It’s an ill wind that blows no good, and the latest fake news regarding “Solar Winds”, the Russian super hack that wasn’t, is a good example. It’s just coincidence, I’m sure, that a sudden leak regarding Russian perfidy should emerge just as Joe Biden was taking office. The odds were already roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 that Uncle Joe wouldn’t attempt a “reset” of U.S./Russian relations, but America’s Military Intellectual Complex does not like to take chances.
If you want the “real” story re the Solar Winds Hustle, Sean Lawson and Brandon Valeriano team up at the American Conservative to bring it to you, “The Russian ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor’ That Wasn’t”. It’s, uh, “amusing” that all the bit players in the farce insisted on staying completely in character throughout the performance, President Trump tripping over himself to defend his bosom buddy, Vladimir “Mr. Pecs” Putin, while Mitt “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” Romney predictably had a conniption.
Yeah, the Russians, and the Chinese, and Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and, probably, Upper Volta, spy on us, as we spy on them. Welcome to reality.
The sad fact is that anything resembling a “reset” involving U.S./Russian affairs is basically impossible as long as Putin is in power, unless the state of world affairs shifts radically. Donald Trump is perhaps the only person in the U.S. who doesn’t dislike Putin,1 with good reason, while Putin himself has to maintain his own reputation as a bad-ass. The thing is, Putin is no more a danger to the U.S. than was Saddam, and Kaddafi, and the Iranian mullahs, and all those other “Great Satans”2 that the MIC conjures up to keep us in line and themselves in clover.
1. I have to make exception for anti-liberal leftists like Glenn Greenwald who hate establishment liberals like Rachel Maddow so much they have to champion Uncle Vladimir just to disagree with her. And, anyway, how come she gets her own show and I don’t?
2. Word recognizes “Satan” but not “Satans” as a word. I had not expected such mono-demonism.
