antithesis to the destructive pablum fed citizens by the mainstream, and their delusions regarding the “white hat” USA will undermine any positives from his election, as long as the snakes still populate the grass.