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This week on Middle Theory, we analyze the decision by President Trump for the United States to leave the Paris Climate Accord.
Stop the presses… can YOU figure out the TRUE meaning of “Covfefe”? Apparently, this obvious misspelling by The Donald was worthy of countless articles and news segments over the last several days… we spend an equally ludicrous amount of time talking about why this is utter bullshit. Then turning our attention to other, more meaningful things, we spend some time examining the current crisis at Evergreen State College, where a group of students have shut the campus down after a white professor refused to accept an “invitation” for all white members of the student body and faculty to leave campus… which in their eyes, makes him a racist.
Then, we look at the controversial decision by President Trump for the United States to leave the Paris Climate Accord, which has aroused varied responses from the international community, including newly elected French President Emanuel Macron. Van Jones also chimed in on this, as we visit audio soundbytes with reactions to the decision, as well as a complete breakdown given by McNonymous about the “environmental hypocrisy” of several organizations and individuals that have decried the decision.
Finally… Hillary Clinton might have pushed her luck a little too much with the post-election loss “sympathy train,” after she said during an interview with ReCode that she was a “victim of the assumption she would win.” She further suggests a broad reaching “right wing conspiracy” that involves Russia, Wikileaks, InfoWars, and possibly members of the Trump campaign might have conspired to thwart her chances at winning the 2016 election. Here are a few of the responses from the liberal media in response to Clinton’s somewhat plausible, but still unproven claims:
- “Well she first of all, really drilled down on the fake news, the role of Infowars and said that it was very clear to her that there were Americans directing and colluding, conspiring really, with the Russian hackers, with Guccifer, with the others who were involved in the hacking, in the dropping of WikiLeaks … and saying that they were doing so with such political sophistication. She’s basically pointing to the Trump campaign, saying that the dots are now being connected in the investigation. So, she is drawing a conspiracy theory,” Mitchell said. “She doesn’t have the evidence, but she is obviously hoping that this is what — that Robert Mueller and what the congressional committee’s going to do.” – Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC
- “While Clinton says she takes full responsibility for her defeat, everything else she says about the election belies that rhetoric. What taking the full blame and responsibility actually means is saying this: There were lots and lots of circumstances outside my control that hurt my chances. But at the end of the day, it was my campaign and my name on the ballot. And that means I lost and I own that. Clinton isn’t saying that. Probably because she simply doesn’t believe it.” – Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
- “Clinton’s latest comments continue a post election emergence in which the former Democratic nominee continues to point fingers for her loss, though other accounts of the Clinton campaign have put more fault in her corner.” – Jessica Taylor, NPR Political Correspondent
Finally, we also have this, from Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College and New York Times contributor: “I’m seeing a disturbing trend of people taking the very serious and real questions about Russian interference and using that as a pretext for all sorts of wild and unsupported conspiracy theories. These are often coming from internet personalities and people who work on social media, but they’re infiltrating into the discourse more generally through liberal elites who are amplifying them. So we’re seeing a spread of these claims out into the mainstream in a way that I think is potentially worrisome.”
Indeed, it seems we’re living in a culture of conspiracy.
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Finally, here are links to show notes pertaining to this week’s podcast:
- ‘Covfefe’ tells you all you need to know about Trump
- Evergreen State College goes all to hell
- CNN: In election blame game, it’s time for Hillary Clinton to take her share
- Debbie Wasserman Schultz, or someone in her office, called the law office of the firm responsible for the DNC Lawsuit and used a voice changer to dig for information… but forgot to block number from showing up on Caller ID
- Trump made up his mind on Paris. Now the rest of the world will do the same on him.
- Dartmouth Professor Concerned About Spread of Liberal Conspiracy Theories on Social Media
- Hannity offers Assange and Kim Dotcom fill-in hosting positions on his show
Micah,
Why are you sticking your neck out for the alt-right’s* Seth Rich conspiracy theory? The police didn’t find anything on his information technology to indicate it was true. Think about that! It’s the evidence you think doesn’t exist that it’s been debunked.
