I have to confess to being conflicted about the “Russia Hacking the DNC and Overthrowing the Governmentgate” crisis. It’s easy enough to disregard the whole affair since the DNC has the integrity of a crack addict in a roomful of cash, and the CIA has never actually spoken a single word of truth to the American public in the past.

Having said that – we do all know that Trump has shared some secret love bond with Putin since before the election kicked off. And he did hire Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State – a man who as CEO of Exxon had a very cozy business and personal relationship with Putin. And now we have Trump denying any Russian involvement almost as vociferously as he whines about media coverage of his third chin. Rumors abound of a pipeline deal waiting impatiently in limbo for the State department to remove certain pesky sanctions. Call me crazy, but the signs certainly point to Trump having some sort of business interest in Russia, be it pending deals or past debt.

I’ve never worked in law enforcement, but I’ve watched a lot of cop shows on t.v. and it sure seems like cops place an awful lot of weight on “motive.” When watching all the lying and scheming and inducing of purgatives in politics, the one way I seem to be able to find my way around is by constantly asking one question: “Who does this serve?” Also known as “Who profits from this?”

Lastly, I am really sorry – this is going to chafe a lot of my fellow lefties: I do not think Julian Assange is the second coming of Edward R. Murrow. Or Walter Cronkite. Or Sam Spade even. I do admire some of the work he has done in the past, and he does provide what could be a valuable service. But I have a secret about him: Julian Assange has an agenda. Before you get upset, I need to ask my fellow Berners in the room: do you remember how we all waited impatiently for each email dump during the primary, certain that the next one was going to sink Clinton and then Bernie was going to get the nomination?  And we were told over and over, “The big one is coming!” “The next one is going to be the one that buries her,” etc, etc.

And we were all asking “Uh . . . why not now? Drop it all now, and let’s get Bernie’s nomination party set up!”  But it didn’t come.  The good stuff didn’t drop until Bernie’s fate (and thus that of us all) was sealed.  Why is that?  Why trickle all of that data out so slowly, coinciding with political events and polls?  The only possible reason I can come up with is that he wanted the Democrats to lose for some reason.  Polls consistently showed Bernie slaying Trump in a potential contest, and the same polls showed Clinton maybe-winning-but-probably-not.  So people can say what they want – and they will – this fella doesn’t think for a minute that Wikilinks and Assange were even a little bit “impartial” during this entire affair.  They wanted the Dems to lose.  Which is to say – they wanted Trump to win.

Did Putin drive his Zil limo up to the gates of the Ecuadorian embassy and toss the end of Clinton’s campaign, along with some cheap, red, ugly baseball hats, over the fence to Assange?  Probably  not, although he will in the upcoming made-for-tv movie.  More than likely the info was handed off by hero DNC staffer Seth Rich, before he caught a bullet in the back.  But there are a lot of unknowns.  In fact, to paraphrase a certain favorite former defense secretary and human-rights violator:  we don’t know a lot of the unknowns that those who know don’t want us to know about.  Or something like that.

The only thing that is certain is that the war junkies and arms pushers will exploit the situation as much as possible . . . until it fades away and they have to manufacture another one.