Making Mugs of Voters: Mueller’s Russia Indictments

Tagged to the Trump presidency like an insistent limpet, the investigation into Russian interference in the US elections of 2016 provides constant fodder for the unimaginative political animals in the United States. But any diet that remains unvaried is bound to induce illness or nutritional deficiency.  Variety is strength.

US politics, and its political culture, distinctly lacks nutritional health.  Estranged, polarised, and paranoid, it has ceased being a green house of hope and governance.  Little wonder, then, that its politicians see external forces of such character and effect, agents of influence that can alter the destiny of the imperium.  Scant regard is paid to a system so putrescent it had to produce a Trump or conjured up the demonic properties of a Steve Bannon.  Foreign interference remains, not merely a red herring but a fairly insignificant one.

On Friday, thirteen Russians and three Russian entities were charged by special counsel Robert Mueller for conspiring in interfering with “US political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”  While there was tooting and trumpeting on the media circuit, the more astute were less impressed.  Various intelligence professionals preferred to see the indictments as reflecting “a different level of certainty, confidence and evidence.”

The charges, interestingly enough, omit the issue of hacked Democrat emails (Podesta and the DNC) and computer systems connected with…

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