Keep Going. This Too Shall Pass.

This article was originally published by Doug “Uncola” Lynn at The Toll Online

Like the weather when a storm approaches, or as the seasons turn, or waves pounding on a shoreline, any deviations are measured and compared by speed and intensity. The same can be said for headlines: Omnibus, discouraged Deplorables, rumors of war, prospects of peace, economic bubbles, fluctuating markets, and political intrigue.  Round and round it goes; when it ends, nobody knows. It’s a time of transition; and when traveling over mountaintops, through valleys, and on rough seas, no one has all of the answers.

Even when looking at maps.

The books, “Generations” (1992) and “The Fourth Turning“ (1997), were written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. These recent explorers identified recorded cycles of history and categorized them across multiple cultures and eras. In both books, historical timelines were analyzed and populations were correlated to specific life-cycles labeled as generational types. Strauss and Howe additionally addressed the concept of time in the context of both circular and linear perspectives and defined what is called a “saeculum” as a “long human life” measuring roughly 80 to 90 years. Every saeculum is comprised of four turnings, each lasting around 20 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within the historical cycles, or turnings, as follows.

The generations experience each turning according their life stage; and the Seasons (i.e. order of Turnings # 1 -4) are identified by each generation as they reach middle-age. Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events. The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and documented consistencies are delineated by the authors.

In America, since the end of the late sixteenth-century, there have been four full “cycles” (i.e. saeculums) as follows:

1.) Colonial Cycle

2.) Revolutionary Cycle

3.) Civil War Cycle

4.) World War Cycle

In every Fourth-Turning, or Crisis period, within all of the above saeculums, American society experienced great upheavals and war. Moreover, like progressively burgeoning tsunamis rising and crashing upon the sands of time, each consecutive American Fourth-Turning Crisis was more devastating than the last.

America’s last crisis occurred during the years of 1929 through 1945; a turbulent transition period whereby the nation experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war.

Now it’s our turn. Time’s up. According to Neil Howe, this current Fourth Turning began in September 2008 and is projected to last until around 2030.

All we can do ride it out the best we can. Trying to individually affect a Fourth Turning would be like lassoing the wind or reversing an ocean’s tide. It can’t be done. With this in mind, it is best for us prepare and adapt by battening down our hatches and adjusting our sails.

Whether we are climbing mountains, descending into valleys, or being tossed about on stormy seas, know that the Presidency of Donald J. Trump is a storm. By accident or design, he has shaken the foundations of geopolitics in ways few could have forecasted less than two years ago.

Although I am first and foremost a Better-than-Hillaryite, I was always cautiously optimistic about Trump. This does not make me a Trumpster, per se. I’ve called him the Oompah Loompah Man, a Reality TV Star, the Orange One, etc., and I’ve previously written about him as the manifestation of one of the following three possibilities:

1.) The Real Thing

2.) Serving the agenda of the global financial elite unwittingly

3.) Controlled opposition as a Judas Goat or Trojan Horse

Time reveals everything; and people are known by their actions, not by their words. The same can be said for events.

Much has transpired in American politics over the past year and a lot of it has been good for Trump voters. Yet, in his recent Omnibus signing speech, Trump acted like a man in a hurry, with more important things on his mind. Obviously, his signature on that steaming pile of shit pissed off a lot of former Deplorables, including one of his most avid advocates, Ann Coulter.

What was Trump thinking? He signed his name while sounding like Br’er’ Rabbit pleading not to be thrown into the brier-patch.  Trump wanted the military funded. And now it appears he desires to build The Wall, as a priority of national security, using the defense budget.

Did Br’er Rabbit Trump, outsmart the Establishment’s Tar-Baby? Or do the globalists have photos of Stormy Daniels spanking him in his underwear? Could it be the swamp is too mucked and the mountains too high for a lone, art-of-the-deal making, 6-level-chess playing, billionaire wizard and his staff?

What’s going on?

Transitions.

Appearances are not always what they seem and Occam’s Razor, at times, loses its edge. But, if past history is any guide, it may not be wise to underestimate Trump; even if paying for the $1.3 trillion Omnibus Bill will be like America’s children climbing Mt. Everest in bare feet.

Multiple forces have been aligned against Trump from the moment he first rode down his escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. And now, every day, he’s still here driving all of my sworn enemies batshit crazy, one Tweet at a time.

