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Key impeachment witness Fiona Hill told Congress the Russians targeted both President Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 to ensure whoever won the presidency would be damaged when taking office.

Hill, the Trump administration's former Russia expert on the National Security Council, said Thursday the Russians targeted both presidential candidates in 2016 "to delegitimize our entire presidency.

The goal of the Russians was really to put whoever became the president, by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale, under a cloud, she said.

And the political conflict that has resulted was just what Russia wanted.

They seed misinformation, they seed doubt, they have everybody questioning the legitimacy of a presidential candidate, be it President Trump or potentially President [Hillary] Clinton, that they would pit one side of our electorate against the other, that they would pit one party against the other, she said.

The Russians essentially bet on both sides, hoping whoever won the presidential election in 2016 would also experience some discomfort, that they would be beholden to them in some way, that they would create just the kind of chaos that we've seen in our politics. And she warned against giving the Russians more fodder that they can use against us in 2020. Hill said continued efforts to paint Trump's 2016 win as illegitimate played into Russian President Vladimir Putin's hands.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2017 that Russian military intelligence was responsible for hacking thousands of Democratic emails and providing those stolen records to WikiLeaks to harm Clinton, a claim bolstered by special counsel Robert Muellers investigation. Independent investigations by the House and Senate also concluded the Kremlin interfered in 2016.

Hill testified behind closed doors last month that British ex-spy Christopher Steeles controversial dossier was a rabbit hole that very likely contained Russian disinformation and Steele could have been played by the Russians. Republicans raised her prior testimony only briefly during Thursday's hearing.

Steele's salacious and unverified dossier was used extensively by the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants to monitor Trump campaign associate Carter Page beginning in October 2016. Those warrants are now part of the investigation by Michael Horowitz, Justice Department inspector general, into allegations of abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Attorney General William Barr told the Senate in May that he was concerned about possible Russian disinformation in Steeles dossier, and former CIA Moscow station chief Daniel Hoffman told the Washington Examiner the Steele dossier was likely disinformation from FSB, the successor agency to the KGB.

Hill said Thursday she'd been shown a copy of Steele's dossier by Strobe Talbott of the Brookings Institution, where she'd worked, a day before BuzzFeed published it in January 2017.

I almost fell over when I discovered that he was doing this report, Hill said in October of Steele, who she worked with when he led MI6's Russia desk a decade ago.

Hill said she met with Steele in 2016 and said Steele was clearly very interested in building up a client base," which she said made him a target for Russia.

"Hes obviously out there soliciting information, Hill said. What a great opportunity to, basically, you know, present him with information that hes looking for that can be couched in some truth and some disinformation.

The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS for $50,000 per month through the Perkins Coie law firm. Fusion GPS then hired Steele, who was paid roughly $168,000. But watchdog groups allege the Clinton campaign purposely concealed the hiring of Fusion GPS and Steele. Perkins Coie was paid more than $12 million between 2016 and 2017 for its work representing Clinton and the DNC.

Steeles Democratic funding, his strong desire for Trump to lose, and possible flaws with his dossier were not revealed to the FISA court.

I don't believe it's appropriate for him to have been hired to do this, Hill said in October. And, again, I think I already expressed my shock and surprise when I learned that he had been involved in this.

On Thursday, Hill also condemned what she saw as the "fictional narrative" advocated by some Republicans that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in 2016. Republican Rep. Devin Nunes pushed back by pointing to the March 2018 "Report on Russian Active Measures" put together by himself and the Republicans who led the House Intelligence Committee at the time, and said it was possible Russia and Ukraine both meddled, pointing in particular to the release of the so-called "Black Ledger," which purported to show millions of dollars of payments connecting Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to pro-Kremlin former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Hill followed up Thursday afternoon about Ukrainian government officials who made disparaging comments about then-candidate Trump in 2016, noting they'd likely guessed wrong about who would win, but attempted to distinguish that from what Mueller called Russia's "sweeping and systematic" interference efforts.

