STRAUBINICAL NEWS DIGEST Three.

STRAUBINICAL NEWS DIGEST Three.

  Today's Washington Post has a front page article about the Russian propaganda campaign to get Trump elected. "Independent researchers," acc. to the article, have studied how Russian provocateurs worked hard behind the scenes to help American right wing sites spread the narrative of Clinton as a tool of global financiers who could die any second. That is, Clinton could, not the global financiers; these shadowy villains have been around forever, it seems, cooking up their nefarious plots while adroitly managing to remain shrouded in fog and mystery. (Kind of like Gary Busey.) These international cabals can never die; they're keen on youth training and nepotism, and in the manner of sitcoms whose toothy wiseacre children get older and require augmentation by Cousin Oliver, Raven-Symoné, and Danielle Brisebois, they always have a backup plan.
  Since this story suggests that we now have Russia's preferred President on deck, an inarguably repugnant state of affairs whose implications and built-in irony I probably don't need to spell out, I assume that spin is impossible. And when spin can't work, discrediting is the way to go.
The popular discrediting method in use today is to denounce "the evil media" and patriotically refuse to read it. Given that Americans don't read much of anything, anyway, loudly refusing to read the Washington Post and New York Times would appear to be a boycotter's dream. Like boycotting haggis.
The article says that the Russians were trying to undermine faith in American democracy. Mission accomplished, Muscovites!

  Over on the op-ed page, Charles Krauthammer is demonstrating how to continue bashing liberals in the wake of his own party electing a dangerously unqualified candidate. The Orwellian phrase "identity politics" is useful for right wing pundits, with its curious insinuation that Democrats alone have encouraged the balkanization of our society by creating state-chosen favored groups. While I've annoyed many by saying something similar, my version of this moldy tune has crucial differences.

1. I don't blame liberals the way he does. I'm only suggesting that if liberals were as smart as they believe they are, they would crow and lecture the yahoo class much less about racism.
I don't suggest that the left is wrong, just terrible at winning converts.

2. It takes an impressively bold strain of chutzpah to assert that liberals are responsible for racism, or for the notion of "state-chosen favored groups." This is an airbrushed modern take on the creepy Reconstruction-era phenomenon of deeply felt victimhood leading to horrendous terror, torture and murder. Klansmen felt, and presumably still feel, that their brutal activities are redressing a wrong.

Elsewhere on the op-ed page, Ruth Marcus attempts to make the case for Breitbart News, and its on-again, off-again schlub reporter Bannon, as racist. Also, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and the usual ist list. It's hard to see how this sort of wallet-lining malevolence isn't "identity politics," but perhaps it isn't. (A Breitbart writer helpfully suggested that women should react to online harassment by logging off and returning to their apple crumble recipes. I argue, alternatively, that if we allow women to surf the web without being shamed by addlepates as too sexy, or not sexy enough, they will be able to make even better apple crumble.)