The famous underworld attorney extraordinaire, Roy Cohn, in a 1984 interview claimed Trump was the closest thing to a genius he had ever met in his life. Thirty-two years after that statement by Cohn, Trump became President of the United States while being outspent two to one, against a rabidly hostile media, in opposition to colluding officials in the United States’ FBI, DoJ, and State Department; plus, with zero support from all Democrats and a significant percentage of Republicans.

Transitions, indeed. Tightrope walking is more like it.

Today, Trump stands high up on the mountain in the middle of a political blizzard. He is surrounded by the gale force winds of a phony Russian election hacking narrative, a sinister special council investigation, and allegations ranging from obstruction of justice to being spanked by porn star with a Forbes magazine.

I couldn’t make that shit up if I tried.

Now, according to a report in Politico (hardly a conservative publication), a majority of Americans believe the Deep State manipulates U.S. policies:

The majority of the country believes a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate national policy, according to a Monmouth Poll released Monday.

Of the 803 adults polled, 27 percent said they believe the unelected group known as the deep state definitely exists. An additional 47 percent said it probably exists. Sixteen percent said it probably does not exist and 5 percent said they believe it definitely does not exist.

Although most people may consider the Deep State as the “administrative state”, or the “establishment”, one wonders how many of the sheeple would have been half-awakened if not for Trump. I say “half-awakened” because most know nothing of the round table groups as referred to by the historian, Carroll Quigley, or the secret societies as referenced by former president John F. Kennedy. This means the majority of Americans remain naïve, controlled, and at the whim of True Power.

But what about Trump?

Our president is either who he professes to be, or he is not. You either trust him, or you don’t. It could be he is playing the power game the best he can and prioritizing actualities that we can’t see for purposes we don’t know; or he’s puppet, or imbecilic sell-out leading us down to a dead-end on the primrose path.

Call me quixotic, but I remain cautiously hopeful. I remain so in spite of the warhawk John Bolton, Trump’s new war cabinet, and his latest hardliner stance with Russia. Why? Well, similar to the way I rejected solipsism in college for fear of being too lonely, I now refuse to despair over Trump’s personality swings because I enjoy the view.

Is he controlled opposition? Or controlled demolition?

Either way, I have nothing to lose and nowhere else I’d rather be at this time. There’s not one damn thing I can do to prevent Russian bombs so I will , instead, wait patiently for the imminent Inspector General’s report; which is said to contain some pure TNT.

What a panoramic scene that will be.

Will the revelations of Michael Horwitz’s report turn the tide for Trump and make America great again? Hope springs eternal. Or, it could be the global elite will trick Trump into cannonading the Cossacks in order to conclude any conversations on corruption in our country. Who knows? The elite bankers could also crash the economy, like Kondratieff and Elliot Grand Supercycle waves, on history’s rocky shore; leaving Trump in a rumpled heap right next to the bleached white bones of Herbert Hoover.

The winter of this Fourth Turning’s discontent will undoubtedly deliver war and economic turmoil; and not necessarily in that order. But what will ensue? Constitutional Law or tyranny?

Time reveals all things; and, what happens after the release of the Inspector General’s report will be very telling.  Why? Because transitions are roads to revelations.

So keep going, watch, and see.

On the way, however, look for any false flags and know this: Tyranny wants you controlled or dead; it is, in fact, right behind you, and up just ahead. It also really, really, really wants your guns. If you don’t believe me, just look behind to see how fast we’ve traveled from Parkland, Florida to a full repeal of the Second Amendment.

Winter is here. A chill is in the air.

House Inquiry: ‘We Found NO EVIDENCE Trump Campaign Colluded With Russia’

The House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry into Russian election collusion, led by Mike Conaway, said the House agreed with US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the U.S.’s 2016 presidential election. However, Conaway also stated that there’s no evidence that Donald Trump or anyone associated with the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.

Conaway, the Texas Republican who has led the yearlong probe, announced on Monday the House committee had finished interviewing witnesses and planned to share a draft report with Democratic colleagues on Tuesday. “The bottom line: The Russians did commit active measures against our election in ’16, and we think they will do that in the future,” he told reporters. However, he added, “We found no evidence that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it colluded with the Russians.”

