The RussiaGate conspiracy drama is a double-edged damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t trap for people on the portside. The perils of signing on to the storyline are clear as day to any self-respecting Leftist. Five come to mind off the top of my head:
1. Neo-McCarthyite distraction from numerous terrible things that the racist, nativist, sexist, white-nationalist, and eco-cidal, planet-cooking Trump administration and the Republican Party are doing with scant serious opposition from the dismal dollar Democrats. The media and the Democrats have the political culture mired in the Russia-Trump conspiracy while the in-power right-wing has worked all-too behind the scenes to: slash taxes for the already absurdly wealthy Few; reduce poor people’s access to health care; hand the federal bench over to religious and free-market fundamentalists; attack women’s reproductive and other rights; deport and harass immigrants; attack minority voting rights; criminalize protest and dissent; rollback labor and collective bargaining rights; rollback civil rights; increase the insanely gigantic Pentagon budget; make desperately poor people perform underpaid work in order to receive health insurance and public housing assistance; shred environmental protections; weaken financial regulations; decrease workplace safety; murder thousands of innocents across the Middle East; deepen Washington’s alliance with murderous regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel;…