During a July 25 phone call, which sparked a whistleblower complaint and impeachment proceedings, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "to do us a favor by looking into a CrowdStrike conspiracy theory. Trump then urged Zelensky to investigate the other thing, referring to allegations of corruption in Ukraine related to Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Hill testified Thursday there was no basis for the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and said it was likely Trump believed it because he was listening to his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, instead of his senior advisers.

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Impeachment witness Fiona Hill: Russia tried to damage both Trump and Clinton - Washington Examiner

Anthony Weiner changed the course of American history when he tweeted out a picture of his dick on May 27, 2011.

This is not an exaggeration. There is a direct line between Anthony Weiners penis and the rise of far-right media, the current state of the countrys biggest city, and the election of Donald Trump. Anthony Weiner is omnipresent over the last 10 years: It is inevitable that if there is a major political moment, Weiner is somewhere on its edges.

He personifies the decade in US politics: Weiner began the 2010s with roaring hope and ended it in total defeat. His scandal is unquestionably funny until you question it, then recognize how much personal tragedy undergirds the whole thing.

Huma Abedin and Weiner attend a cocktail reception following the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on April 30, 2011, in Washington, DC.

Weiner was one of the biggest Democratic stars of the early Obama years. Just before the start of the decade, in 2008, he was a dashing bachelor who had represented his New York City district in the House for about 10 years. His old roommate and good friend Jon Stewart hosted one of the most influential shows on TV. Considered a potential future mayor of New York City, at a minimum, he was one-half of a political power couple: In July 2010, he married Hillary Clintons close aide Huma Abedin at a wedding officiated by Bill Clinton.

Marrying a politician can be tough, Bill Clinton reportedly teased at the wedding, because its easy to distrust them.

At the turn of the decade, Weiner was everywhere. By 2010, with his infectious energy and charisma, he had begun to outshine his former boss and mentor, Sen. Chuck Schumer. Late that July, he became one of the first members of Congress to go truly viral online, with a speech on the House floor screaming at Republicans for not backing a bill to give health care aid to 9/11 recovery workers a model speech for how to use your platform to own the new politics of the social media era.

Then, in May 2011, things changed. A link from a third-party image host called yfrog appeared on Weiners Twitter account a link that led to a picture of his underwear-draped penis. The way the picture was released, how it spread, and who spread it was the first pivot point for Weiners decade.

Hacked or hung? asked BigGovernment, Andrew Breitbarts site, which amplified the picture. Weiner initially said he was the victim of a hack; Breitbart and others kept digging in.

The days following the release of the first picture featured some of the first-ever high-octane internet sleuthing, with professional and amateur journalists scouring Yahoo forums and social media for forensic evidence of what Weiner was really up to. Even before the initial tweet, a group of right-wing activists had been carefully tracking Weiners tweets, a practice that was a novelty then and is standard now. Results included: shirtless Weiner pics, radio hosts tweeting an alleged picture of Weiners penis obtained from Breitbart, and much theorizing about the woman Weiner appeared to have tweeted at.

By June 6, under immense pressure, Weiner decided to hold a press conference in New York. The first person at the podium was Andrew Breitbart, clomping right over the decaying remains of the wall separating what was online and what was off.

Breitbart, who said he was in New York coincidentally, strolled up to the stage at a Sheraton hotel before all of the assembled press waiting for Weiner to show up, introduced himself, and took questions from reporters. He asked Weiner for a personal apology for what hed said about his reporting. When Weiner came to the podium, he confessed that he had sent sexual photos and messages to multiple women online over a period of years, and said he deeply regretted his actions but would not resign from Congress. He announced he would resign from Congress 10 days later.

There was poetry here: Anthony Weiner exiting in disgrace, Andrew Breitbart arriving triumphant. Breitbart would die less than a year later, but it was just the start for his far-right media empire, launched with Anthony Weiner rocket fuel. By 2016, the platform and network Breitbart had created (and that some argue spun away from what hed intended) would help revamp nationalist and racist politics in America.

