Caitlin Johnstone

“Reminder that there are two kinds of Trump-Russia stories: those we pay attention to because they serve a narrative, and those we ignore because they don’t,” tweeted The Real News‘ Aaron Maté ‏yesterday in response to the news that the Trump administration had authorized the sale of hundreds of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. “This one falls into latter category.”

“That piss-tape kompromat surely dropping any day now,” added journalist Mark Ames, a sarcastic reference to the fact that backing off on calls to arm Ukraine was an explicitly named part of the allegations in the notorious Steele dossier as one of the benefits Russia was supposed to have received from its “collusion” with the Trump campaign.

“If US media attitudes re: Russia weren’t so hopelessly blinkered, this could be identified as the dangerous escalation that it is — rather than ignored or spun because it doesn’t comport with the narrative that so many are now wedded to,” said The Young Turks‘ Michael Tracey.

These commentators are all pointing to the now-undeniable trend of mainstream media outlets ignoring all of this administration’s many, many world-threatening escalations against Russia while hastening to label any slight inertia towards even more escalations as evidence of collusion. These extremely hawkish provocations against a nuclear superpower are an issue on which Trump could very easily be attacked from the left in opposition to a possible third and final world war, but instead they choose to attack him from the right and help increase the probability of one.

To recap: in addition to facilitating the years-long neoconservative agenda to arm Ukraine against Russia (a move the Obama administration resisted for fear of needlessly angering Moscow), this administration has killed Russians in Syria as part of its insane regime change occupation of that country, espoused a Nuclear Posture Review with greatly increased aggression toward Russia and blurred lines between when nuclear strikes are and are not appropriate, sent war ships into the Black Sea “to counter Russia’s increased presence there,” forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents, expanded NATO with the addition of Montenegro, assigned Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, shut down a Russian consulate in San Francisco and thrown out Russian diplomats.

But none of that is enough for these seething empire loyalists, including (and this should come as no surprise at this point if you’ve been paying attention) TYT boss Cenk Uygur.

Throughout a panel segment titled “Trump Silent After Putin Demonstrates Missile Attack On US“, a reaction to the announcement of new advancements in Russia’s nuclear arsenal, Uygur is careful to assert over and over again that he is a progressive and does not want a war with Russia from one side of his mouth while toeing the line of the neoconservative center with the other side.

“So what is it that people are looking for?” Uygur rhetorically asked Katie Halper, the only progressive on the TYT panel to push back against the segment’s overall hawkishness. “We’re looking for some sort of sign that Donald Trump is not in the tank for Russia. It’s not because I want him to go to war with Russia, it’s not because I want him to even create more hostilities or do any of the stupid tweets he does with North Korea. It’s that I want to have some degree of certainty that he is not in the pocket of another country. Now people might think that that’s overblown. I don’t think it’s overblown at all.”

How many more signs are you asking for, Cenk? A nuclear strike on St. Petersburg? The US and its allies are already dangerously close to a direct military confrontation with Russia along multiple fronts that are fraught with ongoing hot war conflicts, things keep escalating on an increasingly frequent basis, and you want Trump to give you a sign that he’s not on Russia’s side??

We shouldn’t have to share a planet with these omnicidal propagandists.

“In one of the articles here they said Trump rarely criticizes Putin,” Uygur added. “No. He never criticizes Putin. And he hasn’t done the sanctions, he hasn’t done anything. And that doesn’t mean I think the sanctions are wonderful, it’s just obvious that there is something going on with Putin and Trump, and hence I’m not sure that Trump represents our interests above Putin’s.”

Throughout the segment Cenk takes great pains to say he doesn’t want war with Russia, but saying that while demanding even more “signs” that this administration isn’t beholden to Putin is like saying you support racial segregation but oppose racism. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Cenk. You don’t get to keep the progressive face you’ve built your career on while advancing the neoconservative narrative that has neutered all opposition to this administration’s world-threatening escalations against a nuclear superpower.

You don’t get to feed into the Russiagate narrative while denying that you support escalations with Russia, because escalating against Russia is exactly what Russiagate is for. By feeding into the Russiagate conspiracy theory you are already helping to facilitate those escalations, as evidenced by the abundantly clear and undeniable fact that Trump’s escalations against Russia go ignored by the Rachel Maddows and Cenk Uygurs of the mass media machine while any slight inertia towards those escalations is treated as suspicious at best and treasonous at worst.

As I noted recently after Hillary Clinton lent her voice to shaping the narrative that Trump isn’t hawkish enough toward Russia, world renowned US-Russian relations expert Stephen Cohen has been warning for a year now that we are at a point which rivals the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of the threat of nuclear war. This is because the mounting political pressures being placed on Trump to escalate when he should de-escalate and step forward when he should step back are shoving the sitting president toward direct conflict with Russia in a way that no Commander-in-Chief including Kennedy has ever had to deal with. Add that extremely dangerous dynamic into all the many moving fronts and proxy wars this new cold war is being fought along and we’ve got a situation where a nuclear warhead is increasingly likely to be deployed in the chaos at any moment, setting Mutually Assured Destruction into motion.

Our species barely survived the last cold war, and people like Cenk Uygur are helping to shove us deeper and deeper into the new one when we should all be resisting it tooth and claw. Thanks Cenk.

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