Hmmm, when Clinton does it, it’s “pushing back”,  when others are “accused” of doing it, it’s trolling and “phony news”.

“Judge not that ye be not judged”, or perhaps, yep, we’re all bound for Hell, assuming there is one.

Trolls.  They ought to sue!!!  I mean the fairy tale variant.  They’re being defamed.

The MSM and its its coterie of the likeminded are fixated on purported Russian “trolls”, the Clinton-Obama fantasy excuse for their 2016 electoral disaster.  I recall my experiences then and now with real trolls.  No, not the fairy tale variant, the scripted talking point army comprised of professionals, paid consultants and volunteers who viciously attacked anyone daring to disagree with the official Clinton-Obama polito-historical narrative.  I recall because I was a frequent target.  The tactics involved insults rather than discussions.  Things have not changed.  Trump backers also challenged my views and perhaps their attempts to insult me didn’t bother me much, they tended to be accurate, calling me a pacifist, a socialist, a softhearted idealist and a bleeding heart, fair enough.  The Clinton-Obama troll farms; wonder whether they’re still getting paid and receiving logistical support and scripts, or whether it’s become an addiction?  It’s certainly a virus, perhaps a pandemic too many others have caught.

Yesterday I was pilloried, defamed, ridiculed and excoriated on Facebook, not an unusual occasion although less so than during the recent presidential electoral cycle, again by Clinton-Obama Democrats, for pointing out that rather than having been accused of raping an underage young girl, Republican Senate candidate, former state supreme court justice Roy Moore has been accused of dating teenage girls forty years ago, one of whom has accused him of uncomfortable but apparently consensual “petting” while she was underage, a misdemeanor under Alabama law.  Three others above the age of consent in Alabama, then as now, have indicated that they dated him but that he was always a gentlemen and never engaged in sexual activities with them, some even indicating that their parents were thrilled by the attention that the then relatively young Roy Moore paid to their much younger daughters.

Evidently, after the recent tsunami of allegations involving all kinds of inappropriate sexual conduct, primarily by people allied in one way or another with supporters of the Democratic Party, the Washington Post funded a quest for dirt on Judge Moore in order to bail his opponent for the current Alabama vacancy in the United States Senate out of an embarrassing dilemma, a potential double digit loss after what the mainstream media has described as a tsunami of Democratic Party electoral victories.  And, pardon the pun, the Washington Post hit “pay dirt”.  Whether it’s accurate or not is of course irrelevant.  It will have an impact.  Perhaps even the desired impact.  Democrats close ranks when accused of wrongdoing, Republicans panic and scatter with the winds, all four of them; especially when it involves an antiestablishment reprobate.

Democratic Party loyalists like those who virulently attacked me, rather than focusing on the facts, have elected to distort them, alleging that Judge Moore is a “rapist.  Judge Moore has not helped his case by falling into a Clintonesque style-memory lapse concerning all of the young women involved and in general, concerning his dating of even legal-aged teens.  Although Clinton memory lapses are understandable according to the mainstream media, they smell of bad cheese somewhere in Denmark to the non-afflicted.  A similar odor pervades Judge Moore’s memory lapse.  It affects the credibility of his absolute denial with respect to “inappropriate sexual touching” (not rape or statutory rape) of the single underage girl involved in the allegations.

That was, of course, what the Washington Post hoped to accomplish when it went fishing in Alabama looking for filth that might impact an election the Democrats seemed doomed to lose.  Creating the appearance of impropriety whatever the facts might be.  It is what the Washington Post does on a daily basis with respect to the Clinton inspired Russiagate fantasies.  It is what most of the mainstream media does every day now to what ought to be a quest for truth and relevant news.  That is why perhaps only diehard Clinton-Obama loyalist now have any faith in the mainstream media.  Of course, whether one believes the mainstream media or not, its twenty-four-seven barrage eventually sinks into the subconscious psyche, or at least, that is what the mainstream media’s behaviorist consultants have led it to believe.  Credibility is no longer relevant as long as the desired political ends are attained.  Instead of reevaluating the strategies that failed so miserably for the politicized mainstream media during the 2016 electoral cycle, like the Democratic Party it supports without question or logic, the mainstream media is doubling down on its efforts to bend the electorate to its will, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the resulting social polarization and violence, regardless of the risks of international conflicts or possibilities of racial annihilation.

