Today in Society A major event in today’s society is the RussiaGate scandal, which has been reported on the news for two years running. With the recent release of the Mueller probe, President Trump has declared victory—No Collusion, No Obstruction—and now many news media are doing damage control after basically accusing the president of colluding with Russia for the past two years (Collins & Jackson, 2019). From a sociological perspective, this event can best be interpreted by conflict theory and functionalism—with the best explanation falling in the middle of the two diverging approaches to sociological understanding.

The issue of the great Collusion-RussiaGate-Obstruction story occurred in the political context of Trump’s victory over Clinton in 2016. Democrats and the media, which overwhelmingly supported Clinton during the campaign, jumped onto the RussiaGate narrative to explain the loss: Russia hijacked the election and Trump colluded with Putin to win the White House—so the story went. The event impacted all classes of society, from political ruling classes to middle and lower classes as Trump tried to deflect from the accusations and implement policies to show he was still following through on campaign promises in spite of the accusations. It was important that he still try to show that he was not hampered by the narrative swirling around him for the past two years.

The news source for this story is credible and is really just one of the many several media outlets reporting on the Mueller probe...

Access to the full report can be obtained using the Internet to verify what has been reported on. USAToday’s reporting does not deviate from any other outlet and consists mainly of the facts of the matter giving a bit of perspective on what has transpired over the past two years.
Conflict theory can be used to partially explain why this event has transpired. The conflict between the Trump base (consisting mainly of working class individuals) and the Clinton base was palpable during the campaign. Trump’s supporters wanted Clinton jailed for her various offenses relating to EmailGate and Benghazi along with the murder of Seth Rich and various other conspiracies that hit the Web during the time. Trump’s supporters did not trust Clinton and they were angry that the FBI did not charge her with any crimes relating to EmailGate. Clinton’s supporters were confident of a victory all the same and were stunned on election night when she lost. The Clinton supporters in the FBI, led by Strzok, Paige, Comey and others, conspired to launch an investigation into Trump to delegitimize his presidency. The conflict was thus between the power structure and the working class that supported Trump.

Conflict theory has its origins in Marx, who argued that there was conflict between the classes, with the working class and ruling class (the owners of the means of production) at odds with one another. This theory was in direct opposition to the theory of Weber, who believed that the various classes were mutually beneficial to one…