Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › PERSPECTIVE ON RUSSIA
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Billy_T.
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August 2, 2018 at 1:10 am #88861
ZooeyModeratorhttps://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/07/its-time-for-a-little-perspective-on-russia
I like “Current Affairs.”
JULY 20, 2018
IT’S TIME FOR A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE ON RUSSIAAny Russian interference is only a small part of the “election meddling” we should care about…
by LYLE JEREMY RUBIN
I think we are due for a little perspective on Russia.I was trained at NSA headquarters as a signals intelligence officer in the Marines. This was about a decade ago, and I was by no means an area specialist. That said, I was privy to relevant briefs. At the time I learned that U.S. cyber operations in Russia, across Russia’s periphery, and around the world already dwarfed Russian operations in size, capability, and frequency. It wasn’t even close, and the expectation was that the gap was about to grow a whole lot wider.
This should hardly come as a surprise. Just compare the defense budgets of the United States and Russia. The president recently signed a gargantuan $700 billion gift to the Pentagon, with marginal dissent from either party or their affiliated media outlets. The budget increase alone ($61 billion) exceeds Russia’s entire annual expenditure ($46). The U.S. military budget now equals more than the combined budgets of China, Russia, Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India, and France. As Vice concluded, “it’s 14 times larger than the Kremlin’s budget.”
Furthermore, covert American operations are deeply invested in interrupting democratic processes not only in Russia, but everywhere else. This includes the heart of Europe, where corporate media is now pretending the United States has always respected happy norms and decorum. It is as if the Snowden leaks never happened. The Defense Department’s tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone never happened. The Obama administration’s spying on the German press, including Der Spiegel, never happened. The same administration’s outing of German government whistle-blowers never happened.
Electoral meddling in particular happens all the time, both to us and by us. The U.S. government rigged the Russian election for Yeltsin in 1996, and then they bragged about it in a cover story for Time. (You can still find the cover online.) This followed the disastrous capitalist “shock therapy” of the early nineties and preceded the rise of the Russian oligarchs. Putin’s brand of nationalist resentment grew out of this moment of extreme collective humiliation. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is happily on record pushing for the tampering of Palestinian elections in 2006.
As the political scientist Dov H. Levin has shown, between 1946 and 2000, the United States government conducted at least 81 electoral interventions in other countries, while Russia conducted at least 36. This does not include the U.S. government’s violent overthrow of dozens of governments during this same period, including democratic governments in places like Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), and Chile (1973). As recent as 2009, Hillary Clinton’s State Department played a complicit role in the brutal deposition of democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya’s government in Honduras. No other country, including Russia, even approaches this level of wanton disregard for the norms of sovereignty. Around the world, organizations that the U.S. “fund
, supportand directare openly dedicated to manipulating foreign elections, creating U.S.-friendly opposition movements and even overthrowing governments that impede U.S. interests worldwide.” In 1999, President Clinton sent three advisers to Israel to try to swing the country’s elections for Ehud Barak. The New York Times reported that they were “writing advertisements, plotting strategy and taking polls” for the candidate. Imagine what the reaction would be if Putin had literally dispatched three top deputies to join the Trump campaign.Of course, a few dozen wrongs don’t make a right, and the fact that U.S. outrage over Russian interference is comically hypocritical doesn’t make tampering with our elections unobjectionable. But anyone who sees the Russian activity as an antidemocratic outrage should be condemning the United States just as loudly, and treating the Russia story as some kind of unprecedented act of covert control is laughable.
That said, just because the United States leads the world in meddling of all kinds, that doesn’t mean we are immune to it. In fact, meddling from abroad comes in many forms. Prominent think tanks in Washington are funded by the Gulf states. The United Arab Emirates contributes generously to the coffers of the Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Center for American Progress (CAP). The Brookings Institute graciously accepts millions from Qatar. The Atlantic Council and Center for Strategic and International Studies enjoy similar arrangements with other oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia. The same can be said for numerous other repressive governments beyond the Gulf. And then there are the defense contractors, Wall Street banks, and Silicon Valley behemoths, all of which have joined such governments in capturing intellectual real estate in academia as well.