According to The BBC, Conway said Republicans conducting the inquiry did not find proof that any of the “Russian meddling” done by the Kremlin was to sway the election in favor of President Donald Trump. The inquiry is just one of several probes looking into alleged Russian meddling.

Investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee are ongoing. Mueller is leading a criminal investigation while the congressional inquiries serve to inform the public and make legislative recommendations.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied intervening in the 2016 election and the Democrats on the panel are expected to release their own report. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called the investigation “fundamentally incomplete,” mostly because it’s been a year and Schiff still hasn’t found evidence to back his allegations.  “By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority has placed the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its actions harshly,” Schiff said.

President Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, also tweeted about the House Republicans’ conclusion on Monday night.

THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

The responses to this tweet have shown that leftists in the United States are far from satisfied with ending an evidenceless 14-month-long investigation. But even though the inquiry may be drawing to a close, the political warfare is just getting started. Many on the left wonder if the committee did enough in their drawn-out investigation to find evidence of collusion.

That these are the key questions the left is pondering is good news for the Trump administration. The admission that no clear-cut evidence of “collusion” has been unearthed shows the weakness in the statement “We just didn’t look hard enough” and doesn’t carry that venomous of a political sting.

Conaway said the panel had done more than enough to find the evidence that just doesn’t exist.  They have spoken to 73 witnesses and reviewed more than 300,000 pages of documents. He said the worst the panel found was “perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment at taking meetings,” which appeared to refer to a June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer that has come under scrutiny but that was still not evidence of collusion, according to the House Intelligence Committee.

Leaked Obama Plan To Fight Election-Day Meddling Included ‘Martial Law’

Tyler Durden July 21st, 2017 Zero Hedge Read by 89 people

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com

Former US President Barack Obama has been criticized by both Republicans and fellow Democrats for withholding information about Russia’s alleged interference in the US presidential election – criticism that has only intensified since President Donald Trump triumphed over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November election.

Now, in yet another troubling sign that the Obama administration believed outside hacking groups posed a significant threat to the election, Time magazine reports that his administration had devised a detailed plan to fend off any cyberattacks that sought to falsify vote totals during the election. Obama has been criticized for not informing the American people about hacking attempts allegedly carried out by Russia-linked groups for fear of “rocking the boat” and damaging Clinton’s chances of victory.

Obama and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice

The 15-page plan, a copy of which was obtained by Time, stipulates that “in almost all potential cases of malicious cyber activity impacting election infrastructure, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments,” the governments would have primary jurisdiction to respond.

And if an attack were launched, the White House had several “enhanced procedures” it had prepared to fight back against the attackers.

The document “establishes the federal response plan for a cyber incident that is (or a group of related cyber incidents that together are) likely to result in demonstrable impact to election infrastructure during the 2016 United States presidential election. Furthermore, Obama’s plan appears to include contingencies for martial law…

“Though the plan emphasized the vital role that local authorities would play in combating the hackers, clarifying that they would have primary jurisdiction during an attack, it noted that for the deployment of “armed federal law enforcement agents” who would be deployed to polling places if hackers managed to halt voting.

It also foresaw the deployment of “Active and Reserve” military forces and members of the National Guard “upon a request from a federal agency and the direction of the Secretary of Defense or the President.”

The plan also authorized the creation of the federal “Cyber Response Group,’ which has the authority to form a Cyber Unified Coordination Group to coordinate these activities

The Department of Homeland Security established a committee to coordinate a response to any attempted election hacking. The group includes seven additional agencies on top of the FBI. They are:

• DHS, National Protection and Programs Directorate.


• National Association of Secretaries of State


• State nad Local Election Officials


• US Election Assistance Commission


• National Institute of Standards and Technology


• Department of Justice


• The FBI


• Department of Defense Federal Voting Assistance Program

Even though Obama had no intention of sharing this information with the public, the report ironically included a subsection outlining the administration’s policy for disclosing information about cyberattacks to the public. In anticipation of an attack, the group would develop integrated public relations guidance that seeks to maintain election infrastructure. The public relations guidance developed by those agencies will be fully coordinated before Nov. 1 2016, with the NSC to ensure that appropriate spokesperson re identified, remarks are fully consistent and joint messages are used in any potential cyber incident.”

