It occurs to me that all of us are missing something about the bizarre Russian email hack story. It’s not just the content, which surely is key here but rarely mentioned, the content that revealed the DNC as being biased toward Clinton in a most unseemly fashion. This is barely mentioned in even the articles that doubt veracity of the Russian hack narrative.

I have no way of knowing. My strong suspicion is that there was no Russian hack and this whole business is a false flag, like WMDs in Iraq or the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam. Where the hack/leak came from is not that important. After all, if the emails had shown that the DNC had been meticulously fair during the Primary, there would be no story.

What we’re missing is that a large piece of this mishegas may be about us, the progressive movement. The current neoliberal leadership of the Democratic Party may be willing to threaten war to isolate us, just like their ancestors did in the McCarthy period. Which, among other things, highlights the critical importance of progressives seizing power in the Party. Which has been Bernie’s strategy all along.

Of course, there’s another coalescence of interests here promulgating the Russian narrative. The old MIC (Military Industrial Complex) dreams of a return to the Cold War when “Defense” budgets were celestial. The anti-Trump faction, including both Dems and Repubs, is worried about losing control of U. S. foreign policy.

Then there’s Rex Tillerson and Trump. And people think Trump’s stupid? Oh, I know, I’ll forge an alliance with the largest industry in the county, the fossil fuel industry. There’s something to be said for blatancy. Eliminate the middleman. Exxon Mobil is directly running the country, no longer having to rely on paid surrogates. Rex and Donald may want a much lower level of hostility with Russia, or even a friendship, but it can’t hurt his art of the deal to have Putin see what the bad cop can do.

So, Putin himself comes off as the grown-up by not reacting to Obama’s ridiculous overreaction to something that most probably never happened. But he’s been made aware that the coming tilt toward Russia is not favored by a large faction of the U. S. ruling elite.

A character in my forthcoming novel, Supremacy, a woman who is a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and the Mayflower Madam, says, “Real power is invisible. If you can attach a name to the person you think is in power, you have the wrong person.” Does anyone else get the sense that what we are told about political realities represents less than half the truth?