The Incalculable Damage of the Russia Hoax
With powerful free press constitutional safe guards, Americans have empowered our media with an important mission in an informed democracy: reporting accurately with full transparency on important events. Now with the Russia! Russia! Russia! Trump! Trump! Trump! Hoax, with its incredibly inaccurate and malicious reporting blown to hell and back, there is a significant lesson to be learned.
I have not seen anyone focus on both President Trump and President Putin winning; one man for good the other for evil.
It is very simple. There have been two individuals who entered the maelstrom of this fake news hurricane to emerge after the event and to have their positions made stronger on the world stage. Both President Trump and President Putin knew the real truth of a fake narrative from the first moment the collusion issue was raised as a vehicle for a hide in plain sight what must acknowledged as political/media coup attempt.
President Trump was incredibly strong in standing firm, and his daughter Ivanka nailed it, in essence: the truth is the truth:
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. -- Abraham Lincoln
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) March 24, 2019
Russia’s historic goal of sowing dissent and weakening our democratic institutions was rapidly realized at first, as the Trump presidency was widely declared to be illegitimate on the Left and in the media. But the finding by the Mueller team of no collusion proved the wisdom of Lincoln and Ivanka. Trump Nation “deplorables” have become even more empowered during this time of historic testing and are emerging even stronger in their resolve to support President Trump’s leadership to Make America Great Again.
The Trump presidency has just reaped a global foreign policy and defense benefit: No world leader would never, ever doubt how tough he is, having survived this attempted coup.
Tragically, in terms of world peace slipping away, the other winner was President Putin. He is perhaps the second-best global information warrior in a leadership position in the world today. (President Trump is an order of magnitude better, but faces a hostile media establishment that works against him, and by default helps Putin.
Not since Stalin and one of the original fake news reporters, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Walter Duranty, has a Russian leader scored such an important information warfare victory in the United States. pyrrhic victory been achieved by. Duranty spread propaganda denying Stalin’s starving of millions of Ukrainians, estimated at over 10 million.
It took more than half a century for the New York Times to publicly acknowledge the insidiousness of Duranty’s and its own role in Stalin’s information warfare victory:
On Christmas Day in 1933, Joseph Stalin conferred this orchid on his favorite Western journalist:
''You have done a good job in your reporting the U.S.S.R., though you are not a Marxist, because you try to tell the truth about our country... I might say that you bet on our horse to win when others thought it had no chance and I am sure you have not lost by it.''
The reporter was Walter Duranty, then The New York Times's Moscow correspondent, who is credited with coining the term ''Stalinism.'' He was fascinated, almost mesmerized by the harsh system he described. And having bet on Stalin's rise in the 1920's, Mr. Duranty remained loyally partial to his horse. The result was some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper. (snip)
The biggest Duranty lapse was his indifference to the catastrophic famine in 1930-31, when millions perished in the Ukraine on the heels of forced collectivization. He shrugged off the famine as ''mostly bunk,'' and in any case, as he admonished the squeamish, ''You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.''
Ironically, history shows Duranty knew he was writing BS. Just as I suspect a few ideologically driven reporters have, deep down, known over the last two years that they were also publishing their asserted opinions in the form of hard “breaking news.” Those and many others were useful dolts and will live in infamy.
The damage to America is they have shown to Putin the strengths and weakness of our First Amendment safeguards in real time. He has greatly benefited in seeing this American media suicide attempt.
While the U.S. media was focusing on Trump, Putin was enjoying a relatively free ride in making trouble -- from the Baltics in sending his planes out to threaten our Intel aircraft, to probing UK airspace, to continuing to move aggressively in Ukraine and Syria. Putin has gotten mostly a free ride, his aggressions escaping significant American media focus
President Putin has recently threatened a direct attack against the United States if we do not comply with his strategic approach to Europe and the rest of the world. And the Russian PR machine has really kicked in. Why are all his blustery nuclear threats, some real and others notional (fake) not being reported on?
Instead of attacking President Trump with now proven “fake news,” our media need to grow up and focus on the real danger of Putin’s capabilities and intentions.
Is President Putin diabolically smart or simply a psychopath? Perhaps he is both, because by his direct action, the world is now a much more dangerous place as the former KGB officer creates a nuclear doomsday scenario backed by real Russian naval capabilities.
And the American media establishment has been his unwitting (we charitably assume) partner.