The whole "let's blame it on Russia" thing is getting boring. At one point, my dear American friends, you'll just have to face the mirror.
Most importantly, aiding and abetting covert influence should be a punishable crime. Current tech environment, where tech gaints simply saying they hadn't noticed is not an acceptable answer.
When you are a tech gaint, with power to influence so many people at once, you have the responsibility to be transparent.
With great power comes great responsibility. Not faux remorse after the fact.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jenna-abrams-russias-clown-tro...
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/03/russian-facebook-pag...
When I personally talk about Russia, I just point out that this happened. This being the rise of fake news, etc.
We should remember it was the United States and her allies that normalized this behavior. We should take a few lessons from this, when we do something unethical or questionable these tactics are going to be normalized and other countries are going to use them.
Another example is Trump ordering an attack on a sovereign nation without that nation asking or any resolution passing in US Congress or the UNSC.
We need to understand that this is the age we live in, and that we need to work around fixing these issues. Not blaming others or trying to reverse technological processes.
Russia didn't win the election for Trump, but you are kidding yourself if you believe it didn't play a factor. US democracy has a lot of work to do, but Putin is an ex-KGB strongman who assassinates his opponents and annexes neighbors. It's pretty obvious how he operates.
such responses are often vacuous, if not intellectually dishonest. it's can seem like an effort to divert or sidetrack an argument or conversation with blatantly fallacious responses.
Then we have the DNC very literally and provably rigging the primaries in favor of Clinton.
You know what? I hate Trump. But give me a break. This Russia trash is just all a distraction. Trump blatantly supports unconstitutional programs like domestic surveillance and gitmo--this should be enough to impeach him alone for supporting an undermining of the US constitution and American's rights.
The fact that they need to rely on this Russia story which requires a number of shifting standards and "just trust us's", rather than in-the-open undemocratic authoritarianism here in the US, is probably a testament to failures of the human mind's ability to think in terms of, and stand up for, liberty.
I have been to Germany and Japan and the people are unbeleivably friendly and wonderful. What on earth is wrong with people that they can be coaxed into the evil dreams of tyrants--conflicts, authoritarianism--and is it happening again? Are we so different or special that we really think tyranny cant happen to us when we are going through the same patterns of history?
Probably, if we could just adjust the human factor of 'susceptability to sell their liberties and fall in line behind authority figures for short-sighted self-interest,' we would live in a much better world.
1 - https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia...
Probably if we could just adjust human susceptability to sell their liberties and fall in line behind authority figures we would live in a much better world.
That only happens if you are realistic about what's going on instead of holding ideological political views. That's your solution.
There are lots of good reasons to oppose and impech Trump. Something is wrong if you can ignore the authoritarianism, corruption, and unconstitutionality that exists here in the US--that both parties support, which is why they won't use them as reasons to impeach Trump--and you have been coaxed into a need to make a reach for a dubious conflict-stirring story of half-truths and shifting standards.
You should ask yourself who the parties are that win after every election, no matter Republican or Democrat, and what they stand to gain or lose. Why you, instead, follow the machinations and war cry of authoritarians that have lost all credibility is probably a testament to the human bias to follow authority figures.
You cited a source which debunked the Russian hacking claims, but there's been a lot of evidence of Russian media influence (which is an obviously exploitable weakness).
This didn't have anything to do with Trump. You're reading a lot into what I'm saying.
Sometimes macroeconomists model concepts in the framework of households. Here is an analogy to help express where I am coming from: let's say every month your homeowners association has an election. For as long as anyone can ever remember, George and Barry win every time. Over the years they have installed security cameras inside your house, created conflicts with neighboring towns which profit their businesses and kill some of our children, and they have not done a very good job of taking care of the neighborhood.
Along comes Don. There are lots of good reasons to hate Don, but George and Barry start a campaign to get him out which involves Ted, an adversary from an entirely different, trashy neighborhood, who passed fliers around with fake information in hopes that Barry wouldnt be elected again.
I'm sitting in HOA meeting wondering why no one has brought up the security cameras inside my house, the fact that my best friend died due to George and Barry, JP & Morgan--who don't even live here--are getting a lot of our money for some reason, Barry's team is rigging the election process, and our neighborhood's health and environment is deteriorating. This was just a small start to a long list of terrible problems.
But George and Barry are running the meeting and Ted is the focus.
See, statements like this are a part of the problem. Obama did these things too and noone cared. Given that why should anyone believe anything anyone says? And into that vacuum, a new kind of influence emerges, one that is not about policies but just about "my team winning".