Note: following DallasDoc's example, I thought I'd publish this here before doing so at Dailykos, which was my original intention. Yes, I published an earlier version of this argument here back in October.

Are we talking about acts of war?

Should America launch retaliatory measures?

(Head shaking…)

Enough of all this hysterical arm-waving, warmongers. In what may be a completely futile effort (given the current makeup of the Dailykos community), I want to offer a voice of Sanity and Reason to counter all of the jingoistic rhetoric we’ve been hearing lately.

For the sake of argument, let’s just go ahead and assume the worst-case-scenario that the warmongers are advancing---that Russian government employees did the hacking at Putin’s direction.

Just how big of a deal would this be, if we knew with absolute certainty that it was true? Well, from an historical perspective, there is actually nothing in this possibility that should give any normal American actual cause for alarm, given certain facts that most educated members of the political class really ought to be aware of.

The single most important morsel of truth that MSM sources are willfully ignoring is the fact that all governments around the world that are major players in international affairs have for quite some time been doing their utmost to perfect their abilities to both 1) hack into the secure sites of other countries and 2) protect themselves from the same.

It would indeed be utterly insane for them to not do so.

We know this. We’ve always known this. Contrary to the alarmist language and affected emotion the warmongers are currently using to stoke this ‘crises’---created out of whole cloth---there are no surprises here that our national security people have uncovered in a shocking moment of discovery.

Now you would think, from the accusations the warmongers are pushing forward, that the United States government would never do such a thing to another country, i.e., try to influence the outcome of their democratic elections.

After all, if we were guilty, wouldn’t we have to condemn ourselves in the same breath we are using to condemn others?

The actual historical truth of the matter is that the United States has a long history of using the CIA to do just that if/when our ‘decision-makers’ perceived it would be in America's interests to do so:

In the late 1940s, the newly established CIA cut its teeth in Western Europe, pushing back against some of the continent's most influential leftist parties and labor unions. In 1948, the United States propped up Italy's centrist Christian Democrats and helped ensure their electoral victory against a leftist coalition, anchored by one of the most powerful communist parties in Europe. CIA operatives gave millions of dollars to their Italian allies and helped orchestrate what was then an unprecedented, clandestine propaganda campaign: This included forging documents to besmirch communist leaders via fabricated sex scandals, starting a mass letter-writing campaign from Italian Americans to their compatriots, and spreading hysteria about a Russian takeover and the undermining of the Catholic Church.

Our political leaders have consistently shown that they are not above doing such things. Our leadership class has a long history of not only fomenting political revolutions/insurrections in other nations, but also of attempting to arrange the assassination of the leaders of other countries when we thought it would be in our interests to do so.

Given these indisputable facts re: our political history, it is indeed profoundly hypocritical for American politicians to now declare that efforts by other countries to do the same thing to us are both outrageous and alarming.

The ultimate truth is that since forever all nations have always tried to influence the outcome of elections in other countries if 1) they believe their vital interests are at stake, and 2) they have the means to do so.

The only thing that has changed over the past 40 years is that the "means to interfere" available to technologically advanced nations has changed. Back in the day, it usually involved getting spies/agents in the target country and then finding ways to get money to the political opposition in ways that are not obvious.

Now---with the institutionalization of The Internet---the methods of 'influencing' are different. Hacking foreign websites is more cost-efficient than the methods used in the old days to gather intelligence and 'influence' political developments in other countries.

So in light of these historical facts, the great momentous issue that is supposedly generating a great deal of alarm in Washington---the possibility that Russia might have tried to influence the outcome of our elections---is not any kind of news that can be rationally considered shocking or even scary.

It is not unexpected. It does not present a threat to the American people. And it is certainly not even remotely serious enough of a matter to actually risk going to war over.

Sure, if the Russians (or the Israelis, or any other country for that matter) had sent a team of assassins to kill one of our candidates, that would be quite a different matter entirely, but this 'revealing of political secrets' accusation doesn’t rise to anywhere near that level of seriousness.

No, my friends, we Americans do not have any right to insist that other countries forswear methods of interference that we ourselves have been guilty of with respect to other countries.

And thus, there is no rational basis for any of these expressions of outrage that America’s legion of warmongers are currently voicing at the type of 'interference' that the Russians are being accused of.

. . .

In light of this broader understanding of the ‘Fear Russia’ messaging you’ve been hearing lately, I would suggest to you that there really are some people we need to fear when we start to hear the MSM repeating the demonization of Russia rhetoric that we now hear almost every day.

I’m referring to the warmongers in both political parties who are using this ‘issue’ to stir up anti-Russian sentiment, to prepare the American public for war against Russia, or at least for the high-stakes brinkmanship games that the warmonger class loves to play on the international stage.

You know, like when they start talking tough about our willingness to risk nuclear war over insanely stupid things, like who has sovereignty rights over the eastern Ukraine, or Taiwan.

It is indeed the warmongers who threaten us. The ‘patriots’ within our political class who are always pointing a finger at some country on the other side of the world that we are supposed to believe is a great threat to the American people.

In order for them to play their games with America’s military assets, they know they need to gin up broad public support. They know that this objective is rather easy to accomplish if/when they are able to persuade MSM voices to regularly depict the leaders of the countries they want to muscle around as malevolent ‘dictators’ that America must save innocent people from by either wielding its awesome military might, or simply threatening to do so.

It seemingly never occurs to most luminaries within the MSM that it might be a good idea for them to question with a bit of fearful suspicion the great patriots of our political class when they are solemnly seeking to convince us that we all need to support another noble cause in which we use our weapons of war to defeat the Bad Guys on the other side of the ocean who either threaten us or 'our friends.'

The reason we should fear these people is something that becomes apparent when we reflect on the frightful lesson the German people learned when they trusted the most patriotic voices in their culture back in the 1930's, those who were oh-so-impressed with the military capabilities of the German people, which were indeed quite awesome at the time.

What the German people learned through the horrors of war was that the greatest threat they faced back then was not the Communists or the Jewish 'back-stabbers' they had been warned about, but was rather the extraordinarily proud and boastful legion of patriots in their country who presented themselves as the only collective within Germany who could save the German people from [various named threats] with the military muscle that was available to them.

They were the people who were ultimately responsible for getting nearly six million German citizens killed, for the utter destruction of their country’s economy, for the unpleasant reality that their nation’s reputation around the world was destroyed for several generations.

The lesson their suffering teaches us, my friends, is that quite often the greatest threat that a people will ever face is not some Other out there that they’ve heard rumors about, but is actually the manipulative other-bashing that spews from their own political/military leaders.

Think about that the next time you are listening to the pious bleatings of the 'noble purpose' crowd, who are oh-so-certain that America's military/political leaders would never make the kind of fatal miscalculations of that ultimately doomed so many other nations in history that had invested total faith in, and reverence for, their country’s military accomplishments/leadership.

Why should we believe our political leaders are different? Well, it's because we are so special, aren’t we?

(Head shaking) That oh-so-scary article of faith in American exceptionalism.

God (Reason, Sanity) Help Us!