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16 JULY—Many readers, scores, responded with exceptional insight to the piece we published after Graham Platner was forced to withdraw from the contest for a Maine Senate seat. We read the comment thread carefully, as we always do. Taking it as a measure of the zeitgeist, it is evident to us that many Americans recognize that Platner’s fate at the hands of power in various forms—political power, media power, the power of money, propaganda power—demonstrates plainly that America is at a critical moment. Demands for an authentic new national direction are now too audible to miss. And so, precisely in line with this, are the pernicious machines of the powers just mentioned. The outcome of this increasingly sharp contradiction is not clear. We do not vote, refusing to put our names to an electoral system as corrupt as America’s, but we will watch this autumn’s elections as closely as anyone else. What is possible and what is not as things are? These are the questions we intended to raise in our piece on Graham Platner’s downfall; those commenting have explored them yet further. Today we publish our responses to our readers. Their thinking and their insights warrant it. We thank all of those commenting for taking the time to write. “The political assassination of Graham Platner,” the piece we published last week, is here. —The Editors. ■ A takedown of the citizens of Maine.Cara Marianna. WITH GREAT INTEREST I followed the comments, the back-and-forth discussions, posted in response to our previous published commentary, “The political assassination of Graham Platner.” Many of these invited deliberate consideration, the kind of deep thinking Americans aren’t inclined toward and don’t spend much time doing these days. This fruitful contemplation clarified for me several of the perhaps less obvious dynamics at work in Platner’s lightning quick downfall. I share them here. A reader named Valeria Maines posed a question it is important to understand—where it comes from, what it reflects. “Are you absolutely positive you cannot believe the woman?” Maines asked. This seemingly simple and sensible question is, upon deeper reflection, anything but. The only honest reply, if one takes the question seriously and at face value, is no. No, I’m not absolutely positive. The lack of certainty is the point Maines is intent on making. It’s also the same point of the carefully timed allegation—the calculated uncertainty of it, the purposeful vagueness. To be clear, I found Ms. Maines’ question usefully clarifying precisely because it’s one that is meant to be asked, a question Democrats in particular have been primed to focus on obsessively and with rarely a useful answer. Indeed, the question doesn’t want a definitive answer. Its purpose is to sow doubt and to suggest that not believing the woman is… well, it implies a lot of things but leaves them unsaid. Why should anyone believe “the woman” rather than “the man”? This is the question with which Maines faces us. No one would seriously assert that women are inherently more honest or moral than men, or any less capable of lying, or of succumbing to pressure, blackmail, or bribery—and this is not to suggest any of these things of the woman in question. I don’t know if Jenny Racicot is lying. But the line of thought Maines asks us to consider, indeed the very thing the entire Democratic establishment insisted we consider—she said versus he said—is pointless. And this is why the question interested me: the intentional—convenient and strategic—pointlessness of it. The pointlessness of it serving usefully to hide the machinations of power. The question, intentionally unanswerable, deflects attention from all that is answerable, which is to say, all that was most significant about Graham Platner’s campaign—and his quick demise: the aspirations of Maine voters, the state of our republic, the fundamental corruptions, plural, of the Democratic Party, the cynical instrumentalization of the #MeToo movement, the perversion of due process. ■ A COMMENTER WHO GOES by the moniker “exile,” posted a link to a report, “Weaponizing Rape Allegations,” written by blogger GenXGirl and published 8 July at her Substack newsletter. It’s well-documented and worth a read for those interested in objective reporting on inconsistencies in Racicot’s story and the media’s coverage of it—and much else that warrants a closer look. Of particular interest to me, GenXGirl touched on a dynamic that bears directly on the question Valeria Maine posed: the social psychology of Racicot’s allegation. Americans in general take accusations of rape and sexual assault seriously. Given the continuing prevalence of sexual abuse in our society, this is generally a positive development. But like most issues in America, this, too, has a partisan divide. Democrats have been particularly sensitized to the issue, more so than Republicans, because of their identification with the #MeToo movement. This heightened sensitization among liberals, as GenXGirl puts it, “makes sexual assault allegations a potent tool against male Democrat figures.” “The #MeToo movement has been weaponized,” writes a reader named Sherry Broyles. “This is very sad, as it is one more way that women are misused. The message should not be to believe women, but to take women seriously.” In a social-psychological climate in which Democrats have been primed to prioritize believing women more or less automatically, and in which politically correct virtue-signaling remains a pernicious habit among many liberals and progressives, innocence—Platner’s or anyone else’s—is no protection against allegations that elicit powerful visceral emotions. This is a problem for any number of reasons. Accusations of sexual assault quickly turn public opinion against a political candidate. In the absence of proof—and how seldom is this required?—any allegation is an effective political weapon. This should concern anyone who cares about representational governance, political reform, and due process under the law ignored in favor of public opinion. “. . . sexual misconduct allegations are relatively easy to conjure up against anyone, and they are difficult to disprove.” This comment by Jonathan T is worth citing in full:
