Smoke, Mirrors, Ineptitude, Misdirection, Disinformation, and General Foolishness

Keep calm, and—this is not something I would say every day—ignore the news for the next week.

Intentionally to confuse people, or unintentionally because they're getting excited, various people are shooting news stories from the hip.  The most recent one is that a congressman, Anthony Wiener Weiner, who was disgraced a couple of years ago, has happened to mention Hillary Clinton in some of his emails.  The FBI had gotten permission to impound his personal computer, on which there were records of inappropriate sexual communication with underage kids at the time he was under investigation.  And now some of the hyperactive zombies in the Justice Department want to look through these e-mails to see whether there has been more wrong doing.

So a Federal Judge must now decide whether to allow the FBI to go prospecting in this dubious source of information, to see whether there might be some little juicy morsel that might discredit Hillary Clinton.  Oo, might she have been a party to Anthony Wiener Weiner's sexual escapades?  Remember how the media wallowed in the Monica Lewinsky scandal?  It appears that some people—not friends of Hillary Clinton, for certain—want to make sure that they can dig up some dirt on the Democratic Presidential nominee, so that she can compete with Donald Trump at the same level.  Leveling the playing field, as it were.

Now, this is unfair, but I can't really see anything popping up that could change my mind about which candidate to vote for; I could say the same for most of my liberal friends, and most Democrats: not only is Hillary a more moderate, and a more dependable candidate for President than we have fielded for many years—and we have fielded some amazing people—but Trump is somebody that even the GOP does not want.  But a few conservatives are out of the loop, and they are in a panic about what four more years of Democrats in the White House would do for the Conservative Cause.  They think the Democrats would plant some rabid liberal on the Supreme Court who would destroy the country.  The only liberals on the Supreme Court who were that determined to make changes succeeded in desegregating the schools, and making the social reforms of the Sixties, which gave all minorities the same rights as Whites.  Reading between the lines of the Trump campaign, these reforms are perceived to be the roots of everything that conservative, racist white males in the Trump camp do not like about America today.  These reforms give teeth to the human rights campaigns that America nags other nations with, or has, in the last several decades.  If they were reversed, racists and sexists throughout the World and at home could rest easy, and male bullies everywhere could get back their own, and we would not have to fight any wars to liberate the oppressed.  We would be back to the 19th century, when things were a lot better, according to the Neanderthals in the Trump Camp, and secretly the slimy underbelly of the GOP.  Progress never sat easy with people of low intelligence.

Some kooks, of course, are upset with marriage equality, transgender rights, etc.  More people are anxious about the prospect of higher taxes for Businesses.  And still others are in a tizzy about the various oil pipelines whose construction are being fought.  Shell wants to dig under the Ohio River.  So, like never before, desperate conservatives and big businesses are probably leaning on their moles in the FBI to hurry up and do something.

I really don't care at this point.  My sanity is worth more than any heroic efforts to get to the bottom of this sort of rumor mongering.  I for one am ignoring all this nonsense, though other liberals out there are hyperventilating!  My advice to my readers is: chill out.  It's going to be a crazy seven days, but we hope that the canvassing has proceeded as planned.  It is possible that the people who would normally have gone door-to-door were the Bernie supporters, and so the get out the vote effort is going to be a little feeble.  So, whatever you do in the direction of keeping calm is good, provided it doesn't keep you from mobilizing your friends to go out and vote on election day.  If everyone votes, Hillary will defeat Trump.  If the democrats stay home, anything can happen.

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