Weiners dick pic downfall also helped inspire the first true Sext Panic. Even though the word does not appear to have not made it into any major dictionaries yet, it has now been splashed across news stories nationwide, the Atlantic wrote in a June 2011 exploration of where the word came from. According to Google Trends, interest in sexting was on the upswing by the time Weiner left Congress, peaking in July 2014.

Weiner was ready for a revival by 2013. In the 2010s, nobody was ever truly done and there was always a comeback to be found, even if it meant dancing on network TV. Weiner and Abedin opened their lives up for a New York Times profile that April, and he acknowledged that he was looking at that years New York City mayoral race. I want to ask people to give me a second chance, he told the Times. He formally announced his campaign a month later, saying hed learned some tough lessons. The race was crowded, but Weiner had a clear chance around the time he announced, he was polling second in the primary. A documentary crew was filming his comeback.

He did shit like this:

But he also did shit like this:

In July, new photos and messages showed up from Weiner acting under the confounding alias Carlos Danger. The pictures were first published by the Dirty, an early demonstration of the power even previously unknown online media could have in politics. At a press conference soon after publication, Weiner, with Abedin beside him, admitted that he hadnt stopped sexting after he resigned from Congress. There is no question that what I did is wrong, he said. This behavior is behind me.

Around that same time, a former Weiner campaign intern wrote a tell-all about her experience on the campaign for the New York Daily News, saying that the very messy campaign struggled to hire and retain staff interested in more than just getting in with Abedin ahead of a likely Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016. The Weiner campaign went apeshit on the intern in response. The tell-all was an early published byline for the intern, Olivia Nuzzi, who would go on to become one of the decades best political journalists.

Weiner campaigns outside of the 72nd Street subway stop in Manhattan's Upper West Side, on July 2, 2013.

Weiners mayoral campaign began to quickly sink. The comeback was over, the documentary became something darker (you can now stream it on Netflix). The collapse, a complete circus that pulled in even more national media than New York normally gets, helped open up a path for Bill de Blasio, a long-shot leftist. In a backward way, Weiner wound up having a role in one of the first big progressive electoral victories of the decade (your mileage may vary on what has happened under de Blasio since).

But nothing proved Weiners incidental influence more than the 2016 presidential election.

With Abedin working as one of Clintons closest aides on her campaign, Weiner in 2016 began to pundit more on TV. New public appearances for Weiner could mean only one thing: new leaked pictures of Anthony Weiners sexts, this time in a New York Post spread with a photo of a shirtless Weiner in bed with his 4-year-old son.

At first, the new sexting allegations were merely personally devastating: the scandal pulled Weiner's personal failings back into the news and Abedin announced in late August that she and Weiner would separate.

The political devastation followed: By late September, Weiner was under investigation by the FBI for a whole separate episode involving his sexually explicit communication with a 15-year-old. As part of that investigation, the FBI seized Weiners iPad, cellphone, and laptop. On that laptop, investigators found emails that Abedin had forwarded to Weiner that the FBI deemed pertinent to its previously closed investigation into how Clinton used a private email server.

Just days before the presidential election, James Comey, then the FBI director, informed Congress in a letter that the FBI had found emails on the laptop, reigniting the cooled Clinton scandal. The letter, FiveThirtyEights Nate Silver wrote in 2017, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clintons lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College. As Silver and others have since argued, without the letter Trump very likely would not be president. If the letter never existed, I believe the evidence shows I would have won, Clinton said in 2017.

If I could change time, Hillary Clinton wouldnt have used a private email server, Comey, now a too-earnest Trump critic, said at 2018s New Yorker festival. Anthony Weiner certainly wouldnt have a laptop maybe wouldnt have even been born.

After his collapse, Weiner still held the imagination of the tabloid press and its giant audience a perfect celebrity heel for an era that loves to hate, or at least revel in someone elses embarrassment. On Nov. 4, 2016, four days before Clinton would lose the presidency to Trump, the New York Post published exclusive photos of Weiner in treatment for sex addiction at an equine therapy center in Tennessee. Weiner, the Post reported, turned decidedly glum when approached by The Post and asked for comment. He refused to say a word before riding slowly off.