“We know that Seth’s personal email and his personal computer were both inspected by detectives early in the investigation and that the inspection revealed no evidence of any communications with anyone at WikiLeaks or anyone associated with WikiLeaks. Nor did that inspection reveal any evidence that Seth had leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks or to anyone else. Indeed, those who have suggested that Seth’s role as a data analyst at the DNC gave him access to a wide trove of emails are simply incorrect — Seth’s job was to develop analytical models to encourage voters to turn out to vote. He didn’t have access to DNC emails, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee emails, John Podesta’s emails or Hillary Clinton’s emails. That simply wasn’t his job.
Despite these facts, our family’s nightmare persists.”
– Mary Rich & Joel Rich, “We’re Seth Rich’s parents. Stop politicizing our son’s murder”, The Washington Post, 05/23/2017
You’ve lost your objectivity on this issue, although you may not have encountered those facts until now.
ideogenetic
* In my view, alt-right is the politically correct label for American neo-Nazis.
Hi there, and thanks for your comment. That said…
…Wow.
You appear to have completely misunderstood what I’ve said about this issue… and frankly, though I don’t wish to come across sounding overtly defensive myself, I don’t appreciate your insinuation that I’ve been “sticking my neck out” for “the alt right” in doing so. Add to that the further insinuation that, by doing so, I’m advocating modern American “neo-Nazi” ideals, and you have quite a nasty basket of allegations there. Hence, I’ll take a moment to extract direct quotes from the podcast, so that we can see what I’ve actually said, and then I’ll offer an update on my current thoughts.
First let me state flatly that I do not endorse the conspiracy theories about Seth Rich, although we have discussed them on the Middle Theory program. On our initial episode about this, my conclusion was that, based on what Rod Wheeler appeared on Fox News and said, we did not see any veracity to the “conspiracies” or cover-up he initially advocated (Wheeler later recanted the majority of these claims anyhow). To quote myself from the relevant episode (05.22.17. The Seth Rich Conspiracy), I said the following about Rod Wheeler:
“I don’t know that we can say that there is much veracity to what (Rod Wheeler) has said. I don’t know if we can say he has a very rock-solid record.”
At the time that podcast was recorded, I did suggest, however, that the announcement from Kim Dotcom (which would appear the following day) should be heard, and that we should at least suspend judgment until we heard what he had to offer. Once that announcement was made, we did a follow up on the subsequent episode (05.24.17. Pray for Manchester), where McNonymous joined me in discussing the further allegations made by Kim Dotcom. At that time, I said (and I quote, again) the following:
“We tried to look very diplomatically on the show at this whole Seth Rich thing. We looked at every angle, we reported on it, and I said, and I want to clarify again right here at the outset that, as it stood when we ended that show, it remains to me a conspiracy theory, because I had not seen any convincing evidence that supported what the private investigator claimed, which was that there was evidence that these emails were sent to Wikileaks.”
Updating that perspective, allow me to state again that I still label this a conspiracy theory, because based on the evidence on-hand, there is nothing to-date that conclusively offers credible data in support of the idea that Seth Rich had been the source of the DNC email leaks.
Contrary opinions have been expressed by some, including explicit statements by Kim Dotcom, and somewhat vague insinuations by Julian Assange. However, neither of these individuals have offered conclusive evidence of their claims. Nonetheless, I remain intrigued by the ongoing insinuations made by Assange and Dotcom; this is primarily in relation to what their reasons and motivations for doing so may be. McNonymous suggested (on the show in question) that this may have been a publicity stunt, of sorts, on Dotcom’s part; of Assange, some suggest that his insinuations about Rich may be intended as misdirection. There is also the possibility that Dotcom had indeed had some contact with Seth Rich, but that this had nothing to do with Wikileaks, and instead that, as Dotcom stated, Seth Rich had merely been interested in getting some element of the “Internet Party” operating in America. For the time being, all of this remains conjecture, which we have reported as such.
Again, based on the evidence on hand, there is very little that makes a credible case for any legitimate “conspiracy theory” involving Seth Rich, and I can only imagine the turmoil and pain his family is going through with all of this. However, as a prominent item in the news, we felt that it was important to report on it, and to attempt to do so fairly, without a predetermined bias.
To your credit, I will say there have been similar instances in the past where I have been attacked for reporting on something, which the listener or reader in question perceives as me “supporting” the idea in question. Others (particularly more ideological-minded individuals) might go so far as to assert that by virtue of reporting on a story at all, it conveys some “belief” in claims made in relation to that story. That is not the case here; with Middle Theory, we attempt to operate with a primarily unbiased reporting structure, although where evidence emerges, we do draw conclusions, and we do assert opinions.