Republicans, who in my opinion are wrong about facts and with most of whose policies I disagree (my political views being clearly to the left of the Democratic Party), seem much more honest than do Clinton-Obama Democrats, but they too chose to ignore facts when they prove inconvenient.  So we have two major political parties and a mainstream media as well as a Justice Department and intelligence community to whom truth has not only become irrelevant, but an obstacle to overcome in the quest for political power and no one in a position of power to undertake the complex task of attaining the common welfare, equity, justice and peace which we require for survival as a species.  Seemingly, suicidal lemmings have more to hope for from the future than do we.

We currently find ourselves floundering amidst a torrent of accusations of sexual misconduct, a salutary development in many cases way past due, but also probably full of false accusations, exaggeration and innuendo.  Par for the course when anything involving sex hits our hypocritically Puritan society.  Abuse is protected when convenient (think Clinton and the Kennedys) and distorted when politically expedient, real victim related issues, as in the case of the legitimate Kaepernick racial protest, quickly subverted and overwhelmed in the ensuing chaos.  The case of Judge Moore fits squarely into this scenario, not because of what he may or may not have done forty some-odd years ago, but because it is a perfect political opportunity, a script probably written by the Washington Post even before it went fishing in Alabama, looking to cast the perfect victim.  Lights, cameras, action!!!  Take twenty-seven.

The posters on Facebook who cheerfully calumniated me, damned me and called me every pejorative name they could think of to offend me for noting the facts in Mr. Moore’s case, as set forth by his accusers, are not the exception but the rule.  Some seem to be social media trolls of the kind so prevalent during the past election, no, not Russian bot farm trolls, but the mixture of paid and volunteer Clinton campaign operatives described above, but the rest, most, are merely naïve and earnest people whose emotional buttons have been pushed and who are incapable of even considering accurate information.  Like religious fanatics throughout history, anything that does not agree with the world view template they’ve been programmed into is heresy and merits personal destruction.  All too frequently, that elicits a similar response among their victims which eventually leads to violence, civil strife, and then, brutal armed conflict.  Something to which I fear we are not immune.  As the Democratic troll posters I recently experienced hoped, I was hurt and offended by being calumniated as a “pervert” (perhaps today the quest for truth is a perversion) but unlike them, I restrained myself and replied as follows:

Perverted, for citing the law and indicating that it was not rape but certainly, IF TRUE, inappropriate? For listing the accusation accurately? Not much to be said other than that your calumny and slander of me at least reflects your values and your concern for truth, and that of those who agree with you, which is why so many real progressives utterly reject Clinton and her followers. While there is no proof and the timing and quest for dirt is obviously political to any fair observer, I credit the allegations and whether they existed or not, find Mr. Moore, for plenty of reasons someone I would never support. But I don’t need to make things up to do so, such as mischaracterizing inappropriate conduct, a misdemeanor as defined under Alabama law, as something else, a felony. Truth has relevancy and lends credibility. Pejorative name calling in what ought to be discussions does the opposite.

Obviously a waste of my time but I believe the accusations against Judge Moore, although motivated for all the wrong reasons, are serious and merit serious consideration.  In 1977 I wrote my dissertation on the conflict between freedom of the press and an accused’s right to a fair trial, noting how delicate that balance was.  That consideration has seemingly become an irrelevancy.  The future seems more and more one where our political differences will soon be settled by armed conflict rather than discourse, armed conflict, not like that faced a little over a century ago, more a regional conflict than a civil war, but in a real civil war, one where conservatives are much better armed than are purported liberals and real progressives.  One more like the religiously based Thirty Years War of the early to mid-seventeenth century.

I see nothing positive in that but I do not see anything positive about our current social interactions either.  I just hear Cassandra crying into the tempest.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2017; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen).  Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at wacalvo3@autonoma.edu.co or guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.