"Cokie's Law", 4 years on. I don't think we're doing okay. I don't think the American people are pulling together as wise and resilient as they once did. I don't think "it's the optics, stupid" is working, as the political landscape and more importantly the guys (yes, guys) with the real keys to money and power and the immoral savagery to use it only care about optics in one direction. We might pretend there's some balance, but it's the kind of weak tea like "Buffalo Bill really shouldn't have taken that girl's finger off; he should have just skinned and fileted her like his book says", while yeah, the other side gets to debate whether they gave to a standard ubiquitous but ever-so-slightly tarnished charity. Is that the kind of fair and balanced Fox sold us? You betcha. And the chain media acquisitions across the nation have perfected this only slight nod to equal time, including propaganda channels blaring out 24x7 in the "real heartland" in a way concentration camp loudspeakers could've only dreamed. 

Appearances, eh? How about the law for a change? There's more than enough grist there. Remember the concern about Hillary's email server was whether Russians would get hold of too secret info to undermine our troops, diplomacy and provide kompromat. Well now our government is doing just that direct, straight to the main vein (hey, Butina's back in Russia as a hero, with her own show!!!), hosting Lavrov in the Oval Office, telling him secrets about what the Israelis are up to - but we're still listening to a maniac race about whether Ukrainians have her virtual server with a few non-classified memos from 7-8 years ago, and his lawyer buddy is flagrantly running back to Ukraine to dig up more fake kompromat, with total impunity.

We're fucked.

https://www.salon.com/2015/08/24/anatomy_of_a_hillary_clinton_pseudo_sca...