JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BERNIE SANDERS MAKES A FOOLISH ERROR - AMERICAN SECURITY SERVICES FOOL HIM WITH YET MORE VICIOUS NONSENSE ABOUT RUSSIAN ELECTION MEDDLING - HE ENDS UP SOUNDING LIKE A CROSS BETWEEN HILLARY CLINTON AND DONALD TRUMP AND YOU CAN'T GO MUCH LOWER - BUT HE IS CAMPAIGNING IN A COUNTRY WHERE VICIOUS NONSENSE PLAYS A MAJOR POLITICAL ROLE - SET OF REASONS WHY BARRELS OF TOXIC WASTE LABELLED WITH RUSSIA'S NAME KEEP REAPPEARING

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRAVDA

Bernie Sanders, being suckered in by some members of the US intelligence community concerning Russian election interference, made a serious error calling Vladimir Putin an "autocratic thug" and warning Russia to stay out of American elections.

He was trying to play tough guy, but the words are ridiculous and insulting to Russia and its elected President. Calling the leader of another country names reduces you to Trump’s level.

Bernie should have just dismissed the tired claims about Russia, made by some Democrats and members of the intelligence community, instead of treating them with any respect.

Sanders' words about President Putin are foolish, but, as a lot of people abroad do not understand, that is how American politics work, with lots of foolish nonsense.

Actually, if you removed all the foolishness from American politics, there wouldn't be a lot else left.

The existence of America’s gigantic, resource-consuming military-intelligence complex and the global empire which it serves tends to make that so.

America’s political establishment simply cannot talk about a great many ugly realities, from the nation's endless wars and coups and threats abroad to crumbling infrastructure at home and lack of competitiveness, plus the ugly truth about there being no resources leftover from imperial costs for important improvements.

The American people were bombarded with ferocious propaganda about "the communist conspiracy" for the entire Cold War period, a kind of toxic dump whose effects linger still, even though communism and the Soviet Union have been history for decades.

The residual effect of that long, massive Cold War effort provides an environment highly receptive to nonsense about Russia. And this particular kind of nonsense has some political benefits.

One is to offer an excuse for something, such as losing an election, as Hillary very much did in 2016.

Another is adding to America’s incessant, noisy rah-rah about itself, much as all the politicians feel obliged to wear little American-flag lapel pins to certify against any doubt about their place of origin and intensity of patriotic emotion.

It is hard to regard yourself quite so highly as America does without a contrasting darkness for comparison, and Russia serves that purpose.

After all, when it comes to elections, money and corruption and even fraud (as with Hillary Clinton in 2016) stand at the very center of what Americans call democracy.

It also offers a way of intimidating voters with the suggestion that they just might be “voting for Russia." Heavens!

Of course, Hillary's crowd really re-heated a pot of the old sludge back up in 2016, trying to find excuses for her loss despite burning through 1.2 billion dollars in campaign expenses. Apparently, some big donors to the party had expressed concern at her ferocious rate of spending.

And she couldn't admit that an insider at the Democratic Party put all those embarrassing DNC documents on a memory stick and handed them to Julian Assange to be published by Wikileaks.

Several top technical people, including a retired NSA expert, told us that that is what happened, and of course Assange himself said the material was not hacked by Russia.

I’m sorry to see a politician like Sanders joining in to even the slightest degree, but he is, after all, running for office in America.