It's been a long time since the news media was anything but a joke, but in 2016 they've hit a new low.

A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook went on national television and declared: “There are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race.”

For all the talk over the past 14 months about how Trump has obliterated the supposed “norms” that typically govern the operation of presidential campaigns, this was a norm-buster for the ages. “Puppet for the Kremlin”? That’s the stuff of a dystopian espionage thriller. If true, it’d constitute a scenario utterly without precedent in American history, potentially shaking the very foundations of the Republic. One might think, then, that Mook’s stunning attack would’ve engendered a wave of calls from sober-minded pundits for due diligence and avoidance of hyperbole.

Instead, crickets.

It’s worth considering why.

The total paucity of avowed Trump supporters in elite spheres—including prestige media outlets, think tanks and academic institutions—has created an unprecedented imbalance in our electoral politics. During any given week this summer, commentators might have charged Trump with committing treason (a crime punishable by death), seeking to carry out mass genocide, being clinically insane, or chomping at the bit to instigate civilization-destroying nuclear war—not to mention secretly working to undermine the entire American system of government at the behest of Russia’s dastardly leader. Such extreme besmirchments have become so common now that they seldom even raise an eyebrow.

To say that the rhetoric is totally out of control is a understatement.
To say that the media is committing journalistic malpractice for not providing some balance is an obvious statement.

However, I would like to provide another term here: conspiracy theory.

Calling Trump Putin's Puppet over and over again , and Kremlin's Candidate is beyond the pale.

Trump is a lot of things. A xenophobic demagogue. A nativist bully. A narcissist.
All true, and more.

But calling him a traitor is not just crazy conspiracy theory, but its also reckless Neo-McCarthyism.

And it’s amazing to have watched, in this campaign, Democrats completely resurrect that Cold War McCarthyite kind of rhetoric not only to accuse Paul Manafort, who does have direct financial ties to certainly the pro—the former pro-Russian leader of the Ukraine, but really anybody who in any way questions the Clinton campaign. I mean, they even tried doing it to Jill Stein a few weeks ago by claiming that she had done something nefarious by attending an event in Moscow sponsored by the Russian television outlet RT that’s controlled by the Putin government. And so, it’s sort of this constant rhetorical tactic to try and insinuate that anyone opposing the Clintons are somehow Russian agents, when it’s the Clintons who actually have a lot of ties to Russia, as well. I mean, the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton helped Russian companies take over uranium industries in various parts of the world. He received lots of Russian money for speeches. The Clinton Foundation has relationships to them. President Obama refused to arm factions in the Ukraine that were trying to fight against this pro-Russian dictator, and continuously tries to partner with the Russians in Syria. So this rhetoric can cut both ways, and it’s very problematic, I think, to try and depict anyone who questions NATO or who advocates detente with Russia of somehow being disloyal or useful idiots or stooges to Putin, given how dangerous that rhetoric traditionally has been in American political discourse.

First you have to wonder how journalism and political discourse can come back from this.
Where does it stop?

So WikiLeaks has become an enemy of the Democratic Party, and they seem to have one tactic with their adversaries and enemies, which is to accuse them of being Russian agents. And that’s the tactic that has now been used against WikiLeaks, as well.
And so, it’s a very sort of disturbing strategy that not is just disturbing in and of itself, but that will have enduring consequences in the likely event that Hillary Clinton wins, because when you constantly inflame the public by telling them that Russia is this enemy, that they have domestic agents operating in the U.S., namely anyone who is a critic of the Clinton campaign, that’s going to have lots of long-term implications in terms of how the U.S. government treats Russia, how the American media and the American people are going to expect the U.S. government to react to Russia and how much dissent and criticism is going to be allowed without people being accused of being agents of the Kremlin.

Secondly, if we are going to entertain conspiracy theories, why not look at interesting and believable ones?
Or is there a double-standard in conspiracy theories?