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Good evening. It's Tuesday, February 27
Tonight: In case you didn't get enough of Russiagate hysteria during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump's alleged collusion with the Kremlin was the dominant storyline of the Clinton campaign's attack, and in case you still didn't get enough of it during the entire first Trump presidential term—when talk of pee-pee tapes and dossiers and Russian blackmail and Robert Mueller was the leading story in the United States for years —and in case you still weren't satiated by the tsunami of Russian talk leading up to the 2020 election, when Democrats and their allies in the CIA and corporate media actually succeeded in getting reporting about Joe Biden censored by Big Tech, by falsely labeling it “Russian disinformation,” don't worry, there's a lot more coming as we head into the 2024 election.
Earlier this week, the grand dame of Washington media, NBC News and MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell, who is also a former wife of former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, announced that the 51 former intelligence officials who warned of “Russian disinformation” in the lead up to the 2020 election, now feel “vindicated,” in her words, despite the fact that the claim they made that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation is every bit as much of a lie now as it was then. Somehow they feel “vindicated.” That is because major media outlets are explicitly preparing to label everything they dislike in this election year, from criticisms of Joe Biden to questioning the war in Ukraine and everything in between as “Russian disinformation.”
With apologies to one of the world's greatest animals, these media operatives are like a dog who finds a toy they love and then refuses to release it from its mouth no matter what. Since 2016, they have been attempting to regain control of American discourse and politics by calling everyone a “Kremlin agent” and all dissent “Russian disinformation.” Amazingly enough, despite how tired and stale it is, they are clearly preparing for this to be their primary tactic to prop up Joe Biden and ensure that he is reelected and that the glorious war in Ukraine continues eternally. They unveiled it this week and we will show you all of that.
Then: on Sunday, a 25-year-old member of the United States Air Force, Aaron Bushnell, went to the Israeli embassy in Washington and set himself on fire while chanting pro-Palestinian slogans such as Free Palestine. In recordings and posts he left before doing so, Bushnell made very clear that he was engaging in this as an act of protest against U.S. support for Israel's destruction of Gaza. All of this led to a rather predictable form of discourse, with Israel supporters clearly understanding the danger to their cause of a U.S. service member sacrificing his own life in protest of U.S. support for Israel, insisting that the man was just mentally ill and that nothing about his act should be admired or celebrated, in fact, should be scorned and hated. But is it really possible to separate one's views of this act of self-immolation from one's view of the underlying cause and whose name it was done? One might think from this that anyone who engages in setting themselves on fire for a cause is always disparaged as mentally ill. But that is simply not true. The U.S. has a long history of venerating such acts and expressing admiration for people who do this provided the cause is right. So, is there anyone condemning this self-immolation now because they believe that the act is inherently immoral, or is it just cover for their opposition to the underlying cause of stopping Israel's destruction of Gaza? It's really worth taking a look at.
Finally, Germany's history in the 20th century is rather shameful and horrific, to put that mildly. Few people will say this more loudly or eagerly than Germans themselves. Not only do they engage in extreme self-denunciation of their history and self-actualization as a people, but they also insist that they are now going to do everything possible to compensate for what they regard as their shameful past. Yet so often, this embarrassment about their own history results not in what you might think it should—humility or moderation or restraint—but instead in its opposite. Some of the most unhinged extremism on the planet emanates from German officials. Indeed, one could easily make the case that Germany is, despite all this history, or more accurately, because of it, still the most extremist nation in all of Europe. We will examine how and why.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
