There were so many gifts delivered indirectly through Jeff Bezos this Christmas. As the business news breathlessly reported–he was up to 100 billion after this holiday season’s Black Friday sales at Amazon. This is so wonderful to hear and celebrate. Now 3 guys in the US own as much as the bottom half of the entire population. Think how many crappy couches Warren Buffett owns if he’s got ⅓ of ½ the population’s stuff. 108,103,333 crappy couches. He obviously doesn’t need that many.
Anyway, Bezos of this trifecta of hoarding–his Washington Post also gave out Christmas gifts, namely an article that pretty much indicated that those of us who have written and contributed to CounterPunch are likely Kremlin trolls or…..at least something shady like a guy in the alley in a trenchcoat without his trenchcoat. It just goes to show how insidious the process has become. I sit here in Bumblefuck, West Jeshoshaphat (turn left where the big barn used to be) rolling in the rube-alls, a part of a thickening plot.
An entity that goes by one Alice Donovan evidently slipped some articles to a smattering of left-leaning sites, CounterPunch being the biggest name of the bunch. The few articles from “her” that CounterPunch used sound largely forgettable–no dramatic fawning over Putin (which btw, I recall a very unflattering article run by CounterPunch that mentioned Putin doing a Grand Canyon river trip with cash on hand for prostitutes, if I recall correctly…… but that’s an aside). The articles sound like they presented some thoughts on the situation in Syria. Not the mainstream media talking points(which seem to always favor the rebel side, which in turn favors the Islamic extremists). Oh there……I hear you….I just uttered something that Russia would probably like. Yes, I did. Because I can look at the nuanced situation in Syria and say….holy fuck, what a mess. I wouldn’t want to pick any side in that dumpster factory fire shitshow (this is a metric measure of fucked-upedness, 1,000 times more screwed up than the English measurement of one dumpster fire shitshow. I’ve already demonstrated that I know math.
This is what is great about CounterPunch. You can voice thoughts that perhaps aren’t in the mainstream, and the readers (by and large, except for that one guy) are bright enough to understand the world has a lot of situations difficult to clearly parse out. And it is okay to talk about that. We’re in a new red-baiting era when we likely do have a president that …..who knows….might be a patsy for Russia. Maybe they have video of the bed Obama slept in being urinated on while Trump hung out with prostitutes– or other leverage. But this will be difficult to prove unless someone really awesome out there leaks it. Yes, that’s what she said (I’m so sorry I just did that). But why isn’t it enough that Trump is a flaming idiot? Why can’t that stand-alone fact be enough to get rid of this greasy, not quite on long enough Just for Men (and Just for White People) lowlife?
It’s rotten that this Alice Donovan lied about who he/she/it is. Rotten that she wouldn’t even prove her identity by turning in a water bill with her name on it (which I will be glad to do, providing any recipients pay the damn bill. The water in West Jeshoshaphat is very expensive, we have to filter out at least most of the manure)–I do think there’s a measure of honesty that is required as an author, and it does kill the message when it is presented in this type of manner. But to have a salon of ideas, to allow voices that would otherwise not be heard due to inadequate pedigree/inadequate domestication–well, maybe a few questionable sorts slip through. I think it’s a lot like the death penalty. It’s not worth being so safe that a fresh voice never breaks in to prevent one dumbass Alice Donovan situation. You know, not worth killing an innocent guy and all. And as Thomas Paine once said “Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.” Okay, that was from Stephen King, but so what. Cars can kill. And even enemies have points that grown-up minds can tolerate, consider and hopefully discard if found to be nonsense.
I’m saying that we shouldn’t become so damn delicate that we can’t even read something that could perhaps be “propaganda” from another nation. We need to be a bit—how do I say it—well not so fucking stupid. I think it’s a lot like a weird dysfunctional couple where one of them has an affair, and all of the anger is placed on a strumpet or man-strumpet, instead of the philandering spouse or such. It’s wrong all over the place, but one has to look at the foundations of the situation. If we are in such a place that a milquetoast article written with a different point of view from CNN or Fox is able to make us put up hammer and sickle wallpaper along with young Stalin portraits (okay bad example, young Stalin was pretty hot–he really let himself go, weight-wise and genocide-wise later in life)–anyway, if we let this sort of thing derail our ability to take in lots of information….I think the problem is really the philandering spouse, or to put it another way, the ignorance of our populace. Why would the Washington (Com)Post want to discredit sites that routinely allow one to look at worldviews that perhaps don’t completely back up the aims of 3 guys with WAY too many couches? Think about that one, comrade.