The following May, Weiner pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor. "I accept full responsibility for my conduct," he said in court while crying. "I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse."

Abedin took her young son and mother-in-law to see Weiner in prison for Fathers Day last year, and the Daily Mail had a photographer capture every moment; you can see Weiners son carrying an Amazon package, and you can see Abedin sitting alone in a car. Weiner served 18 months in prison and was released this spring.

The dashing bachelor of 2008 is a bachelor again, but now his dates are subject to jeering in Page Six; Who would date him? an unnamed source in the paper asked this summer.

Weiner's influence is stamped all over the 2010s. He helped create social media politics, fully embraced it, and was quickly swallowed by it. He rose on YouTube and crashed on Twitter. He was the protagonist of American politics first sexting scandal and helped elevate Andrew Breitbart and nontraditional journalism in the process. His comeback attempt was the kind of moral theater the 2010s lived for. It sucked in national camera crews and it wound up leading to a leftist mayor of New York. Through an inexplicable inability to control his online impulses, he further entangled Hillary Clinton in her email investigations at exactly the wrong time and altered the 2016 election.

Weiners life choices are the butterfly effect of the 2010s. If he didnt make the decisions he made, if the former director of the FBI had his way and hed never even existed, would our politics look anything like they do right now? Would Donald Trump be president?

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Anthony Weiner Is The Most Important Politician Of The 2010s - BuzzFeed News

Thanksgiving Day is 110 days away from Floridas presidential primary. The (relatively few) polls of the state have shown former Vice President Joe Biden leading a three-way race for the Democratic nomination, ahead of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But theres a political lifetime to go.

Heres a list of who else led their primary races on Thanksgiving Day, and who won in the end:

Though former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced a tougher-than-expected challenge from Sanders, her lead in Florida was never in question. The eventual nominees support in Florida climbed above 50 percent in most polls starting in early November, and she didnt look back.

It was always a crowded field in 2016s race for Republican presidential nominee. But Donald Trump, now president, led Florida nearly as soon as he entered the race. For much of November 2015, according to RealClearPolitics, polls of the state showed about 30 percent of voters supporting Trump. On Thanksgiving Day, three other candidates still had double-digit support: Ben Carson (18 percent) and Senators Marco Rubio (17 percent) and Ted Cruz (11 percent).

Remember Herman Cain? The tea party candidate was, in fact, dead-even with Mitt Romney after leading a few polls in early November. Cain and Romney were each polling at around 25 percent in Florida, ahead of Newt Gingrich (14 percent). Romney eventually pulled ahead after Cain was accused of sexual harassment and suspended his campaign two months before the Florida primary and threw his support behind Gingrich.

The 2008 race was the last time a presidential candidate won the Florida primary but did not secure the nomination. Hillary Clinton led in the state from start to finish. Clinton carried a 27-point lead over Barack Obama in Florida on Thanksgiving and later won the state decisively.

Rudy Giuliani, now personal attorney to President Trump, was the early frontrunner for the 2008 Republican primary. Giuliani, who was all-in on Florida, regularly polled ahead of John McCain and Mitt Romney through the end of 2007. On Thanksgiving, he led Romney by 16 points, with McCain in a distant third. But McCain surged in the polls in January and won the state primary on his way to the partys nomination.

At this point in 2003, the Democratic primary was wide open. Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) led the field in Florida with just 21 percent of the state, according to a Mason-Dixon poll in November. His support quickly fell, as he polled at just 15 percent early in December and dropped out in February. John Kerry went on win the state easily.

Al Gore, who was the vice president at the time, had an easy time in the Democratic primary. According to a St. Petersburg Times / Miami Herald poll in November 1999, Gore led Bill Bradley by 22 points in the state at the time.

Then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush jumped out to frontrunner status early and polled at 59 percent in Florida in November 1999, a 35-point lead over John McCain. In the Republican primary, Bush won 44 states and Washington, D.C.

