American Shithole #9 — Robert Mercer, Part One: Cambridge Analytica
By Eric Wilson
In what may prove to be the undercover investigation of the early 21st century, the Channel 4 exposé on Cambridge Analytica has blown the roof off a story that had long gone dormant. The hidden camera footage is career-defining, and the transcript reads like the Darwin Awards for Espionage. It’s jaw dropping in scope and stupidity, and it feels a bit like you’re watching two proper devils talk shop in hell.
"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
—Cambridge Analytica suspended CEO and genital wart, Alexander Nix.
Posing as potential clients, journalists secretly filmed Cambridge Analytica officials describing how their company rigs world elections. I still can’t believe it — they probably can't believe it — but these sweet Channel 4 geniuses basically Scooby Doo’d Cambridge Analytica. Enjoy your place in the annals of journalistic legend, you deserve it.
Well done, Shaggy!
The twitterverse was experiencing twittergasms, as word had gotten out on the segment before it aired. Perhaps it was more of a Twitterquake, as you could feel the tremors across social media in anticipation. In our age of big stories, this was bigger, and you could sense it on Monday morning before the news broke.
As far as the video is concerned, it’s a must watch — one where operatives from Cambridge Analytica, including CEO, Alexander Nix, describe the legal and illegal tactics they use to manipulate supposedly free elections all over the world. Note the calmness with which they speak, it really is captivating in its cold, calculative way.
A second installment of the Channel 4 investigation aired a day later, and it brought to light Cambridge Analytica’s critical role in the success of the Trump presidential campaign. They were far from humble. In this hidden camera video Alexander Nix and other CA operatives actually take credit for Trump’s victory.
It would seem that if there is an election happening, Cambridge Analytica is there — working angles, using sex slaves as honey traps, blackmailing enemies, manipulating big data, all safely from the shadows. Well, it's not so safe in the shadows anymore, Nix.
Channel 4 isn’t the only one on the case.
While that was amazing work by the team in the UK, American Shithole has its own crack team of investigative journalists, and our operatives — working deep undercover — were able to procure a top secret list of other gifts and services Cambridge Analytica reserved for its highest paying clients.
Dictators brought to power by Cambridge Analytica may also have received:
What a great mockup this could have been, had I not sucked at Photoshop.
1. Buy 9 elections get 1 free* Customer Loyalty Card.
2. Subscription to Children’s War Refugee Monthly magazine.
3. Slovenian Sex Slave First Lady Platinum Upgrade.
4. Super PAC Mystery Sack!™**
5. First time dictators received a signed copy of Howard Zinn’s So, You’ve Bought Yourself a Country, Have You?
6. Handmade Russian lamp for presidential office desk.***
7. Children’s War Refugee Monthly complimentary pinup calendar.
8. The American President DVD case with a ripped copy of Wag the Dog inside.
*Please refer to your customer loyalty card owner’s manual for rules regarding free election eligibility.
**Super PAC Mystery Sack!™ is a subsidiary of Mystery Sack! International and may contain foreign politics.
***Lamp must be on the desk facing the president at all times.
The one name I was expecting to hear more in the media this week was Robert Mercer.
Unfortunately, there was little to no mention of the Mercers, as Cambridge Analytica faced a torrential downpour of bad press, day after day. It’s been a fucking shitstorm in the blogosphere on both sides of the Atlantic (more on this later), but the lion’s share of the focus has been on the company and its senior officer, Nix.
It astounds me how this family of billionaires seems to so effectively manipulate their own media presence — even when one of their own companies is embroiled in a scandal involving election tampering, criminal behavior, and international conspiracy.
CNN’s Don Lemon barely mentioned the Mercers by name on Monday, during his interview with the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie — while Steve Bannon, former Mercer lackey and Pigpen from the Upside Down, was mentioned at least a dozen times.
If you are going to talk about a company that was clearly influential in the Trump victory, maybe you should mention the asshole that owns 90 percent of the stock — mega GOP/Trump donor and serious contender for all-time Shitbag of the Universe, Robert Mercer. Or perhaps his daughter, who currently sits on the CA board of directors.
That is some Obi Wan level Jedi mastery right there. These are not the billionaires you are looking for.
But they are the billionaires we are looking for! Here they are behaving terribly, and we as dutiful wealth-worshipping Americans let them get away with it every single time. We let them game the broken system to serve their greed, and strip resources, and ruin communities, and rig fucking elections — and we worship them for the effort.
We allow them to continually commit crimes against humanity, and now we are allowing them to systematically dismantle democracy. Yet somehow we are blinded by their wealth, as if greed were some sort of cherished American virtue, this richness that absolves all sin.
The past few days I’ve looked for news stories on Robert Mercer; passing mentions at best, with very few interviews or articles focusing on the individual that owns the company that just may be responsible for both Brexit and Trump.
