Think tanks, corruption, propaganda, and lies

Welcome to right-wing America! If the anti-intellectuals of the American right had any idea how much of their worldview is being cooked up in the rarefied intellectual environs of think tanks, they’d be very suspicious that all these smart people are doing things they don’t understand and undermining their interests and dissing them at every turn. And they’d be right.

However, the American right is currently extraordinarily busy being suspicious of anything they think the American left is doing, so they don’t have time to be suspicious of their ‘friends’ who are knifing them in the back (and in the bank account).

Of course, a proper accounting of the role of right-wing think tanks would require a book-length tome to investigate and oh hell no we are not doing that right here right now.

We’re just going to hone in on one convoluted little throwaway story about an American-Israeli think tank founder charged with acting as a Chinese agent. The alleged agent for China is named Gal Luft, which is a great name, so one point for him. On the other hand, China is waging cyber warfare against the West, so let’s subtract that point.

He is co-director of the ‘Institute for the Analysis of Global Security’ and apparently he did enough analyzing to realize that there’s money to be made in arms trafficking (legal or otherwise), since he is accused of helping Chinese companies sell arms to Libya and attempting to sell other arms to the UAE and Kenya.

When he wasn’t doing that, he was apparently attempting to get around US sanctions on Iranian oil, since nothing enhances global security like funding the Iranian regime.

And then he supposedly paid a Trump official to publicly support China’s policy. That’s the Chinese agent part.

If you’re thinking to yourself well that sounds like one busy little corrupt think tank guy, you’re missing the extra busy fun part. In his spare time, when not allegedly engaging lucrative workarounds to US national security, he was making a name for himself, sort of, by accusing the Biden family of bribery. Our Chinese agent was pretty darn fed up with the Bidens, not unlike the Chinese.

Gal Luft’s fedupness with the Bidens was revealed in a video published by none other than that renowned paper of record, that bastion of the impartial search for the truth – the New York Post. The New York Post, in case you weren’t aware, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, is not generally deemed credible, and semi-routinely gets sued for doing horrible things to innocent people.

It may be that the strongest evidence for the innocence of the Bidens of whatever they’ve accused of (oh yeah, bribery) might be that the Post is the one making the allegations. That’s not a fail-safe, of course, but score one for the Bidens on that account.

Oh yeah, and Mr. Luft also jumped bail – score another one for the Bidens cuz jumping bail is not a good look compared to ‘I look forward to proving my complete innocence in a court of law.”

So when the bribery accuser is accused and both sides claim a political agenda at the root of the accusations – who’s right?

Well…. that’s a question for the politically engaged in a multitude of nations right now. One of the interesting (ahem) trends in global politics is an amazing number of incumbents, insurgents, opposition parties, and general scumbags all claiming to be accused of this, that, or the other, on the basis of a political vendetta or agenda.

Gal Luft’s think tank supposedly “focused on energy, security and economic trends.” But the trend Mr. Luft really focused on was probably the inordinate opportunities for corruption around the globe.

Who knew that the worldwide rise of the political right would just so happen to coincide with an unending stream of jaw-dropping corruption? Well some people did. There is a saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and if there’s one thing a wanna-be right-wing dictator is after, it’s absolute power.

So does that make it weird that a think tank guy goes after an advisor to then President Trump to shill for China when Trump was supposedly coming down hard on China? It’s not at all weird to the corruption mind-set! Say one thing in public and do entirely different things behind closed doors. Or – just lie! Lie for fun and profit.

And as for the public – what to do – what to think?

Well – you could go, as best you can, to the source. In this case, the source would Gal Luft. You can look the video he made and note for yourself that it devotes an awful lot of time to questions and insinuations and doesn’t really talk much about the Bidens. It’s mostly about what a victim Mr. Luft is (also a social trend – everyone’s a victim!). It doesn’t tell you much, if anything, about the underlying issues.

You could note that Mr. Luft accuses the Trump DOJ of corruption and harboring what seem to be zealous Biden-lovers out to protect Hunter Biden at all costs. And then you could say to yourself ‘wait a minute, someone loves Joe and Hunter Biden?’ This is a mind-blowing concept in and of itself, since there seem to be less than half a dozen people in America who are really all that fond of the Bidens.

And then you could turn around in your mind the idea that of all the mediocre people in government to conduct a massive cover-up for, someone chose – the Bidens? Poll after poll seems to indicate that even the people who support his political party are pretty fed up with Biden himself.

So maybe the thing to do is what normal people are doing all around the world and say something that means ‘A POX ON ALL THEIR HOUSES! I’m getting pretty damn fed up and I want you all to QUIT IT – quit it right now!’