Russiagate vs. Climate Genocide: How Democrats Cover Up Trump's Worst Crime

Russiagate's Beauty for Dems: Dissing Trump without Discussing Issues

The more important an issue is to humanity, the likelier it is Democrats don't want to discuss it.

Thus, it's hardly surprising that Noam Chomsky felt obliged to point out the "moral depravity" of both major parties for discussing neither climate change nor the increasing risk of nuclear war during the recent midterm-election campaigns. It's likewise hardly surprising that the Republican Party, which Chomsky rightly terms "the most dangerous organization in human history," likes to stay mum on the real nature of its wantonly destructive policies. But what's truly amazing--until one habituates to the mammoth corruption of current U.S. politics--is how utterly unwilling today's Democratic Party is to discuss issues that would paint Republicans in not merely in an unflattering, but in a criminally insane light.

But so corrupt is today's Democratic Party that the very issues on which they could "nail" Republicans at election time--climate destruction, warmongering, ever-worsening economic inequality, or corruption by political money--are themselves a profound embarrassment for Democrats as well. So, far better for Dems to pin their anti-Trump stance on something far less discernible, like Trump's purported (but never proven) collusion with Russia.

Now, given the jaw-dropping corruption of Trump and his cronies, it's hardly surprising if Robert Mueller's two-year witch hunt for hints of Trump's collusion with Russia--and a witch hunt it has indeed been--uncovers numerous crimes (most or all probably unrelated to Russia). As respected veteran journalist Allan Nairn (interviewed in the Intercept podcast just linked to) penetratingly says, "Look, Trump is a guy who's guilty of almost everything, in a meaningful sense. Yet, here, the Democrats have pinned the political future of the world on nailing him for the one thing of which he may in fact be innocent: Russia collusion."

Nairn's interview is a virtual diamond necklace of piercing insights; it's perhaps the best single existing reflection on the grand significance of life under Trump. But his observation that Democrats have (with adrenaline-junkie death defiance, at best) "pinned the future of the political world" on nailing Trump for collusion with Russia merits readers' emphatic attention.

So suicidally risky is Democrats' dumping of all their anti-Trump eggs in the Russia-collusion basket that it has enabled a highly pernicious claim by left-wing ideologues. Namely, that Democrats (rhetoric aside) are the same as Republicans. Their embarrassing lack of significant policy differences--at least, any they're willing to publicly acknowledge--forces them to rely on a largely concocted propaganda narrative that's damning to Trump.

Though far from a Democrat fan myself, the evidence against the claim both major parties are the same strikes me as overwhelming. For example, could self-styled "socialist" Bernie Sanders have even considered making a run for president in today's Republican Party? Could young progressive insurgents like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib--themselves prominent targets of Republican smears--have for one second considered running as Republicans? Would it have made any sense for the Sunrise Movement to confront incoming Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as it confronted incoming Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi without expecting stony silence or outright ridicule--to say nothing of a far harsher Capitol Police response? Like, say, the Republican anti-climate brutality at Standing Rock?

Note that all my evidence for Democrats differing from Republicans involves progressive insurgents opposed by the Democratic leadership (and, most importantly, a party voter base eager to support them). If we focus solely on the party leadership--for example, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's promotion of Trump-friendly fossil-fuel puppet Joe Manchin as top Democrat on a powerful energy committee--it becomes much harder (rhetoric aside) to see substantial difference between our two major parties. So, the more rational leftist ideologues claiming the essential sameness of Republicans and Democrats point to the essential impotence of progressive insurgents in setting (or even affecting) Democratic policy. Only time will tell if they're right--and insurgents' Green New Deal will prove a major test.

But for now, Democrats' predominant leadership rhetoric--reliably echoed by Democrat leadership media stooges like Rachel Maddow--ditches all talk of a Green New Deal for the policy-dodging (or better, policy-perverting) narrative of Trump's collusion with Russia. Even if this means sweeping under the rug Trump's most blatant, egregious crime against humanity.

Nailing Hitler for Unpaid Parking Tickets--as the Holocaust Rages On

It's crucial to revert here to Allan Nairn's important insight, cited earlier, that "Democrats have pinned the political future of the world on nailing him for the one thing of which he may in fact be innocent: Russia collusion." The key words to stress here are political future of the world. By focusing so obsessively on Mueller's witch hunt for purported Russian collusion--in a world facing emergency-level crises--Democrats and their supporting media have reprehensibly played dice with civilization's very survival. Indeed, with the risk of human extinction.

The best lens for viewing the criminal irresponsibility of Democrats' obsessive focus on Russia collusion is humanity's climate crisis. And by Democrats' showing, you'd never know that 1) such a crisis exists and 2) the Trump administration is committing an unprecedented crime against humanity by knowingly exacerbating that crisis at the worst conceivable moment. A crime that could easily dwarf the death and suffering unleashed by both world wars and the Holocaust combined.

The Russiagate witch hunt amounts to trying to nail Hitler for rumored unpaid parking tickets while the Holocaust openly rages on. If that parallel seems shocking, it's only because official propaganda, by a process well analyzed by Allan Nairn--and Joseph Goebbels--has numbed us into an even more shocking unawareness of the real nature of our world. A world where Trump's administration is actively working to commit a crime well beyond genocide.

Make no mistake: The Russiagate narrative serves not the interests of Democrats as a successful party ready to wipe criminally insane Republicans off the electoral map, but of a narrow wealthy-donor-serving (and thereby self-serving) party and media elite that seeks to preserve its power and corrupt practices whatever the negative electoral consequences for the party. As evidence, I can do no better than to quote Nairn (from his Intercept interview):

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