The Eighteenth Brumière of Louis Napoleon (1852), the great philosopher Karl Marx famously stated the history repeated itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
This prophecy is evident today with Russia Gate and the New Cold War.
The first cold war was a genuine tragedy which resulted in the deaths of millions of civilians in proxy wars and waste in human resources in the waging of a nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union. There was at least some semblance of legitimacy in that the Soviet Union lived up to its moniker as an evil empire in some aspects, as with the Gulag system and political repression.
The second Cold War, however, has no moral purpose at all, and was triggered by American leaders’ breaking a promise with Russia not to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) towards Russia’s borders.
The farcical aspect of the new Cold War was firmly on display on Wednesday July 24, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee.
In April, Mueller released a 448 page report purporting to detail alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, though which failed to find any evidence that the Trump administration had colluded with Russia to win the election.
For weeks, the media had been hyping up Mueller’s testimony, raising anticipation that he might reveal new smoking gun evidence.
Many on the left had displayed great reverence for him, believing that he would help cleanse the country of President Donald J. Trump.
However, the actual testimony, like with the report, was a great letdown. Mueller revealed no new information and was evasive, declining to answer 198 questions, according to a count by NBC News.
Muller at times showed a lack of knowledge of what was in his report and revealed that he had not even been present to interview many of the witnesses.
Appearing to be feigning, or actually suffering early signs of senility, Mueller was alert enough though to make a few politicized points, such a condemnation of Wikileaks for allegedly illegally obtaining emails.
The central allegation of the Mueller Report that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on behalf Trump has ever actually been proven, though most media outlets would lead us to believe that it has.
A study by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) determined, based on the speed of communications that the alleged hack of Democratic Party National Committee emails, which damaged the Hillary Clinton campaign, were actually a leak that was sent through a thumb drive from the east Coast of the United States.
The VIPs report was never engaged with by Mueller and his team, which also failed to examine the DNC’s computer servers.
Despite spending over $30 million in taxpayer dollars, Mueller’s team also never bothered to interview Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who has denied that he received the stolen emails from Russia.
The supposed social media disinformation campaign that helped sway American voters was carried out by a private company based in St. Petersburg, Internet Research Agency (IRA), whose connection to the Russian government has never been established and probably never will.
Half of the IRA ads on Facebook were enacted after the 2016 election, and many were non-political while others actually supported Trump. One theory is that they were part of a bait and click commercial operation designed to advertise various products.
The Russia Gate affair has been damaging to American public discourse, highly divisive and a waste of taxpayer money.
If the first Cold War was indeed a tragedy, the second is playing out as a farce with no rational basis.
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