Our politicians, of course, are being flooded with cash from foreign-related interests. Pro-Israel billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban have bought themselves outsized influence in both parties, with Adelson successfully financing Trump’s rise to power and Saban effectively blocking Keith Ellison’s bid for Democratic National Committee chair. The Turkish lobby, likewise, continues to prove itself another bipartisan force, with everyone from former House leader Dick Gephardt to disgraced national security advisor Michael Flynn being enlisted to secure Ankara prerogatives while whitewashing various crimes against the Armenians and Kurds. As for explicit electoral interference, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been implicated in foul play in the 2016 election. Same goes for Ukraine. Same goes for Israel in 2012. And these are just the instances so brazen that they have made their way into Wikipedia.
Lastly, our entire corporate media is owned and run by a global capitalist elite who could care less about us and our schoolkid patriotism. There are essentially five multinational corporations that now own the news media. This is down from six just a few years ago. In 1983 it was 50. This rapid consolidation is thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, itself a bipartisan bill purchased by the donor class. The few dozen billionaires with the largest shares in these companies are almost all white men. They are also almost all tied up in business investments around the globe. And almost all their investments bear zero regard for the needs or desires of Americans or non-Americans alike.
For Russian interference to be a threat to our democracy, we would have to have a democracy to begin with. But our elections are already so heavily manipulated by corporations and foreign governments that it’s hard to take seriously anyone who sees Russia as a singular threat to our system of government. The issue needs to be kept in perspective, and seen in the context of both our country’s own actions and the other, even greater, barriers that prevent us from having a true democracy that reflects the will of the people rather than corporate and government interests.
Look, by all means, let’s protect the integrity of our voting systems. As Seth Ackerman just counseled in Jacobin, let’s follow Europe’s lead in a practical, guarded response to Putin’s authoritarian machinations, free of hysteria. Let’s keep pushing for independent investigations into Trump, his team, and their possibly criminal involvement with the Russian government and other unsavory entities. Let’s hold them accountable accordingly. But let’s also stop swallowing state and corporate propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Let’s stop being blind to military-industrial stakes in escalating U.S.-Russia tensions in Syria, Yemen, Iran, Ukraine, and the Russian periphery, never mind the cyber arena altogether. Let’s spend more time exposing the ways the conversation around Russia points to liberal and progressive acquiescence toward (one might say collusion with) imperialist narratives that only guarantee further death and destruction for poor and working people everywhere.
Beyond all that, let’s finally start doing the hard work of fleshing out a left foreign policy. Aziz Rana has an urgent piece in N+1 arguing that the left lacks a coherent approach to international affairs, and needs to spend its time articulating a clear response to the “bipartisan cold war ideology that has shaped American elite thinking since the 1940s, organized around the idea that the US rightly enjoys military and economic primacy because its interests are the world’s interests.” Rana lays out a set of principles that can guide the creation of an alternative approach and answer difficult practical questions like “If the US should not be the enforcer of Saudi and Israeli led dictates in the Middle East, what are alternative regional orderings?” and “What would demobilizing significant elements of the national security state look like?” We should do our best to make sure that everyone reads Rana’s piece, and faces up to the challenge he poses. Doing so will require us to be thoughtful and consistent, and to make sure that instead of following the corporate media’s lead on what to be outraged about, we work it out for ourselves and keep things in perspective.
August 2, 2018 at 1:25 am #88862
znModeratorBut anyone who sees the Russian activity as an antidemocratic outrage should be condemning the United States just as loudly
And as we know all too well, and have known all too well for years, that did not happen. Heck the guy in charge of the CIA operation to overthrow Mosedegh openly discussed it as a classic successful operation.
None of which btw shuts me personally up about Russia. I did complain about those things almost my entire adult life.
