I think it’s very fitting that the ever-tightening repetitive loops of America’s increasingly schizophrenic partisan warfare have finally hit peak shrillness and skyrocketed into a white noise singularity on Groundhog Day. Right about now I feel like we’re at the part of the movie where Bill Murray is driving over a cliff in a pickup truck with a large rodent behind the wheel.

If you only just started paying attention to US politics in 2017 what I’m about to tell you will blow your mind, so you might want to sit down for this: believe it or not, there was once a time when both of America’s mainstream political parties weren’t screeching every single day that there was news about to break any minute now which would obliterate the other party forever. No Russiagate, no Nunes memo, no Rachel Maddow red yarn graphs, no Sean Hannity “tick tock”, no nothing. People screaming that the end is nigh and it’s all about to come crashing down were relegated to street corners and the occasional Infowars appearance, not practicing mainstream political punditry for multimillion dollar salaries on MSNBC and Fox News.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that Americans are starting to look critically at the power dynamics in their country, but the partisan filters they’ve slapped over their eyes are causing mass confusion and delusion. Now everyone who questions the CIA is a Russian agent and the term “deep state” suddenly means “literally anyone who doesn’t like Donald Trump”. Your take on the contents of the Nunes memo will put you in one of two radically different political dimensions depending on which mainstream cult you’ve subscribed to, and it will cause you to completely miss the point of the entire ordeal.

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/959491663893794817

The part of the memo that has everyone talking today reads as follows:

“Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.”

This refers to a surveillance warrant requested by the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking permission to spy on the communications of Carter Page, a member of the 2016 Trump campaign. The controversy revolves around the claim that this surveillance warrant would never have even been requested if not for the clearly biased, Clinton-funded, and error-riddled Christopher Steele dossier which is acknowledged even by its former MI6 author to be 10 to 30 percent inaccurate.

Combine that with the fact that this has never been made clear to the public, and baby you’ve got yourself a scandal. The FBI knowingly using extremely tainted evidence from one presidential campaign to get permission to spy on another would indeed be a very big deal.

There are some problems with the “BOOM! Bigger than Watergate!” exclamations that pro-Trump partisans have been parading around about this, however. The first is that the memo is only an internal communication between Republican congressmen; it’s not a sworn testimony or legal transcript or anything legally binding. It’s basically just some Republican ideas about what happened. The assertions made therein are reportedly being hotly contested by Democrats with knowledge of the situation, which is in turn being disputed by Republicans.

Another thing putting a damper on the GOP’s “KABOOM!” parade is the fact that the memo’s contents are not even entirely new; CNN reported way back in April of last year that sources had informed them that the Steele dossier had been used to get a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign. Additionally, even if every single allegation in the memo is true, the revelations are still arguably far less earth shattering than the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 exposing the NSA’s sprawling domestic espionage network, so the expectation that these less significant new revelations would cause a radical transformation in US politics when the Snowden revelations did not seems highly unrealistic.

Nonetheless, there have been some extremely important revelations as a result of this memo; they just haven’t come from the contents of the memo itself. In the same way that cybersecurity analysts observe the metadata underlying hacked files rather than the contents of the files themselves, political analysts have been pointing out that a lot can be learned about the political establishment by looking at its response to the possibility of the memo’s release.

“Memo is clearly not a blockbuster. We can tell so by reading it. Which makes Dems’ frantic efforts to prevent anyone from reading it seem even more bizarre,” observed TYT’s Michael Tracey, later adding, “Veracity of memo’s claims aside, we were told that its release would undermine the rule of law. So, just checking: is the rule of law still in tact?”

“Now it is clear to all,” WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange tweeted. “The claims about how the ‘Nunes’ memo would destroy ‘national security’ were lies. Classification stickers are used by bureaucrats trying to obtain ‘political security’ for their cronies.”

“One effect of the memo — it’s an example of how extensively we overclassify information,” wrote National Review‘s David French. “I’m highly dubious that any information disclosed threatens national security in any way, shape, or form. I’d be willing to bet the Dem response is similarly harmless. Release it.”

Indeed, both the FBI and high-profile Democrats have been claiming that the memo’s unredacted release would pose a national security threat, with California Congressman (and virulent Russiagater) Eric Swalwell going so far to call it “brainwashing”. A CNN panelist wandered completely off the paddock and suggested that yesterday may have been America’s last day as a democracy. Why were they all flipping out so hysterically over a release of information that plainly poses no threat to the American people?

In addition to Assange’s assertion that government secrecy has far less to do with national security than political security (a claim he has made before which seems to be proving correct time and time again), there’s the jarring question posed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?”

Whoa, Nelly. Hang on. What is he talking about?

It would be understandable if you were unaware of the debate over the reauthorization of FISA surveillance which resulted in unconditional bipartisan approval last month; the mainstream media barely touched it. In point of fact, though, the very surveillance practices alleged to have been abused in this hotly controversial memo are the same which was waved through by both the House and the Senate, and by the very same people promoting the memo in many cases.

The McCabe testimony was in December. FISA was renewed in January. Why is all this just coming out now? If the Republicans truly believed that McCabe said what the memo claims he said, why wasn’t the public informed before their elected representatives renewed the intelligence community’s dangerously intrusive surveillance approval? Was this information simply forgotten about until after those Orwellian powers had been secured?