A reader writing under the name—all caps—BIG WILD MIND MACHINE raised concerns about legal precedents and procedures that protect all of us. This was his or her reply to Valeria Maines question:
■ SEVERAL COMMENTERS, notably Dave Pollard and Kojo, elaborated on the need for better candidates all around. How right they are. This was a point made recently by Tonery Rose in conversation with Aaron Good on his podcast, American Exception. Rose compared Susan Collins, and Platner, too, with leaders in Iran, many of whom are of exceptionally high intellectual caliber, multilingual, prominent scholars, deeply familiar with Western cultures even while we in the West largely remain ignorant of theirs. Good, who aptly named this segment of the podcast the “Feckless, Balkanized US ‘Left,’” seemed almost dumbfounded by the irony of those on the so-called left destroying Platner on a mere allegation, while Susan Collins is guilty of actual criminal behavior. To be clear, I’m not defending Platner and I wouldn’t have voted for him. I quit voting in 2016, when the Democratic establishment systematically subverted the campaign of Bernie Sanders—who has since proven worse than a mere poseur—and forced Hillary Clinton on voters. That broke the spell of my misguided loyalty to a political party that is thoroughly corrupt and nauseatingly hypocritical and self-righteous. At least Republicans are out of the closet about just how evil they are—the thankfully “late” Lindsey Graham being a case in point. You always know Republican politicians aren’t nice people, whereas Democrats in office smile and pretend to be, cynically abusing the aspirations of the well-intended. Along these lines there seemed an unusual glee in the social media pile-on as Platner went down. I marvel that so many people—Democrats, liberals, those who pass as progressives—are triggered by allegations of sexual abuse but not apparently by the ongoing genocide in Gaza or the carpet bombing of Iran or any number of horrific crimes committed in all of our names, sufficiently triggered to want a populist candidate destroyed but not to hold congressional Democrats, to say nothing of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, et al.—all of whom should be tried at The Hague—responsible for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the end, the demise of Platner’s campaign was not about the man himself. It was a takedown of the citizens of Maine—and all Americans who aspire for a government that responds to their needs. It was a warning and a reminder of what happens when power is challenged and the lengths to which the powerful will go to keep their power sequestered. ■ ‘The damage wreaked upon this country.’Patrick Lawrence. OF ALL THE TRUTHS we stand to draw from the organized subversion of Graham Platner’s campaign for a Senate seat, it seems to me the revelation that stands well above all others concerns the Democratic Party’s intentions in response to a swell of voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo that runs from Maine to California. Platner’s political fate is to be read as text, I conclude. This thought comes to me after reading the considered, articulate comments of JT, whose profession, as an attorney or in another capacity, is criminal defense. Snippets from his or her lengthy note:
JT forces a conclusion on all of us—bitter for those who insist on voting, merely confirming for those (such as I) who do not. Faced with an electorate that fairly shouts from the mountaintops for a new national direction, the elites who run the Democratic Party have no intention of going anywhere near such a thought, or of altering any of its policies an iota. The intent, as JT so well puts it, is to crush the energy coming from the ground up, where people live—to extinguish it. Post–Platner, it is inescapable that the Democratic Party dedicates itself not to a single, solitary idea or principle or to the betterment of life in America, but solely to manipulating voters at intervals defined by election cycles to gain their support in the empty charade of the American political process. À propos this thought, a reader going by John D quotes Michael Hudson, the noted economist, as saying “In today’s U.S. political duopoly the role of the Democratic Party is to protect the Republicans from attacks from the left.” Brilliantly succinct, I’d say. And in support of this insight John D continues with a list of the Democrats’ most egregious betrayals of trust:
It is impossible to miss the mournful rancor in these remarks (and the many more like them in the comment thread to the piece in question). We ought not forget, John D seems to be telling us, just what the Democratic Party’s leadership has done to America and Americans over the years, and I appreciated his comment for this. A little more in this line from JT:
How very true this remains 98 years later. “The parties have reverted to this comfortable power-sharing deal,” JT writes, “and only the voters can snap them out of it. We tried man, we tried.” I found JT’s sign-off a striking measure of our times.