In my opinion, based on the evidence at hand, which we have read and evaluated to the best of our ability, the Seth Rich allegations are merely conspiracy theories (hence why we titled the episode in question “The Seth Rich Conspiracy”). It is not my personal view, based on the current evidence, that a credible argument can be made for Rich’s involvement with Wikileaks, the DNC hacks, or any similar matters.
To close, I do wish to revisit one of your quotes: “You’ve lost your objectivity on this issue, although you may not have encountered those facts until now.”
I hope my response comes across as “objective” enough here… given the unfortunate misperception of my attitudes that you presented, and the further ludicrous insinuation that I advocate “alt right” ideological views, I think it is fair to say that a bit more objectivity all-round would do us well in the future. Thanks for listening. 🙂
-Micah
Thank you for trying to remain middle, guys.
It must be hard at times. The world has never been so divided, who would have thought one defeated elite (who got caught cheating the system and lost) could have had so much influence.
Thanks for doing your best to keep it real in these blinding times.
We should all do our part to dispel myth, break down white lies, and see past ideological corruptions. Not so easy in a pandering pc sissy climate but here it goes…
Lately I have seen a gross and greatly misinformed pander towards women that I just can’t sit back and let ride. Note that I have more girl friend’s than men and I have brought this up with many of them and through logical discussion they all agreed with me. This myth is the bs that women can focus on more than one thing. This is actually called lack of or having no focus. It is impossible for anyone human to pay attention to multiple things at once. Anyone who has been a fighter/boxer/martial artist understands that fighting is difficult because you can only (focus) pay attention to one thing at a time and humans have four appendages they can throw at you. If women really possess the uncanny ability to focus on multiple things no male fighter should be able to compete. Anyone who has ever boxed knows a fake jab is all it takes to distract an opponent and leave them open for the other hand to blindside them. A fake jab can be the deadliest move in a fight why because you cannot dual focus.
This myth has gone so far Bill Burr makes a joke about it in his newest set. Not poking fun at how ridiculous it is but using it like a fact to build humor off of of course against men. I’m sorry ladies but nobody man nor woman has the ability of dual focus. Dual focus is a total oxymoron. Having trouble keeping your mind on track isn’t a super power and being aloof doesn’t designate superiority of intelligence nor is it evidence for superior focus skills. It means you can’t pay attention. So there I dispelled it right here women do not have the ability to focus on multiple things nobody does. As you will see this myth will keep growing and embellishing and taking liberties with the truth as long as the pc climate is set to cold pandering.
This also is a great example of how our culture constructs horse dung and identifies it with a sex or race, political party so that a chicken livered people afraid of offending a protected idea, identified with by a group, fear speaking the truth. Once a people identify with a stupidity no amount of logic, reason, or truth can sway them from their ideological fantasy. The saddest thing is seeing beings capable of creating, thinking, and taking new leaps of the self fighting, dying, getting punched in the face for defending someone else’s idiotic ideas?
In case you’re wondering what my trigger was, here it is:
Show Date: 06/02/2017
Time: 1:40:32
Speaker: Micah
“Something tells me that there’s a least a grain of truth to all this, that there’s something more that we don’t know. But again I think that unfortunately the conservative media is all in and think that this is the crux of the matter….Meanwhile people on the left, especially in the media, are saying there is no truth to this because there cannot be and therefore there is not…from the outset they’ve been saying it was debunked. But again if we’re gonna to come to the center, and this is not endorsing the idea that Seth Rich was the DNC leaker; I mean, I’ve wondered if that could be possible myself…well if it were to turn out that that were true, as Kim Dotcom and certain people say, maybe it is ok to ask that question. I don’t think that anything should be put off the table just because the Washington Post says it’s already been debunked. Which comes back to what they’re saying here, again this debunked idea. Now again, I don’t see a whole lot of evidence to support it.”
Until your clarification I interpreted the phrase, “I don’t see a whole lot of evidence to support it” as referring to insufficient evidence that it has been debunked.
And for what it’s worth, I think “come to the center” should never be applied as splitting the difference between objectivity and conspiracy theories.
“There’s nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos” – Jim Hightower
As we know, the yellow line is a caution.