All those that study fascism say "beware the little changes" well we better heed that; and quick
This banana republic administration has become so normalized that a lot of us have become lulled into reacting the way they want us to react. I've noticed less than a few people have pointed out the real meat of this Susan Rice stuff. No, it's not that it's a nothingburger story. I'll lay it out real simple:
1:WH in hot water.
2:WH dredges up a nothing story that sounds suspect (mainly because the intricacies of our intelligence agencies are too complicated for the layman), but is a nothing story nonetheless.
3:WH releases this story.
4.Contacts in conservative media are primed to pump hot air into the imaginary balloon that is this story (we all know from that Paul Ryan thing that the WH has a direct line to Fox).
5.Smaller distributors of conservative media hear the dog whistle and drum up outrage to fill their coffers, dwindling from a pathetic inexcusable republican administration.
a). The president loves rightwing propaganda, and a media drought accompanied by the his abandonment from more centrist organizations, creates an incentive for him to increase their content deliberately.
b). I'm sure his staff has financial holdings in at least a couple of them.
c). MOST IMPORTANTLY the WH created a story and fed it into state-aligned private companies for it's own political benefits. Essentially a dry run for an under-the-skin webbing of propaganda networks. The administration legitimizes a story, the rw media financially benefits, and the administration gets attention diverted to its enemies.
This is the state-run media of 21st century. It's a system not easily comparable to those of the past, such is the case with the advances in the way people consume information. But our failure to identify the risks and bring those risks to the attention of the general public is risky and borderline negligent. We saw this with how Russian trolls and fake news hit the mainstream AFTER identifying those problems truly mattered the most.