On election day, the group set up a national monitoring center at FBI headquarters. The command center, which operated between 6 am and midnight, served as the launchpad for any counterattacks.

By Election Day, with widespread coverage of Russian hacking and then-candidate Donald Trump’s assertions that the vote would be rigged against him, Gallup found that only 30% of Americans had faith in the honesty of elections, while 69% did not.

Since news first broke that Russian-backed hackers had tried to infiltrate voting systems in 21 states, several notable Democrats – House intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff among them – have criticized Obama’s unwillingness to disclose the information to the public.

First it was Susan Rice illegally ‘unmasking” Trump associates to try and create some illusory heft behind the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. Then the public was informed about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s meeting with former President Bill Clinton and an investigation was launched. Today, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein suggested that former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to leak his memo about a meeting between himself and President Trump – the one in which the president appeared to lean on his top cop to drop the bureau’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn – was improper.

This, combined with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s announcement that he’s examining Trump’s finances as the next step in his investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, begs the question: When will Congress and the FBI switch gears and investigate the DNC?

Read the report in full below:

354227068 Russia Hacking President Obama s Previously Undisclosed Election Day Plan by zerohedge on Scribd

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com

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WaPost to Retire ‘Fake News’ Term Because They’re Failing Miserably as it Keeps Exposing Their Lies

After spearheading an unctuous plan to discredit alternative media and reporting not in lockstep with the liberal establishment paradigm, the Washington Post — whose hypocrisy on the matter doomed the campaign from jump street — sanctimoniously declared, “It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news.’”

“So, here’s a modest proposal for the truth-based community,” wrote WaPo’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, on Sunday.

“Let’s get out the hook and pull that baby off stage. Yes: Simply stop using it.

“Instead, call a lie a lie. Call a hoax a hoax. Call a conspiracy theory by its rightful name. After all, ‘fake news’ is an imprecise expression to begin with.”

Imprecise is a criminal mischaracterization of the chaos and confusion wrought when the Post threw journalism into a fan late last year.

Of course, that had been journalistic standard operating procedure for time immemorial — until WaPo blazed the precipitous trail into anti-Russia, Fake News propaganda following Hillary Clinton’s crushing electoral defeat — a result catching off guard only corporate outlets who predicted the opposite.

Had mainstream behemoths like the Washington Post and New York Times bothered consistently covering the stupefying corruption infesting the Democrat establishment — as revealed in the contents of documents published by Wikileaks — it’s debatable whether Donald Trump would have won.

Tone-deaf all Hillary, all the time corporate media coverage during this election cycle led swaths of the nation to turn to alternative sources for responsible journalism — whether for fair reporting on emails proving the Dems sought to undermine Bernie Sanders, to get a conservative viewpoint on Trump, or simply for factual reports on Wikileaks publications.

As bewilderment lingered over Clinton’s embarrassing loss, mainstream presstitutes hastened to point fingers at everyone but themselves — and hardest targeted were those outlets who’d failed to blindly lionize the former secretary of state.

In a hapless and immediately viral article on November 24, WaPo proffered a mind-numbingly untenable — and subsequently partially retracted — assertion in a headline stating, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.”

Citing the suspiciously nascent organization PropOrNot as one source and known Russophobe Foreign Policy Research Institute as another, the once-illustrious Post — inexplicably eschewing every semblance of journalistic due diligence — refused to name individual researchers or offer even the frailest of explanations of methodology in asserting:

“The flood of ‘fake news’ this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.”

PropOrNot, the Post claimed, a “nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds,” identified “more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season.”

So bereft of verifiable evidence was WaPo’s brash ‘hit piece,’ journalist and  Intercept co-founder, Glenn Greenwald, snarkily tweeted,

“Yes, the WashPost is saying: some people who we won’t identify, using methodologies we won’t describe, created This Important Blacklist!”

Yes, the WashPost is saying: some people who we won"t identify, using methodologies we won"t describe, created This Important Blacklist! https://t.co/4D9o5H7eEj

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 25, 2016

Compounding the recklessness, after half-heartedly retracting the embarrassing Russian propaganda incident, the Post proceeded to publish a now-notorious article, headlined, “Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House.”

“The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter,” the publication contended — failing to name these ‘officials’ or include a shred of proof their allegations could tread water.

