After their defeat in WW1, Germany developed in the fall of 1918 a conspiracy theory, trying to explain the devastating loss of their seemingly unbeatable military, which presumed that their war efforts had been undermined by secretive domestic forces. In the German language it was called the Dolchstoßlegende or the Stab-in-the back Myth. Historians agree that this legend greatly destabilized the Weimar Republic, and contributed to the rise of National Socialism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
We are now witnessing as similar onslaught of conspiracy theories developing among the political left, trying to explain the devastating loss of the Democrat Party in the November elections. Among the many legends trying to whitewash the party’s totally unexpected defeat, none comes closer to the German legend than the accusation that Trump won the election only because the Russian Government actively interfered with the election process to secure his win.
None is also more dangerous to the democratic process in this country, – though not for the reasons most media want us to believe. It, of course, matters greatly whether the Russian government attempted to influence the democratic election process, and it even matters more to determine whether any such attempt had at its goal the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the win of Donald Trump. And it, of course, also matters whether the Russian government succeeded in these efforts in any way. This is, however, not why the Democrat Party has stopped talking about FBI Director James Comey, the internal divisions and scandals revealed by WikiLeaks’s e-mail disclosures and the party’s colossal strategic and analytical failures during the campaign.
The reasons why Democrats and the extreme left are concentrating on the Russian legend as an explanation for the lost election are obvious. First, it absolves the candidate and the leadership of the party from responsibility. But even more importantly, like the Dolchstoßlegende in Germany, this conspiracy theory has the potential of establishing a populist counter-movement to “Trumpism” because who would not be opposed to the Russian Bear determining the outcome of U.S. elections? Most importantly, however, it offers a great opportunity to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency from the get-go, especially since his quick rise in popularity after the election, and the complete collapse of the Democrat’s party leadership circle, offers a unique opportunity for Donald Trump to become one of the most powerful transformative post-WWII presidents, with potential decades-long impact on the direction of the country.
The Canary, of course, has no inside knowledge on whether the Russian government, indeed, was involved in WikiLeaks’s disclosures about all the monkey business at the Democratic Party headquarters. If leaks from the intelligence community are correct, then the Russians, likely, were involved. But those same leaks also claimed that there was no evidence that these leaks influenced the outcome of the election unless, of course, we want to assume that the public being made aware of all the lying and deceit, the manipulation of the Democratic Party’s primary election process, internal concerns about Hillary’s truthfulness in the campaign and other interesting vignettes influenced the electorate. And would anybody really argue that making the electorate aware of truth is condemnable, unrelated to whoever does it? We don’t think so! If that were the case, then the U.S. government would have been condemnable forever, since this country prides itself on broadcasting the truth into countries, and on supporting dissident groups all over the world, if we believe they are not privy to such truth from their own governments.
Obviously, illegal hacking is condemnable but we live in a world where adults, and especially those in politics and the government, should know that, unless they take appropriate precautionary defensive steps to protect their electronic communications, they will be vulnerable.
Which really raises the most interesting question of all: Let’s assume for a moment that the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and, maybe all of them and, possibly, even a few more nation states, indeed, hacked into Democratic Party Headquarter e-mails. Who is then really responsible for the resulting damages?
This, of course, is a most relevant question, especially considering that Hillary Clinton’s by now notoriously infamous e-mail server, which according to FBI sources was hacked by at least five nation states, was so central to the failure of her campaign. We already noted above that, in principle, we all are the shepherds of our own confidential communications. But it is also important to note that, until only a relative few years ago, we never heard about hackings of major businesses and government offices. This, of course, does not mean that hacks did not occur; but it, certainly, did not happen at the current pace and with the same ease.
Something, therefore, happened to our nation’s cybersecurity over the last few years. After almost eight years of uninterrupted Democratic control of government during two Obama administrations, it, therefore, has become abundantly clear that the nation’s cybersecurity is yet another major area of national security where the administration has been caught sleeping at the wheel.
It, therefore, is truly remarkable that the Democrats now are developing their own Dolchstoßlegende about Russian government hackers being responsible for Hillary’s loss and Donald Trump’s election. Even if that were true, the Democrats have only themselves to blame that this could happen. Were it not for their administrative incompetence over the last eight years, it should not, it would not have happened. So here is one more thing to thank President Obama for on his way into retirement, together with Obamacare, the Iran deal, the gutting of the military, and so much more.
If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable!
The Canary