CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, November 20, 2023

When war comes, the first casualty is truth.*

"It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so," said President Ronald Reagan on October 27, 1964. Fast forward to today and we find there are Americans who actually believe that candidate Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Sane, rational people, even those with the slightest interest in domestic politics, have seen mountains of evidence that the Hillary Clinton campaign, hiding behind some law firms as cut-outs, hired a former British intelligence agent to fabricate a story that Trump and Putin were in cahoots. The evidence of a Clinton-directed hoax was so clear that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign $133,000 for spreading false information.

A well-connected D.C. contact says there are still thousands of people who either do not know the truth of this matter or simply refuse to believe it. And so, that brings us to another conspiracy theory one finds difficult to believe.

It goes like this: Some of the Russia Hoax deniers wanted to "punish" Donald Trump for winning the 2016 presidential election. So, they seized upon the idea to promote a war between Russia and Ukraine that would, somehow, "punish" President Trump. How that would "punish" Donald Trump remains unclear.

Also unclear is how the hoax deniers managed to engineer a war between Russia and Ukraine. But this could be a developing story and so we wait and see. Meanwhile, what is happening in the Ukraine War? Based on reports from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) one could conclude we are watching a 15-round boxing match between the Heavyweight Class Russia and the Lightweight Class Ukraine. After about ten rounds, both fighters appear so punch-drunk that neither has the strength to deliver a knock-out blow. **

Such a state makes for boring TV and the once riveted audience is drifting away to watch what the Israelis must do to prevent further surprise terror attacks by Hamas from Gaza. While archeology shows that Jews have inhabited the Holy Land for over 3,000 years, some people refuse to believe that the Palestinians are today’s invaders/occupiers.

In 1948, the U.N. included the Negev Desert as part of the new State of Israel. Israeli settlers found ways to make the desert bloom. In 1967, after Israel won the Six-day War, it found itself in possession of Gaza and the West Bank of the Jordan River. Hoping for peace, in 2005, Israel pulled all of its troops and even its settlers out of Gaza and gave Gaza to the Arabs living there.

Millions of dollars of humanitarian aid flowed into Gaza; however, the PLO leadership pocketed much of the money and spent the rest on rockets to fire into Israel and for tunnels to get under Israel’s defensive barriers. Money intended to improve the infrastructure of Gaza went up in rocket smoke.

Recently, former President Obama opined that the people of Gaza are living under "unbearable" occupation. Hello! The Israelis left Gaza 18 years ago. Gaza is "occupied" by Hamas. Again, some people believe whatever they want to believe.

*U.S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson, 1917.

**Suggested reading: War of Attrition, by William Philpott, 2014.

©2023. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com