WhatFinger

Democracy, da?

Russians: Hey, the United States is interfering in our election!

By Dan Calabrese ——--December 28, 2017

American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

Russians: Hey, the United States is interfering in our election! This is only a little less absurd than the hyperventilation going the other way. It totally redefines "interfering," but the whole Trump/collusion narrative pretty well rendered it meaningless anyway, so why not?
The Russian foreign ministry accused the United States of “direct interference” in the country’s upcoming election after the State Department criticized ?the barring ?of ?President Vladimir Putin’s chief rival from running against him, a report on Wednesday said. “This State Department statement, which I’m sure will be repeated, is a direct interference in our electoral process and internal affairs,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote Tuesday on Facebook?, according to Business Insider.?
The State Department lashed out at the Kremlin after an election commission stopped Alexei Navalny from mounting a challenge against Putin in the March 18 presidential election, expressing concern over the “ongoing crackdown against independent voices, from journalists to civil society activists and opposition politicians.” ?The statement said the Russian government is failing to protect “fundamental freedoms.”? “More broadly, we urge the government of Russia to hold genuine elections that are transparent, fair, and free and that guarantee the free expression of the will of the people, consistent with its international human rights obligations?,”? the statement said.? Zakharova shot back at the claims. “And these people expressed outrage over alleged Russian ‘interference’ in their electoral process for an entire year?!” she said.?? ”The funniest thing is that these are the same people who just tagged RT and Sputnik as foreign agents, who are harassing Russian media around the world and who are investing huge amounts of money into ‘countering Russian propaganda,’ which is how they label anyone who they disagree with.”
Of course, the U.S. criticizes other countries all the time for assaults on democracy and other violations of human rights. What it doesn't normally do is what it did after the 2016 election, when it went into DefCon 5 over the notion that Russian "fake news" and whatever else had somehow delivered Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania into Donald Trump's column and handed him the election - all the result, of course, of an elaborate conspiracy between Trump and Putin, brokered by Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Julian Assange.
When you're willing to go on the record with nonsense like that, you can't be too surprised later on when the object of your criticism comes back later with derision aimed at you. It's too bad, because the Putin regime's treatment of Alexei Navalny really is an outrage, and deserves to be highlighted before a global audience so they will understand how thuggish and undemocratic Putin's regime really is. It's also apparently giving us a race between Putin and "the Russian Paris Hilton," for whatever that's worth. But the American political class decided to glom on to this cartoonish notion about Russia "interfering" in our election, which set up the Russians to treat our legitimate criticism of them as an equally absurd exercise. Which is worse? Disqualifying a political rival on trumped up charges of embezzlement like Putin has done? Or spending millions on an investigation into "collusion" that it's clear to everyone never happened? I'm not sure either.

Support Canada Free Press

Donate
Subscribe

View Comments
Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

VIEW Comments

Sponsored