This is a text in its own right, its import not to be glossed. A safe haven from the cannibals outside: The Floutist is O.K. serving this purpose so far as readers find us useful in this way, but—JT raises yet another question—what have we made of ourselves such that the well-intended among us seek sanctuary from the duped and those who dupe them? ■ FROM A READER writing as “exile”:
From Feral Finster, a faithful reader of The Floutist, ever welcome in our comment threads:
From JohnOnKaui. Some thoughtful nuance here:
From JT:
From Mark Watson:
Watson reminds me of something the late John Pilger once said: “The truth is always radical.” The American Israel Public Affairs Committee subjected Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican, to a political massacre in broad daylight during the state’s primary campaign season in May. A.I.P.A.C. and its associated lobbies spent $32 million, a record in a House contest, defeating Massie in favor of a Zionist puppet named Ed Gallrein. You remember Massie’s bitterly humorous jibe on election night, maybe: “I tried to call Ed Gallrein to congratulate him on his victory,” he announced at campaign HQ, “but I had trouble reaching him in Tel Aviv.” A.I.P.A.C. does not appear to have operated so obviously in the Platner case. I have not seen any figures measuring the presence of A.I.P.A.C. or otherwise Zionist money in the endeavor to destroy him, but it seems extremely safe to say there was some and possibly much. They would have tried to maul him, certainly, has he won the nomination. Platner’s critical view of Israel and his vigorous position against the terror state’s genocide of Palestinians were very plain. Where there is criticism of apartheid Israel and its incessant brutalities there is Zionist money subverting it: Can we posit this as a rule of thumb? I think so. It is difficult if not impossible, let’s say, to find a case in America’s national political life wherein this does not prove to be so. Criticize the Zionist terror state and you’re done for. And Graham Platner criticized the Zionist terror state. Again, I have not seen figures indicating the extent of Zionist money in the operation to bring down Platner, but it is a disgrace I or anyone else even has to ponder such a question. Massie, all those pro–Palestinian progressives in Chicago and its environs who, in recent primaries, contended with Zionist puppets with lots of A.I.P.A.C. money behind them: I insist on caution for the sake of intellectual integrity, but it beggars belief that the Jewish lobbies left the exuberantly popular Platner alone, especially given he was on the way to a seat in the upper house. I also insist, then, that those readers who implicate A.I.P.A.C. in the fate of Graham Platner are right to do so. Phil Giraldi, the former C.I.A. operative who now executive directs the Council for the National Interest, published a piece in The Unz Review the other day under the headline, “Is America Truly Becoming a ‘Zionocracy’”? The “truly” is a reference to other students of the American scene who, having already concluded this is so, invented the term. From Giraldi’s piece:
“exile,” quoted above, provided a link to an extremely pithy Substack newsletter published as GenXGirl Files. The writer’s principal concern in “Weaponizing Rape Allegations” is as the headline states. But she has also done diligent digging into the identities of the reporters covering the Platner affair, notably those very many who have displayed a marked bias against the Maine oysterman since his rise in national politics last year. “Across the reporting from NYT, Politico and CNN,” GenXGirl writes in her 8 July piece, “there is a curiously high level of career overlap amongst the reporters and publications and a high degree of pro–Israel affiliation and reporting.” The Zionocracy, whether we live in it already or we are on the way to doing so, most certainly extends well into mainstream media. GenXGirl would endorse this assertion, surely. I will address the media question below the next square bullet. For now, this: The operation to subvert Platner puts us on notice: We must must must come to terms with the power of “the Jewish state,” the Zionist lobbies, and the wealthy Jewish donors whose money helps finance the political duopoly if this country is to be kept from total collapse of the Roman kind. If we do not act in this cause, by whatever means available to each of us, we will stand on the wrong side of the old French adage, “People get the government they deserve.” ■ KATIE GLUECK AND Lisa Lerer are two of the reporters GenXGirl singles out, altogether rightfully, for the unconscionable bias they brought to their coverage of Graham Platner’s rise and fall. They both worked previously at Politico, which did a handy job distorting, by way of unethical reporting standards and absolutely gross omissions, its interview with Jenny Racicot, whose allegation of rape brought Platner’s house down. These two covered Platner for The New York Times and seem to have brought Politico’s inexcusable standards with them—along with backgrounds that cast serious doubt on their capacity to produce objective reporting. During her time in university, as GenXGirl reports, Glueck was co-president of the