How This Blog Serves the People; How Its Service Defines Its Content
A COUPLE OF READERS have asked me why I didn't link to last Friday's breaking news of the brazenly deceptive lawsuit the Democratic (sic) Party filed in federal court against Hillary Clinton's long list of selected scapegoats -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, WikiLeaks itself, the Russian government and of course the Trump campaign.
Rather than dodge such questions, I welcome them as potentially corrective feedback; they often tell me what I need to do improve Dispatches' usefulness to readers. In this instance the questions tell me I have not adequately explained Dispatches' form, content and purpose -- an oversight for which I apologize and -- hopefully -- will remedy in the next few paragraphs.
I did not overlook the lawsuit story or -- Goddess forbid -- choose to ignore it. The suit itself is merely the newest reiteration of the Democrats' endlessly repeated Big Lie that a criminal conspiracy by Assange, Russian intelligence operatives and Trump/Pence campaign officials stole the 2016 election from Hillary. The reeking taint of its Big Lie is half the reason Dispatches' "Weekend Update" of 20-21 April did not link to the original stories. The other half of the reason is the extensive, favorable and typically misleading coverage the lawsuit was granted by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. Why sully Dispatches by linking to the sort of disinformation it seeks to neutralize or transcend? The story was already widely reported, and at that point in the news cycle I could add nothing to the coverage save perhaps a cynical sneer.
Thus -- as I usually do in such circumstances -- I decided I would await further developments. Decades ago the evolution of broadcast media, and more recently the advent of the Internet and social media, relieved print journalism of the scoop-the-world mandate that had ruled during most of my newspaper, wire service and magazine years. By necessity, print journalists these days focus far less on the rudiments of what happened -- that's now the job of the broadcasters -- and far more on the intricacies of what it means and what it might portend. It is an approach that in the newsrooms of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was known as a "second-day angle," and it was the reportorial lifeblood of all the better afternoon papers.
(Note too it is the greed-motivated refusal of the news monopolies to adopt this approach that has put U.S. daily newspapers on the endangered species list. Reliably ferreting out and communicating second-day angles demands of its writers and editors far more than the sorely limited perspective provided by a journalism degree. It is therefore considerably more expensive to produce than the traditional who-what-when-where-and-why brand of reporting. But why should you buy a paper if it merely rehashes what you already saw on your TV or cellphone?)
In any case, I knew someone of far greater professional renown than I would soon analyze the implications of the lawsuit, at the very least recognizing it as an obvious effort to further undermine the First Amendment, or as the World Socialist Web Site has since called it, "a frontal assault on democratic rights." Other analyses were similarly forthright. See also: "The DNC's suit...poses a grave threat to press freedom." Plus this: "The Democratic Party...is seeking to...cripple journalists’ ability to expose corporate and government wrongdoing." And don't overlook this: "It’s very a risky move. In civil suits 'discovery' runs in both directions. We’re about to learn a lot more about how the Democratic Party really works behind the scenes."
Meanwhile
even the more normally astute analysts somehow missed the suit's most
glaring implication -- that Hillary Clinton is planning a third run for
the presidency.
If proven, the lawsuit's assertions would substantiate the portrayal of Hillary as a feminist martyr. But even as formal though unproven allegations, they turn the Trump presidency into to her springboard. They enable her to offer herself as the reanimated savior come back to lift the nation out of its Trumpian convulsions of cruelty, conflict, chaos and corruption "without ever" -- this next whispered in an aside to her owners -- "damaging so much as the proverbial strand of hair from any One Percenter's head."
If Hillary makes it onto the 2020 ballot, the notoriously short-memoried gullibility of the U.S. electorate will interact with widespread post-Trumpian loathing of anything Republican to enable her to at last fulfill her all-consuming ambition to be not only the first female president of the United States and ruler of its global empire, but also the first-ever conqueror of Russia.
How else but with a resurrected Hillary candidacy will the Democratic (sic) Party continue to serve its Capitalist masters? How will it (again) suppress the ever-intensifying grassroots effort to leverage it toward another New Deal?
And what of the so-called "CIA Democrats"? Are they not the perfect Praetorian Guard for a Hillary presidency?
Given the givens, what other strategic explanation for the lawsuit actually makes sense?
As its founder and editor, I do my best to avoid regurgitating the rigorously censored...
(To read the rest go here.)