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Primaries arent all gravy. Heres who led Florida on Thanksgivings past. - Tampa Bay Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at an economic forum in Moscow on Nov. 20. "Thank God no one is accusing us anymore of interfering in the U.S. elections. Now they're accusing Ukraine," he said. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP hide caption

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at an economic forum in Moscow on Nov. 20. "Thank God no one is accusing us anymore of interfering in the U.S. elections. Now they're accusing Ukraine," he said.

Last summer, just days before former special prosecutor Robert Mueller publicly warned that the Kremlin would continue its interference in U.S. elections, Russian state television aired a 30-minute special report titled "Ukrainian Interference."

"It's time to start a new investigation into meddling by Ukraine, which from the start supported President Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton," said reporter Anna Afanasyeva. "So-called Russia-gate is turning into Ukraine-gate."

Weaving insinuation and unsubstantiated claims by Ukrainian lawmakers, the report pushed a narrative Trump had already embraced: that the Ukrainian government had intervened against him in 2016, and that Joe Biden, during his time as vice president, had been involved in a crooked scheme in Ukraine with his son Hunter.

Those accusations are the same ones being made by Trump's Republican allies. Democrats counter that Trump abused his presidential powers when he demanded Ukraine's new president investigate election interference and the Bidens in return for military assistance and a White House visit.

In her Nov. 21 testimony during the House Intelligence Committee's public impeachment hearing, Fiona Hill, Trump's former adviser on Eastern Europe on the National Security Council, admonished Republicans not to fall for the "fictional narrative" of Ukrainian interference spread by Russian intelligence agencies.

"Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them," Hill said. "In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests."

The Kremlin has largely refrained from commenting on the hearings. But the focus on Ukraine is a relief after the revelations and indictments of the Mueller investigation.

"Thank God nobody is accusing us anymore of interfering in U.S. elections," Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a Nov. 20 investment conference. "Now they're accusing Ukraine. Well, let them sort this out among themselves."

Putin welcomes the impeachment process, like any political turmoil in Western democracies, says Masha Lipman, a political analyst in Moscow.

"Whenever there is a division, the Kremlin tries to drive a wedge. Whenever there is a weakness, the Kremlin tries to take advantage of it," she says. "The impeachment proceedings certainly do not make America stronger."

Sowing domestic strife in competing nations is a hallmark of Russia's intelligence services, according to the annual report published this week by BIS, the Czech Republic's domestic intelligence agency.

"The key Russian goal is to manipulate decision-making processes and the individuals responsible for the decision-making in order to force the counterparty to conduct activities to weaken itself," the BIS report says.

Even if Russian intelligence agencies keep their tradecraft secret, the narratives that Hill warned about are constantly repeated by Russian government media.

Last Sunday, on state television's flagship "News of the Week" program, host Dmitry Kiselyov called the impeachment hearings "a big political show" and asserted that Trump's enemies were too busy taking him down to ask what exactly the Bidens had been up to in Ukraine.

Putin is hardly indifferent to what happens in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.

For centuries Ukraine was the jewel in the crown of the Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union. The mere prospect of Ukraine joining the European Union and NATO was enough to make Putin seize the strategic Crimean Peninsula and foment an armed insurgency in the east of the country in 2014.

By accident rather than design, Ukraine is playing a supporting role in Washington's impeachment drama. But for Russia, which way Ukraine goes is of central importance. Every misstep by Ukraine's pro-Western leaders is covered obsessively by Russian state TV, as if to demonstrate the perils of an alliance with powerful but fickle friends.

In early November, Putin said Ukraine shouldn't seek its fortune "overseas" and instead should learn to live with its neighbors. He was referring to his first meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, planned for next month in Paris.