Northwestern chapter of Students for Israel. Students for Israel at Northwestern got an Activist of the Year award from A.I.P.A.C. in 2009. All right, a couple of journalists whose presence on The Times’s National Desk is in keeping with the ideological hoops Times reporters must jump through until superiors are confident their work will be properly unbalanced. GenXGirl does a superb job reproducing examples of this objectionable work. But I thank GenXGirl and the commenter writing as “exile” for bringing a vastly more revealing reality to our attention. This is a Mondoweiss report published a year ago next week under the headline, “The New York Times commitment to Zionism begins with its own staff.” Moy Gawd, as they used to say in the New Hampshire of my youth. I knew Tom Friedman, the buffoonish Foreign Affairs columnist, bought a house stolen from Palestinians for The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chiefs—this in the mid–1980s, while he was serving in that position. I knew Isabel Kershner, who has covered Israel for The Times since 2007, has two sons and a husband who served in the Israeli army and that the husband has gone on to run a think tank producing Zionist propaganda Kershner habitually quotes—more than 100 times, by the Mondoweiss count. I had heard that David Brooks, who just stepped down as a columnist, had a son serving in the I.O.F. during his Times years. But this. Mondoweiss, which also credits The Electronic Intifada, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Intercept, and unnamed Palestinian writers for the research, exposes more than 20 senior editors, correspondents, columnists, and reporters “who have ties to the Zionist state.” One stunning but exemplary case is Natan Odenheimer, who served in an I.O.F. commando unit and then as a correspondent in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau—embedding with and covering his former colleagues. “How can we ever expect someone to report on the occupation correctly when he wore the occupier’s uniform for four years?” Mondoweiss wonders. O.K., The Times’s disgusting corruptions and betrayals of readers’ trust when covering anything to do with the Zionist state are not our topic. Katie Glueck, Lisa Lerer, et al. do not figure in the Mondoweiss investigation. But this is not the point, and I cannot see it is “exile’s” or GenXGirl’s, either. I rephrase Mondoweiss’s question to make the point: How can we ever expect Zionist-controlled media to report fairly and correctly on a political candidate when any such candidate denounces the Zionist state’s crimes and opposes the United States’ support of them? Is it necessary to type an answer to this question? To say the corporate press and broadcasters share responsibility for Israel’s daily atrocities and crimes is an obvious point many have made. The Floutist has made it severally. Corporate media do much to enable genocide and countless associated atrocities while keeping public opinion subdued if not pacified. We must bring this truth back home now. These same media were active participants in the subversion of Graham Platner and bear responsibility not only for his fate: They are participants in the destruction of what remains of America’s all-but-collapsed democratic process even as they purport to cover it. Let us not miss this reality now that the Platner affair faces us with it so squarely. ■ WHAT HAS BEFALLEN Graham Platner over the course of many months, now that this has reached its conclusion, has exposed a great deal about who runs America and how they go about their work. The comment thread to our piece makes this clear. This is why we choose to reply to it as we have. An increasing number of Americans do not miss the reality I just mentioned. I count this a positive outcome, revelation, if anything about this affair can be counted positive. But something else has also been exposed. This is the American public’s extreme vulnerability to the powers of propaganda. In a nation so moralistic as America this has been so from its founding—from before its founding if we go back to the 17th century Puritans. But it comes out now as a more or less prevalent inability to think and reason, bitter as it is to write this—bitter as it is to see evidence of this in the Platner story. Americans have been conditioned over a long time to think, believe, accept or condemn, support or oppose whatever it is they are told to think, believe, accept, condemn, support or oppose and not think, believe, accept, etc. anything they are told they should not. I have not seen this among any other people in the course of my travels abroad. Faith and trust in forms of authority prevail when neither is warranted or wise. Graham Platner turned out to be other than a perfect man on a straight-and-narrow path, as he was the first to say when he became a public figure. Let he who has not sinned, etc. It is the spectacle of moralistic condemnation among those who look to a party of genocide enablers, warmongers, fiddlers, thieves—a party routinely abusive of the interests of most Americans, as John D reminds us: It is this the Platner affair also forces us to see. The Floutist publishes this piece without a paywall. 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