It now appears likely these alleged officials cited by the Post were referencing the only recently published — and equally evidence-barren — putative intelligence community report accusing Russia and President Vladimir Putin, himself, of orchestrating an election meddling campaign.

But, in advance of the public debut of the dubious report as a whole, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security coughed up a disclaimer-emblazoned dispatch under questionable pretenses it offered proof The Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails to fork over information to Wikileaks.

Speaking more to tech security firms seeking ways to protect systems from hacking, however, the brief’s imprudent information panicked the unsavvy — and provided yet further kindling for WaPo’s Chicken Little-ism.

“Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say,” read the original, altogether alarming, and utterly untrue headline. An order of magnitude more dangerous than wantonly calling out The Russians, had there been an actual hack of the U.S. electrical grid, the Obama administration would have grounds to justify military force against Russia.

But it didn’t happen. At all. No one — Russian or otherwise — hacked Vermont or put Americans in peril.

State officials later said a laptop inside the utility might have been penetrated — but the device wasn’t even connected to the grid. As typical for the Washington Post’s clickbait Fake News, however, the damage had been done.

Because the original now bears only a truncated editor’s note and a delicately retouched headline, stating, “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say” — and, additionally, WaPo buried the full retraction article at the bottom of the front page — millions of readers have been scammed into fearing a non-existent threat.

Corporate media have been the most vocal purveyors of Fake News in all of journalism — and the Washington Post would have done well to consider no entity is ever too big to fail. Indeed, the larger and more imperious the entity, the more likely the downfall will be a spectacle to behold.

WaPo and its ilk outgrew their journalistic expediency when they began the bombastic war against Fake News — while pushing out Fake News as fast as their reporters could misconstrue fact, or fabricate threats based on lies.

And that’s precisely where the Post royally failed — when the outlet began hurling Fake News stones at legitimate independent media organizations under the assumption its own towering glass house of horrendously fraudulent reporting could survive the storm.

Notably, Sullivan’s attempt to rein in the Fake News Russian bear intimates the Post has no intention of following its own advice — her “modest proposal” targets the curiously-termed “truth-based community” — evincing a preemptive bid to ostracize outlets continuing to accurately employ the term against the corporate press.

In short, WaPo doesn’t want to be called on its falsehoods anymore, because — in light of its recent track record — Fake News is both a booming business, as well as an unwinnable war. When reputation hangs in the balance, withdrawing and re-describing your most effective weapon is akin to a Hail Mary — a last ditch shot at wiping the pie from your face before it crusts over.

This war on Fake News, war on information, war on independent media, war on speech — all of this — is a war on dissent. WaPo’s Red Scaremongering and vacuous propaganda don’t pass the litmus test — neither does its feeble effort to shut Pandora’s Box.

Corporate Media’s ‘Fake News’ War is Backfiring by Showing the World the Power of Alt Media

As you’ve likely heard by now, Facebook has taken its war against ‘fake news’ to a whole other level — employing third party media and fact-checking organizations to judge whether news items are legitimate — to the consternation of countless users who see the platform overstepping red lines.

Servile corporate media immediately parroted the wealth of benefits Facebook’s plan will ostensibly provide, from an alert and gateway system forced onto articles deemed “disputed,” to the organizations making the ‘kiss of death’ judgment call: Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and ABC News.

Anyone with passing knowledge of bias in media is probably spitting out their coffee — all four organizations are notoriously left-leaning and liberal, and the list includes no outlets with any other of myriad ideological tilts.

Indeed, right-leaning outlets from Breitbart to the Drudge Report, as well as the sizable alternative media community — who, collectively, held to higher journalistic standards throughout the election cycle than “old media” titans like the New York Times and Washington Post — quickly condemned the unabashed bias imbued in Facebook’s plan.

Mark Zuckerberg, a large consensus concluded, just declared war on dissent — if not information, itself.

But in an article intended to criticize purveyors of ‘fake news’ and applaud the social media platform’s oh-so-noble efforts to strike such outlets from the American interwebs, The Atlantic’s Kaveh Waddell posited, “Will Facebook’s Fake News Warning Become a Badge of Honor?”

Waddell asks this question, the reader doesn’t discover until more than halfway through the article, through a lens of myopic bias — if not outright scorn — against anyone who dare question the motives of Facebook or its choice of fact-checkers.