Before his fateful July 25 phone call with the U.S. president, Zelenskiy suggested including Trump in talks with Putin as a way of increasing pressure on the Kremlin to end the five-year conflict in eastern Ukraine. Now, with Washington consumed by the impeachment process, Zelenskiy is more isolated than before.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who will host the Putin-Zelenskiy summit, has been advocating for a rapprochement with Russia in recent months. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will also attend the meeting, is concerned with domestic political issues as she finishes her last term in office.

Washington's distraction by the Ukraine scandal, combined with a growing rift between the U.S. and its European allies, may embolden Putin.

The Kremlin has always denied that it interfered in the last U.S. presidential election or plans to do so in the future. During a panel discussion in Moscow in October, the moderator asked Putin whether Russia is attempting to influence the 2020 U.S. elections.

Putin put his hand next to his mouth and said in a conspiratorial voice: "I'll tell you a secret. We'll definitely do it, just to keep you amused. But you won't tell anyone, OK?"

The hall erupted in applause.

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The View From Moscow On The Trump Impeachment Inquiry - NPR

You can tell a lot about a crowd by the things they do and dont chant at a given rally. In 2016, following Hillary Clintons loss, the streets of Denver Colorado chanted not my president or her body her choice. Not bad, right? But when I and a group of friends began a chorus of black lives matter at the same rally, it didnt catch on. We would get looks, maybe two or three supporters, then a swell of pro-choice or pro-Hillary chanting. They would shout their frustrations for Hillary Clinton but racism was apparently a bridge too far. I knew then what crowd I was in.

My personal favorite chant goes like this. No justice, no peace, over and over. Its a chant like this that the world needs to hear. But its just the sort of thing Im sure would get drowned out in a crowd of well-meaning folks.

NO JUSTICE NO PEACE, AND I MEAN THAT.

You can tell a lot about a crowd by the things they do and dont chant at a given rally. In 2016, following Hillary Clintons loss, the streets of Denver Colorado chanted not my president or her body her choice. Not bad, right? But when I and a group of friends began a chorus of black lives matter at the same rally, it didnt catch on. We would get looks, maybe two or three supporters, then a swell of pro-choice or pro-Hillary chanting. They would shout their frustrations for Hillary Clinton but racism was apparently a bridge too far. I knew then what crowd I was in.

My personal favorite chant goes like this. No justice, no peace, over and over. Its a chant like this that the world needs to hear. But its just the sort of thing Im sure would get drowned out in a crowd of well-meaning folks.

For most people, Donald Trump is more of a psychological problem than a physical one. Hes a tangible threat, but thats not what bothers people. Just think, what are his policy positions that bother you? The wall, with all its pomp and vitriol, as a psychological reminder of an inhumane America? How about the quiet but dogged and systematic removal of environmental protections? Do you hate the caging of children on the border as a stain on American idealism more than how legal immigration has been decimated? Are you mad that things feel bad, that the chaos of the world is spilling over into your living room every day, or are you mad about the facts on the ground? I know there are many people that feel upset about both, but I surmise many Americans are not unsettled by the injustice but by a sudden disturbance in what was once a peaceful life.

How can we know when calls for justice arent genuine? Part of it is the chants at protests. But another part is what makes it on television and which candidates are appealing to voters. As of now, Joe Biden is in the lead, followed by Elizabeth Warren, then Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden has promised nothing would fundamentally change proving to be a perfect example of my point. There is a disturbingly large amount of people content with anyone but Trump because they dont care about change but simply about going back to Obama era brunch and bliss. Elizabeth Warren also reflects this ethos. Warren gives people the hope that there could be change, but she is promising to do it within Washington using the best plans and compromises. She isnt the yelling old man the media has often portrayed Sanders as and shes not demanding people become re-engaged in the political process. Shes planning on going to Washington to fight for us not with us.

Sanders, however, is the media-described Trump of the left. And while its flat wrong to compare them in demagoguery, they do share populism. Sanders is calling for a fight, promising to be in our faces asking us for something. Hes asking people to get mad, but for liberal voters who have strung themselves from one high-rage CNN headline to the next, thats the last thing they want. People are exhausted, they want a break.

