Scotland Yard's inquiry also found no evidence of Williams's fingerprints on the padlock of the bag or the rim of the bath, which the coroner said supported her assertion of "third-party involvement" in the death. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt said it was theoretically possible for Williams to lower himself into the bag without touching the rim of the bath. A key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath his body" (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)
It's absolutely mad, but remember this happened in 2010 -- before Russia did many of those bad things you mention. It wouldn't surprise me if a combination of political pressure and police incompetence made this go away.
The exhibits are short and worth looking at
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-d...
But does it matter? 77 million Americans knowingly voted a convicted felon and court adjudicated sexual assaulter back into the presidency instead of a jail cell. From those, about 40 million were women, fully aware that a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and that multiple judges affirmed the verdict.
The majority of Americans saw criminality, sexual violence, and contempt for the law and decided that was acceptable leadership. :-))
"Kushner Companies and Russian individuals exchanged suspicious money transfers at the height of the 2016 race, ex-Deutsche Bank employee says" - https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-russia-2016-mo...
Let that be the prism through which all future political action is seen. Let's be real. Let's be good. Let's strive to eliminate and replace this farcical hyperbole, self-agrandizement, this pyramid scheme of a pretense at government. Let's have some confidence and ambition: work to restore a real balance of power between our three branches. There is so much we could do in the near and long term if we just set out sights on a simple, positive goal.
We may never be great again. Maybe we never were. But we can be good.
Run with the ad Homs if that’s the narrative needed to win, then use the power to implement policy. Anything less is bringing a book to a gun fight
My hunch is that a lot of Americans ticked 'Trump' because of brand recognition.
It's like buying laundry detergent. Most people know nothing about the chemistry or efficacy. They pick whatever package looks familiar, 'Tide' probably
I personally think there's a more direct link between the US administration and Russia, in line with the rest of your points. I think it's more than "dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement", although what that "more" is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure the differences between the possibilities matters in the end.
I really think it's hard not to read [about] Foundations of Geopolitics and the history of Viktor Yanukovych, the ties between the latter and Trump, and not conclude Russia's tendrils in the US, England, and elsewhere are far deeper than is generally acknowledged in the press.
I lost a lot of trust in most media to cover this issue appropriately when people in the UK started mysteriously dying and zipping themselves in body bags, and the coverage was a collective shrug. Why they would report something like that and then with a straight face conclude an article with "police say there's no evidence of foul play" is beyond me. But then again how the Mueller investigation got spun as an exoneration is also beyond me as well.
I know it's often seen as dismissive or shallow to blame the media for things, but I really do place a huge proportion of the blame for our current mess, at least in the US, on news outlets and media soft-pedaling what's been happening for the last 10 years. A lot of what people trust became propaganda, and a lot of the rest of it chased that audience around for clicks.