Some of us have been shouting this from the mountaintops into the abyss:
“Barr just confirmed: his letter only established no criminal charges. It’s “binary.” “Charges or no charges.” [It] doesn’t say anything about whether there are facts [about misconduct in the] report short of [a] high criminal standard … And his conclusion is [NOT that the Special Counsel found no] criminal obstruction.”
– Mimi Rocah, Fmr. SDNY Prosecutor
10:51 A.M., 4/9/2019
Most journalists, and even most progressives, fell for the Barr ruse. Despite their protestations to the contrary, I heard almost universal despair at Barr’s “conclusions”.
No amount of explanation could overcome their masochistic hook-line-and-sinker acceptance of these “conclusions” regarding conspiracy snd obstruction, even as they considered Barr a shill. Only a few federal prosecutors and lone criers screaming “there was no exoneration on either count” were heard – and they received far too little attention.
Now watch the sheep run in another direction now that Barr has admitted publicly that there’s more ‘there’ there. Now everyone will suddenly have hope, when they would have had such hope along had they bothered to pay closer attention to federal prosecutors who actually knew what were talking about, and who understood things in proper legal context.
The know-nothings are too often winning the propaganda battle. We need to re-teach our society how to access, respect, and value expertise.
Right-wing populism is usually, in part, an assault on the very idea of knowledge (i.e., science), expertise, and fact-based intellectual analysis.
As this episode once again demonstrates, it is actually no wonder we have who we have as president.
Absent a sudden change in now-obvious patterns of public acceptance of blatantly false frames foisted on us by Trump regarding issues ranging from immigration to trade, Democrats need to push back on propaganda right away with a digestible counter-narrative instead of allowing facially false narratives to settle into the public mind. People are not going to do the work on their own.
It has become painfully clear that Trump and the Russians get this. Do we?
As usual, Terry, your analysis is right on the nose. Have you thought about submitting this as a letter to the NYTimes?!