The left often totes that Obama was the least scandal-ridden president in history, and theyre right, but that does not say anything about the amount of justice achieved. Never mind that he continued mass surveillance, proliferated natural gas exploitation, was the deporter-in-chief to many, or rained hellfire on the Middle East every day of his administration. Everything was okay because nobody had to hear about it. This quiet peace is the goal of the modern democratic party, as Martin Luther King declared it would be long ago in his letter from a Birmingham county jail. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negros great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;

The world yearns to go back to its negative peace.

The problem with this path to peace is that it will never come. Peace does not come through denial but by facing your demons and winning. America will not have peace because it does not deserve peace. Even if voters elect a peace-promising candidate, the news will still be a frenzy, the streets will be a frenzy, and the world will be a frenzy. The time is not coming where your kids can go back to school worry-free of shootings or the coming ecological collapse. That time is many years from now, and the only way itll come any faster is if you get to work now. Trump was elected in 2016 because all is not well on the Western front, and we cant pretend it is. We wont get justice, and when Trump wins in 2020, we wont get peace either. So next time you hear me chanting, dont ignore it, decide to join me. No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.

For most people, Donald Trump is more of a psychological problem than a physical one. Hes a tangible threat, but thats not what bothers people. Just think, what are his policy positions that bother you? The wall, with all its pomp and vitriol, as a psychological reminder of an inhumane America? How about the quiet but dogged and systematic removal of environmental protections? Do you hate the caging of children on the border as a stain on American idealism more than how legal immigration has been decimated? Are you mad that things feel bad, that the chaos of the world is spilling over into your living room every day, or are you mad about the facts on the ground? I know there are many people that feel upset about both, but I surmise many Americans are not unsettled by the injustice but by a sudden disturbance in what was once a peaceful life.

How can we know when calls for justice arent genuine? Part of it is the chants at protests. But another part is what makes it on television and which candidates are appealing to voters. As of now, Joe Biden is in the lead, followed by Elizabeth Warren, then Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden has promised nothing would fundamentally change proving to be a perfect example of my point.

There is a disturbingly large amount of people content with anyone but Trump because they dont care about change but simply about going back to Obama-era brunch and bliss. Elizabeth Warren also reflects this ethos. Warren gives people the hope that there could be change, but she is promising to do it within Washington using the best plans and compromises. She isnt the yelling old man the media has often portrayed Sanders as and shes not demanding people become re-engaged in the political process. Shes planning on going to Washington to fight for us not with us.

Sanders, however, is the media-described Trump of the left. And while its flat wrong to compare them in demagoguery, they do share populism. Sanders is calling for a fight, promising to be in our faces asking us for something. Hes asking people to get mad, but for liberal voters who have strung themselves from one high-rage CNN headline to the next, thats the last thing they want. People are exhausted, they want a break.

The left often totes that Obama was the least scandal-ridden president in history, and theyre right, but that does not say anything about the amount of justice achieved. Never mind that he continued mass surveillance, proliferated natural gas exploitation, was the deporter-in-chief to many, or rained hellfire on the Middle East every day of his administration. Everything was okay because nobody had to hear about it.

This quiet peace is the goal of the modern democratic party, as Martin Luther King declared it would be long ago in his letter from a Birmingham county jail. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negros great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;

The world yearns to go back to its negative peace.

The problem with this path to peace is that it will never come. Peace does not come through denial but by facing your demons and winning. America will not have peace because it does not deserve peace. Even if voters elect a peace-promising candidate, the news will still be a frenzy, the streets will be a frenzy, and the world will be a frenzy. The time is not coming where your kids can go back to school worry-free of shootings or the coming ecological collapse.

That time is many years from now, and the only way itll come any faster is if you get to work now. Trump was elected in 2016 because all is not well on the Western front, and we cant pretend it is. We wont get justice, and when Trump wins in 2020, we wont get peace either. So next time you hear me chanting, dont ignore it, decide to join me. No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.

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Without Justice There is No Peace, and We Must Remember That - The Sideline Observer