Of course not. Don’t be an idiot.

This makes the kicking, screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth by the political establishment make a lot more sense, doesn’t it? Now suddenly we’re looking at a he-said, she-said partisan battle over an issue which can only be resolved with greater and greater transparency of more and more government documents, and we can all see where that’s headed. In their rush to win a partisan battle and shield their president from the ongoing Russiagate conspiracy theory, the Republicans may have exposed too much of the establishment foundation upon which both parties are built.

The term “deep state” does not mean “Democrats and Never-Trumpers” as Republican pundits would have you believe, nor does the term refer to any kind of weird, unverifiable conspiracy theory. The deep state is in fact not a conspiracy theory at all, but simply a concept used in political analysis for discussing the undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist in America, and that they tend to form alliances and work together in some sense. There is no denying the fact that plutocrats, intelligence agencies, defense agencies and the mass media are both powerful and unelected, and there is no denying the fact that there are many convoluted and often conflicting alliances between them. All that can be debated is the manner and extent to which this is happening.

The deep state is America’s permanent government, the US power structures that Americans don’t elect. These power structures plainly have a vested interest in keeping America’s Orwellian surveillance structures in place, as evidenced by the intelligence community’s menacingly urgent demand for FISA renewal back in December. If there’s any thread to be pulled that really could make waves in the way Official Washington (hat tip to the late Robert Parry) operates, it is in the plot holes between the bipartisan scramble toward unconditional surveillance renewal and the highly partisan battle over exposing the abuse of those very powers.

If we’re going to see a gap in the bars of our cages, that’s a great place to keep our eyes trained, so keep watching. Watch what happens in a partisan war where both parties have a simultaneous interest in revealing as little of the game as possible and exposing the other party. Things could get very interesting.

_________________

Thanks for reading! My daily articles are entirely reader-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, bookmarking my website, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypalor buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Liked it? Take a second to support Caitlin Johnstone on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!

9 responses to “The Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content”

  1. Using “schizophrenic” in such a way is really offensive toward the mentally ill. Most schizophrenics cannot help that they have these symptoms. There is no possible way to be or act schizophrenic without actually being schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is usually a symptom of a much larger spectrum of mental disability that is a harsh reality to to those that experience it. Most of them would much rather have a normal brain that doesn’t function the way it does and most, despite your use of the term indicating so, do not wish harm on anyone. Most schizophrenics are able to lead fairly normal lives and plenty are noted as having been prominent in the arts and music industry. Look up simply “Famous schizophrenics” and you’ll find out.

    This is a real illness that suffers too many individuals trying to lead normal lives. This kind of hate spewing arbitrarily towards the mentally ill when referring to otherwise healthy individuals doing seemingly sadistic things not only undermines what you’re trying to say but also takes cheap shots at a group of individuals with no real means to defend themselves from the apparent misconception you’re spreading in doing so.

    Thanks

    1. ~Ñöstra-Thomas®, the Futureseer Avatar
      ~Ñöstra-Thomas®, the Futureseer

      The word ‘schizophrenic’ has been adopted by writers to have more than the medical meaning. That is understood and clearly obvious that Caity was no disparaging those with an actual organic disorder of the mind. Let’s stay on topic and avoid identity politics and needless diversions. The word schizophrenic stays and I will continue to use it in this manner.

  2. America will never regain any moral compass or authority until these global super-villains are neutralized. Many will cry, many will be enraged and many will swear it’s unfair. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Others will gloat and claim a false victory over a manufactured opponent. Some will claim a hollow Red or Blue supremacy but it will mean nothing. But Hillary Clinton and many others have to go to prison. This was ALL for her. SHE did this.

    I think a massive ass-busting ala Bastille is required to regain control of what we’ve allowed our lawless nation to become. Brats need punished no matter how popular and above the law they think they are. And organized syndicates of brats need to be hunted down and erased. The GOP is just as corrupt if not MORE!

    Our Justice Department has HIV. The very organ we use to combat lawlessness has ITSELF been compromised by criminal pathogens. The nation as a whole and our body politic are doomed if we do nothing. It’s only a matter of time. If the story ends with Red losing or Blue receiving a black-eye in the history books is of little consequence at this point.

  3. Ahem… you are digging yourself into a hole. Steel actually said per your article link that he believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90% accurate. Why are you trying to look past that by saying he said it was 10% to 30% wrong?? Also, Steele’s research was initially funded by the Republicans for Jeb Bush.

    1. Steele did not enter the picture until after the Washington Free Beacon stopped funding Fusion GPS to find dirt on Trump.

      1. Thanks – you are right on Steele himself but Fusion GPS, which hired Steele in June 2016, had already been investigating Trump for the Washington Free Beacon / pro Bush Republicans. Steele was brought in by Fusion GPS when lawyers for the Democrats simply picked up where the Republicans left off.

  4. Caitlin nails it…. every time.

  5. Seems pretty much, as expected, a case of two devils in league with two devils. Nothing surprises me anymore.

  6. Priceless!! Picture combined with content

Trending