I think it is worth while to enclose this article relating to the ongoing travails of the political dimensions : written by a columnist in the opinion section : in full.
The Trump presidency is often a kind of political ‘Rashomon’, with Partisans on either side looking at the same facts and coming to different conclusions.
So it is all the more remarkable that the central controversy of our time isn’t a fight over one story with different interpretations of shared facts, but a fight over two different stories altogether.
For devotees of prime time Fox News, the only story that matters is how the Deep State -i.e.partisans in non partisan disguise: the CIA and the DOJ -worked to either destroy Donald Trump or anoint Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. According to this group, the allegations of collusion between Trump and Putin is merely a frivolous conspiracy theory , and Robert Mueller’s investigation is both a witchunt and a distraction from this "worse then Watergate " scandal.
For viewers of prime-time MSNBC and CNN, this Deep State. stuff, is the real bogus conspiracy theory, intended to muddy the waters from the actual “worse then Watergate” scandal , which is the Trump-Putin collusion and the president attempts to obstruct any inquiry into it.
The two narratives are like a binary star system , each body circling the other, throwing off so much blinding light and heat that it becomes difficult to distinguish them.Their combined gravitational. pull bends everything in their direction.
The problem is, that both stories could be true.No, the cartoon versions offered by the usual suspects on the left and right are not entirely accurate…But both stories have some truth to them.
It certainly does seem that the Department of Justice was simply going through the motions of investigation of Hilary Clinton and her off book server and email system.
Andrew McCarthy , a former federal prosecutor has meticulously and persuasively argued that the Obama administration was never interested in taking the Clinton Investigation. all that seriously because it would have implicated President Obama possibly derailed or damaged 2016’s presumptive Democratic winner
(Which is ironic , because if the Deep State benefited anyone in 2016, it was Clinton , not Trump)
Meanwhile , the argumemt that President Trump secretly colluded with the Russians Russians to help Clinton has more plausibility than those shouting 'conspiracy theory- are willing to entertain.
I still don’t think that Trump hatched am explicit scheme to work with the Russians, but the hardest thing to prove in most conspiracy theories is intent
Conspiracy theoriea reverse-engineer facts to construct imagined motives.this is what William Buckley meant when he scorned the John Birch Society’s tendency to infer subjective intention from objective consequences.
The 9/1 "truthers’ looked at the rubble , asked “cui bono?” - to who benefits’- and concluded that George Bush most be the real villain
Other than Trump’s public pleading with Russia , to find Clinton’s missing emails, which he says was a joke, and his open praise of Russia’s front group Wiki Leaks, there is little evidence that he had a more sinister alliance with Putin.
But it does seem clear that the Trump campaign was eager to collude with Russia.
The meeting at Trump Tower between a Russian emissary and the campaign’s key leadership Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manaford, was convenient for that reason
George Papaddopoulos, campaign advisor was sent by Sam Clovis , specifically to get political dirt on Clinton
It seemed at times that Roger Stone was Wiki Leaks operative inside Trump World
These and related facts form the gravitational bind between these two stars. In the New York Times telling of the story and from the perspective of the officials who leak to that paper, the investigations into the Trump campaign were a necessary and good faith effort to discern whether a foreign power had infiltrated the Trump campaign
For those who subscribe to a Hannitized version of reality , this was a lawless extension. of the Deep State’s plot to thwart Trump and.protect Clinton.
It is at this nexus where the Rashomonosm of our age intrudes. I have no idea what the truth seekers Mueller, DOJ Inspector General Horowitz will find.
But I suspect we’ll discover that everybody has some dismaying facts on their own side
, and the verdict will be a strong shade of gray.