“There’s a danger that people who are disinclined to trust traditional sources of information will treat Facebook’s warnings as a badge of honor,” Waddell clarifies. “If fact-checking organizations deem a story questionable,  they might be more likely to read and share it, rather than less. There’s reason to believe this group might think of itself as a counterculture, and take the position that anything that ‘the man’ rejects must have a grain of subversive truth to it.”

For a journalist in a nationally-regarded publication to display such seething condescension toward a category of people perhaps most critical to preventing a narrowing of news media to a single viewpoint is criminally self-interested, indeed — evincing the paranoia among old media to validate its reporting in the wake of horrendous election coverage.

Regardless of his patronizing tone, Waddell’s question presents what might be the thinnest silver lining to having a Facebook-approved information gatekeeper — news deemed “disputed” will be viewed by non-establishment thinkers as bearing the Scarlet Letter C — censored for being problematic for the political elite.

In other words, this soft censorship could facilely create a Streisand Effect — whereby efforts to suppress content backfire and instead draw greater attention to something than it ever would have received otherwise.

Waddell and the Atlantic, among others, like the Daily Beast — known mouthpieces for the Democratic establishment scrambling to blame Hillary Clinton’s loss on everything but the kitchen sink of a horribly flawed campaign — realize to some degree the threat posed by legitimate criticism of the accepted narrative.

This battle has literally nil to do with fake news — or even Russia — and everything to do with the power of dissent.

Of course, a brazen irony in Facebook’s purge of random items is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments on the subject prior to mass Democratic and corporate media hysteria over iterations Donald Trump won because Russia:

“Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.”

Zuckerberg’s protestations and resistance to acknowledge ‘fake news’ as influencing the outcome of the election quickly melted under pressure from the pro-Hillary camp — and evaporated as Clintonites and a smattering of miffed Republicans switched gears and ratcheted up New Red Scare propagandizing.

When utterly unfounded, un-researched, and unverified reporting by the Washington Post termed the collective body of independent, right-slanted, or pro-Jill Stein media organizations as either active agents of Russia or the Putin’s “useful idiots,” those outlets formed an implicit bond for having been scurrilously blacklisted.

Once the Post’s thinly-veneered paper tiger went down in flames for it being impossible to substantiate, the outlet threw journalistic integrity out the window and proffered another unprovable paragon of irresponsibility: “Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House.”

This gem swears CIA officials have performed an extensive assessment of the election and can prove individuals with ties to the Russian government as responsible for submitting documents on the Democratic Party to Wikileaks for publication — an allegation Julian Assange emerged from the shadows to dispel in an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday.

Wikileaks — whose published documents have never been proven inauthentic — found itself on the Post’s ‘Russian agent blacklist.’

In other words, by relying on user-reporting and biased outlets to flag articles means any “disputed” contents feasibly earned that label on a subjective — not hard and fast — basis.

But should there be any labeling — read: moderate censorship — of articles and items by a social media behemoth who claims impartiality while rubbing elbows with Democratic heavy-hitters. All grumblings on Facebook’s status as a public entity aside, when your platform acts as the primary news aggregator for millions, there is a staunch obligation to preserve the rights of everyone to speak their version of truth.

To be honest, that includes outlets spewing horrendously false news items as the real thing.

In this new age of information aptly deemed the post-truth era by the Oxford Dictionaries this year, the onus of consequence for sharing any erroneous or fabricated information falls squarely on the shoulders of the fecklessly lazy who don’t bother checking sources and hyperlinks — or, in most cases, read more than the title — before disseminating information online.

Because that basic duty was apparently too much for so many to bear, we’re now all faced with the Huxleyan prospect of being spoon fed vanilla government propaganda disguised as news — while legitimate news earns the dystopic “disputed” label.

Maybe, just maybe, Waddell and the others have it all wrong. Maybe the imminent Streisand Effect will thwart Facebook gatekeeping in its tracks. Maybe people have wearied of the perilous penchant for categorization. Maybe this Scarlet Lettering of dissenting viewpoints will disgust the wary and students of history.

Maybe Facebook will see its fast-approaching, inevitable demise and decide the suppression of information does not a profitable business move make — or maybe the “disputed” info plot represents the ultimate poison pill.