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Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Russiagate

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Witch Burning
 

“An epidemic terror seized upon the nations,” wrote Charles Mackay in his 1841 masterpiece, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. “It was a crime imputed with so much ease, and repelled with so much difficulty, that the powerful, whenever they wanted to ruin the weak, and could fix no other imputation upon them, had only to accuse them of witchcraft to ensure their destruction.”

Sound familiar? It’s a recurring theme. There’s always some specific group to blame for all our problems. Witches. Catholics. Jews. Freemasons. Reds.

And, lately, Them Russians.

The problem with popular delusions extends beyond their cultivation by the powerful to distract us from real problems. Such delusions can and often do escalate into panics far more dangerous than originally intended.

The purpose of the “Russiagate probe” is to convince us that the Russian state “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election.

So far the evidence for that proposition boils down to some cheesy Facebook ads (“Help Jesus Beat Hillary!”) and street theater (e.g. an actor playing Hillary Clinton in inmate clothing, haranguing passersby from her “cell”), supposedly funded by Russian intelligence operatives and carried out by their American dupes (including several now under indictment pursuant to Robert Mueller’s investigation).

For the sake of argument, let’s stipulate to the claim that Vladimir Putin unleashed an army of trolls to freak us all out, and that he thought he could thereby change the outcome of the election. Based on current evidence  the attempt looks pretty pathetic, but OK, let’s just say that’s what happened.

In this universe, it’s a safe bet that it didn’t work (Clinton lost by about 80,000 votes from Rust Belt Democrats who decided Trump was Ronald Reagan redux).

Nor, in this universe, is it at all unusual for foreign countries to try to influence US elections and vice versa. Especially vice versa. The US government went all-in to ensure that Russian president Boris Yeltsin won re-election in 1996, and sponsored a coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014 to overturn that country’s election outcome, to name two recent instances. Business as usual.

But now the same public figures who drummed up “Russiagate” in the first place to explain why their candidate lost in 2016 are attempting to escalate the matter to the level of Mackay’s “epidemic terror.” They’re  comparing “Russiagate” to Pearl Harbor and 9/11,  calling it an “act of war,” and publicly baiting US president Donald Trump to respond accordingly.

In case anyone’s forgotten, Russia is a nuclear power. Throwing around the phrase “act of war” is over-the-top insanity.  It’s a call for the transformation of some Facebook ads into burning cities and piles of body bags, all because an election didn’t come out the way some people wanted and expected it to.

Even if the most grandiose claims for “Russiagate” are true, they don’t constitute anything close to a legitimate casus belli.

Time to calm down, America. Whatever “Russiagate” ultimately turns out to be, it won’t be anything that’s worth a single drop of American or Russian blood.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

Why We Must “Politicize” Guns

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Gun photo from RGBStock

 

Every time there’s a mass shooting, or even a particularly well-publicized single homicide, all of America’s political factions go directly to battle stations on the question of whether or not the violence can be reduced or eliminated with “gun control” legislation. As the debate rages on, the calls begin to ring out from different corners that whatever else we do, we must avoid “politicizing” the issue.

Have you ever noticed that the “let’s not get political” talk always seems to emanate from the side that perceives itself as on the losing end of the argument at the moment?

Right after the incident that opens the latest “gun violence” news cycle, Michael Bloomberg, the Brady Campaign, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, and other openly and unabashedly political actors roll around in the blood, jump on top of the caskets and start doing the funky chicken for “gun control.”

While that’s happening, pro-gun and pro-civil-rights organizations issue somber condolences to the families of the dead and argue against “politicizing” things.

Later, as the tide turns against the idea that a bunch of new laws will reduce the body count, the anti-gun groups shower off the blood, don mourning black,  and urge us to stop being so darn political about the lives they’re trying to save, while the pro-gun/pro-rights groups jump on the political stage and start making practical suggestions (permitless open and concealed carry, armed teachers, etc.) to actually save those lives.

Why bother pretending that this issue is ever beyond, or apart from, politics? Does anyone really buy that?

Politics is, according to the most applicable definition from the 1913 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, “the conduct and contests of parties with reference to political measures or the administration of public affairs.”

Support for or opposition to “gun control” legislation is by definition political. It can’t be anything else. We’re not sitting around the dining room table talking about the weather, baseball, or little Bobby’s upcoming piano recital. We’re in each others’ faces over proposed or opposed use of force by government.

There’s certainly a right side and a wrong side here.

One side continues to back legislation that is clearly unconstitutional, that inherently violates human rights, and that as a practical matter increases homicide rates everywhere and every time it’s tried (including but not limited to the Gun-Free School Zones Act).

The other side — unfortunately not always consistently — points out that the right to keep and bear arms is not just a basic human right that is clearly and unambiguously protected by the US Constitution, but that it has consistently proven to be the best way of reducing violent death among the innocent.

But both sides are hypocritical when they retreat to a “don’t politicize this” position. And not just hypocritical, but careless. If we stop discussing political issues, all that’s left is to start shooting each other over those issues. And as Winston Churchill once said, “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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No Huawei! US Spy Chiefs Reverse Course on Phone Spying

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RGBStock.com WWW

If it seems like only a year ago that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was telling us how dangerous it is for Americans to have encrypted smart phones that make it hard for the FBI to poke around in our data, that’s because yes, it really was only a year ago.

In early 2017, James Comey took Apple to court, demanding that the company help the FBI hack into the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist/murderer Syed Farook. Other officials have kept up a steady whine against strong encryption ever since.

But now, CNN reports, the FBI and other US intelligence agencies are suddenly and ever so deeply concerned with preserving your smart phone privacy.

Testifying before the US Senate Intelligence Committee, officials from the FBI, CIA, NSA, et al. warned Americans against using phones made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE.

Why? Because, Christopher Wray (Comey’s successor at the FBI) explains, the Chinese government might equip, or find and exploit weaknesses in, such phones to “maliciously modify or steal information” and “conduct undetected espionage.”

I feel Wray’s pain. The US spy community has presumably been playing catch-up with China and everyone else since last March, when WikiLeaks released its “Vault 7” series of documents exposing the CIA’s tools and methods for compromising your electronic privacy. Wikileaks then went to work helping American tech firms harden their gear against those tools and methods. Wray and friends must really hate the idea of being in second place behind Beijing when it comes to eavesdropping on, and rifling through the files of, Americans.

Who would you rather have crawling around inside your cell phone: The FBI or China’s Ministry of State Security? It’s not a tough call for me.

We’re separated from China by an ocean, and their government probably doesn’t give a hoot about the three felonies author Harvey Silverglate says the average American commits every day. Unless I’ve got the  military’s nuclear launch codes or pictures of Donald Trump and someone else naked together on my phone (eww!), the Chinese probably aren’t interested.

The FBI, on the other hand, seems to spend a lot of its time charging people with crimes that shouldn’t even BE crimes. Like, for example, lying to the FBI.

If I didn’t already own a Samsung, I’d be temped to tell the FBI to shut up and get the heck out of my Huawei.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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