If There’s No Reckoning Over The Russia Hoax, It Will Happen Again The Federalist, Mar 27, 2019, Sumantra Maitra
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But this shouldn’t be over. Every time incessant attacks on conservatives are discovered to be unfounded, there are calls for national unity. As if it is a burden on the falsely accused to heal the wounds, not the false accusers.
But that needs to end. Otherwise, there won’t be any balance or sanity restored. Vengeance is the purest form of emotion, according to the ancient Hindu epic of Mahabharata. Of course, it is a transliteration of the ancient Sanskrit word, which doesn’t mean vengeance in the way we know it in modern times, but the philosophy behind it is clear.
Without accountability and punitive deterrence, there is no justice, and without justice, society implodes. From the hate crime hoaxers intending to simply “start a conversation†to the activist media bullying young kids, to academia providing fuel to the fire to sell their books, to the serial celebrity rapist-filled industry sanctimoniously lecturing on public morality, to public intellectuals fueling mass hysteria to bureaucrats trying to undermine a legitimate government—the single constant in all of these is a lack of accountability and pushback.
It is time to ponder the same philosophical question that vexed ancient warriors on North Indian plains 5,000 years ago: How do we restore balance in society and bring about the fear of justice? The answer was that there needs to be a reckoning. A punitive deterrence needs to be established to restore sanity and order.
What started this hysteria was a pre-election federal investigation based on a highly dubious dossier, funded by rival campaigns, with the implicit support of a section of the ideological bureaucracy, supported by legions of celebrities and public intellectuals worried about their declining influence on the broader American populace. There must be a reckoning for all of them.
Sumantra Maitra is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a writer for The Federalist. His research is in great power-politics and neorealism. You can find him on Twitter @MrMaitra.More:
https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/27/theres-no-reckoning-russia-hoax-will-happen/