Yes, if you are a little late to this developing story, so was I, but you are reading that correctly.
Cambridge Analytica has also been connected to Brexit, possibly the worst development in the UK in a half-century — that is, if you don’t count the invention of modern-day reality television a development. Thanks, Brits, we took your reality TV, and after over thirty years we have reduced it to what is now a stupefying slog through a kaleidoscope of spirit-dampening white-hot noise and eye vomit.
But I digress.
If a billionaire’s company can orchestrate Brexit and the Trump presidency, via numerous illegal activities — and the billionaire gets away with it — this is a message to all would be tyrants that the upper echelon of the ruling class may do anything they please, with no fear of consequence.
We are talking about crimes with ripple effects so pervasive, so widespread and far-reaching, that it would be impossible to calculate the damage done, or the punishment deserved.
In this humble American’s opinion, anything less than a massive devaluation of the Mercer family, and jail time for both Robert and his diamond-bespectacled harpy of a daughter, Rebekah, would be an invitation to every two-bit hustler, billionaire tyrant on the planet to treat entire countries like their own personal political stomping ground.
Not that they aren't doing that already.
This might make Robert Mercer the reigning Worst Person on the Planet. I cannot think of two events in recent history that have sown more discord, created more havoc than Brexit and Trump.
I get Mercer isn’t news sexy. I don't want to write about him either — it’s like trying to write negative copy about Mr. Rogers. By comparison, I was chomping at the bit to eviscerate Cambridge Analytica CEO, Alexander Nix. He so plays the part of the Bond Villain to perfection. I imagine he likely has a few rather unpleasant appetites as well. I could write jokes about him for days.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let the 74th Hunger Games begin — and may the odds be ever in your favor!”
The real villain here though, is Robert Mercer, and by proxy or association, his ogress fishwife of a daughter, Rebekah. Look at the two of them. They look like they’re about to preside over the fucking Hunger Games.
So who is this charming prince, you ask? Tough to say, as he leads a largely private life.
The few that know the reclusive billionaire describe him as a quiet loner. I already see where this is going. He lives with his many cats. Uh-oh. He hates the establishment, and was thoroughly convinced long ago of all the craziest conspiracy theories involving the Clintons. Oh, boy.
And like all billionaires, his power has increased manifold since Citizens United, and Mercer has taken advantage of that, as one of the most generous GOP donors over the last eight years.
What we have is another crazy-rich asshole using his gross overvaluation to fund shadow companies that rig world elections. Including ours. I struggle to find the reasons why we value these billionaire cretins so?
Is this misguided misanthrope single-handedly responsible for the destabilization of the west? No. Hardly. It’s not for lack of trying though. Mercer's just plodding along, money-murdering everything decent in his path. He’s like Jason Voorhees in a suit.
No, Mercer has plenty of help. There's another name that always seems to turn up whenever you cast light into the shadows. Erik Prince is linked to Cambridge Analytica as well, and at this point I’m no longer surprised to see his name when investigating criminal activity.
I look forward to the day when our value system better reflects the compassion of the species we long to be, versus the greed of the humanity we desperately need to leave behind.
Mueller’s widening investigation now thankfully includes Cambridge Analytica, and that may finally shed some light onto why certain republicans seem willing to do anything to protect this president. The House Intelligence Committee majority republicans ending their investigation into Russian collusion, risks indictment of collusion itself. We need to discover what kind of pressure has been put on elected officials to get them to risk ruining their careers and lives the way Devin Nunes and the rest of the House Intelligence Committee majority republicans have, with their shameful cowardice.
This is good news, my friends. The brilliant undercover work by Channel 4 has done more to connect the dots between various forces at play, than any other investigation breakthrough so far. Everything is starting to come into focus — even with the Mercers doing everything they can to keep this out of the media — which means it will be harder for republicans that may have been compromised, to continue to support this morally bankrupt administration.
Also, it might be time to dust off your Myspace account, because Facebook is Face-fucked.
B.S. Report
I wanted to draw attention this week to a story already in the rearview. For whatever reason it was several days before I caught wind that Republican Leslie Gibson had, among other things, dismissed student activist Emma Gonzalez as a “skinhead lesbian.”
For obvious reasons, many in America (such as myself) feel very protective of these kids. I get really fired up about them. I pissed and moaned that I had missed the story, and I was ranting a bit on social media how this asshole Gibson needed a social media handshake, or a nice hello from the world.
It wasn’t an hour later that the universe calmed my sputtering fit. I was informed much had been put in motion, and that Gibson's words had encouraged a challenger for his run for congress (he was running unopposed), and not long after that, he announced he was dropping out of the race.
I thought this deserved more focus for the power of it. The raw power being rightfully transferred from a hateful, bigoted asshole — back to the people, where they would choose to give it to someone worthy. And that is what I am talking about, America!