Did the Russians Poop in the Hallway?

Column by Paul Bonneau.

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There is an amusing “meme” floating around that bears on recent events:


I have found an article that is more even handed than most these days, on the question of Russian hacking of email servers. Highly recommended.

There are apparently, three distinct views that one can have of this controversy:

1) Whoever hacked the DNC email server--assuming they were hacked, rather than compromised by insiders--it was not done by the Russian government.

2) The Russian government did the hacking, but it helped ordinary Americans rather than harmed them.

3) The Russian government did the hacking, and it harmed ordinary Americans.

The third option we can dismiss out of hand. It certainly harmed Hillary and her cronies, but that is really the same thing as saying it helped ordinary Americans. Exposing the inner working of our own government, the dirty laundry of our enemies, the ruling class--how can this possibly harm us? Do people really not want to know, for example, how the Bernie Sanders campaign was betrayed?

The first option does not seem especially plausible either, but that does not mean there are not a lot of very strong disincentives for hacking a crucial resource like the DNC server during an election. Even a government with such a long history of meddling and intelligence work and surveillance must at least consider that one can go too far in poking the American Eagle, just as much the same thing can be said for the Russian Bear (if you will excuse my employment of such statist symbolism for the moment).

On the other hand, there is the old story about the husband being blamed by his jealous wife for sleeping around--after a while he figures out, that if he is going to be blamed for it anyways, he might as well go out and actually do it. No doubt this kind of calculation probably also passed through the minds of the Russian leadership, so they might have decided to go ahead with the hack.

Or it may even be that the American and Russian ruling class colluded on this whole mess ahead of time, just to keep the peons entertained. Stranger things have happened.

Right at this moment I find option two the most plausible. Like my wife says, “everybody does it”, but that does not mean she wants war with Russia--on the contrary. A lame duck starting a war over a hacked computer--could anything be more ridiculous? Instead, we should thank the FSB or GRU, who are benefiting the American people. Likewise, the Russian people should thank CIA et. al. whenever they expose Russian ruling class dirty laundry.

This says nothing about how utterly lame the American ruling bastards must be, that they are caught in a phishing attack. Were they born yesterday? And security? “What’s that?”

The latest twist to this “crisis,” Obama kicking out Russian diplomats, followed by Putin not kicking out American diplomats, and inviting their kids to a party in the Kremlin, appears to have been won by Putin. One gets the impression that Obama, and his neocon coterie, are a bit outclassed by the wily Russians. No surprises there, I suppose! The American method of picking ruling thugs does not seem designed to find the “best and brightest”, after all. One hopes our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president does not grab for that nuclear football in a fit of pique.

If we humans ever do manage to obliterate life on Earth in one final war, it will most likely have been done for reasons completely idiotic. We may look for whatever consolation that may be found in this prospect.

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