In our advertorial culture, where the wealthiest interests have a billion ways to influence public opinion, no citizen can rely on anything, meaning that whatever we say or think is just as good as the exact opposite, which we can also insist on with impunity, if the timing is right, with no consequences for our credibility.    If you walked into this pay-to-play world from a place with traditional values about truth, fairness, the need for facts to back an argument, you’d think you’d gone mad.   

It’s part of a deliberate strategy, you can watch Putin do it every day (we are liberating Ukraine from Nazis! — wait, from US/Ukraine chemical weapons, from NATO…) and, of course his “not a puppet, not a puppet” whatshisname, the GOP leader.  If you have any doubt about the strategy of calling critical thinking into question being deliberate, look at this short fake news clip:

https://youtube.com/shorts/cOCe8yn85Sw?feature=share

We have Trump recently publicly asking Putin to take a pause in deNazifying Ukraine to give him some dirt on Biden.   And why not?  He did this without consequence when he withheld military aid to Ukraine in his perfect call to Zelensky (and Barr did his best to bury the verified, urgent whistleblower complaint).   He did this as a candidate when he said, spontaneously, during a nationally televised debate “Russia, if you’re listening…” and within a few hours Russia provided some dirt on Crooked Hillary (kudos to pardoned felon Roger Stone).  He did this regarding the over 100 acts of coordination between his campaign and Russian agents, documented for all-time in the Marco Rubio Senate Committee report.   He does variations on this every time he transactionally lies to gain some kind of political/personal advantage, including his Big Lie, (not the one about the disputed size of his dick) about a stolen election.  39%, we’re told, fervently believe this destructive whopper from the master of accountability-free obstruction of justice.

The Department of Justice, headed by the supremely cautious Merrick Garland, has given no sign it is investigating Trump’s now well-documented plan to sow the news cycle with outright lies about a stolen election, strong arm state Republicans into flipping electors, recruit members of Congress to repeat this lie, block the certification of Biden’s “stolen” victory based on the millions of Americans who pollsters showed passionately believe this lie, summon an angry mob to Washington D.C., use a crackpot legal theory to put a “constitutional” fig leaf on a last ditch attempt of elected Trump diehards to overturn the will of the American people as he whipped up and unleash an angry mob to hang Mike Pence, after putting out a false statement the night before wherein Pence “agreed” to hold up the certification.   We’re told it’s hard to show the former president had “corrupt intent” in doing all these things. There’s a puzzler for you, law and order fans.

The DOJ has, however, allowed Barr-appointed special prosecutor John Durham to finish investigating the “oringes” of the fake Mueller witch hunt, on the grounds that it would have seemed “political” to interfere with an openly political investigation launched by Trump’s gunsel to create more doubt about fucking Mueller’s totally “political” investigation.   Durham turned up very little in an investigation that went on longer than Mueller’s.   He found no deep state conspiracy to fuck Donald Trump.   Then we get this, today, from a long expose in the Washington Post about Hunter Biden using his father’s name and position to get millions of dollars from foreign oligarchs:

Hunter Biden’s overseas work has been the subject of heightened scrutiny. He has been under federal investigation as part of an inquiry into his taxes, with witnesses called before a grand jury as recently as last month. Federal prosecutors had been attempting to determine if he failed to account for income from China-related deals, The Post has previously reported, although it is unclear whether that is still a focus. Republicans, meanwhile, have pointed to the Biden family’s business deals in China, along with Hunter Biden’s past membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, as potential conflicts of interest.

Wondering why Congress’s contempt citation for Tea Party Jesus/Trump follower Mark Meadows has not been followed up on, in over three months?   The law, after all, requires DOJ to present the case to a grand jury.  Wonder no more.  Look, it’s all fake, OK? And now, a word from your rightful masters…