My turn about is fair play take on the selective outrage of some who pale at Russia but never even knew about Mosedegh and Pinochet plus a very long list of etc.s. is to say to them “that’s true about Russia but the USA has done it too, for a long time, and a lot.”
But among fellow leftists I don’t have to say any of that. We already know and always did. And as one who already knows, knowing that doesn’t shut me up about Russia in the least. What bothers me about Russia is that we seem to be forming a direct alliance with an unembarrassed right-wing autocracy. Russia now is Pinochet’s more successful brother on steroids. I objected to Pinochet, why would I cut Putin a break.
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August 2, 2018 at 2:05 am #88866ZooeyModeratorAs far as Russia goes, I find it fascinating that they have a marionette-like control over the president of the United States. It would have been dismissed as ridiculous fantasy if someone wrote a novel like this back during the Cold War.
Yet…here we are.
And not only are we HERE, but the Republican Party is defending and even exalting this fact to the point that many Trumpettes are toting Russian flags. I don’t know what is more crushing…the weight of hypocrisy, or the weight of irony.
August 2, 2018 at 10:51 am #88873Billy_TParticipantLotsa good points in that article.
A few of the most frustrating things for me, when discussing Russia-gate, especially with (a few) fellow leftists in other venues:
1. Standards of evidence, thresholds for belief in evidence, seem highly selective. As in, if a leftist reads a single article, or sees a single video, in which someone asserts “The CIA recently did X, Y and Z,” most will immediately accept this as factual. But show them 50 articles with in-depth, comprehensive break-downs of Russian connections with the Trump campaign and administration, and it’s (in so many words) “Fake news.” They won’t accept it. I’ve bumped into more than a few on other sites who refuse to read it, period, while repeating the mantra, “Prove it!!” Um, I just did.
2. There is a major issue of “whataboutism” in this case. It’s kind of like, when someone says “Second hand smoke kills 40,000 Americans a year,” another will say, “Well, 400,000 people die from smoking directly! Who cares about second-hand smoke!” Throw in “hypocrisy” and this is supposed to make us shut up about second hand smoke (Russia-gate), etc. etc. Um, we can talk about both, right?
3. Leftists who fight to dismiss, poo-pah or seek to shut down discussions regarding Russia often resort to the most absurd strawmen. In so many words, it’s “The Dems keep saying Russia has taken over and controls all American life, Trump is a traitor and a Manchurian candidate, and they keep beating the drums of war!!” Um, no. I’ve never seen any Dem express the wildly exaggerated claims pushed by this faction of leftists, and, again, the most aggressive on the Putin question are Republican Never Trumpers. It’s not even close. To me, the Dems have been far too quiet on the issue, having decided long ago to let Trump hang himself, for the most part.
Etc. etc.
August 2, 2018 at 11:03 am #88874Billy_TParticipantOf course, as ZN notes above, leftists know about what the CIA (etc.) has done, and is doing. We know about the coups, counter-coups, black sites, torture, teaching torture, Mossadegh, etc. etc. But we know this because we’ve read a critical mass of evidence. And/or we know people who have experienced these things first-hand, etc. etc. The vast majority of leftists want substantial evidence before accepting X, Y or Z as fact. This includes despicable acts by “the state,” corporate America, other nations, etc. etc.
From my observation, though, for some bizarre reason in the case of Trump and Russia-gate, that isn’t necessarily the case anymore.
In short, I see a willingness to believe, with scant to no evidence, counter-narratives to the more “mainstream” Russia/Trump news. At the same time, the same folks will often ignore or dismiss an overwhelming amount of investigative reporting that supports the crux of that news flow.
It’s always smart to be skeptical of everything we read. Obviously. It’s always smart to seek corroboration. But that also includes “alternative sources.” I think it’s a mistake to dismiss entire ranges of news sources, out of hand, while eagerly embracing counter-narratives, without due diligence. All sources require that.
August 2, 2018 at 12:30 pm #88877
wvParticipantWell i agree with the thrust of that article, as yall know.
I dont think i agree that trump is putin’s puppet though. I think putin and trump share some ideas, and disagree on some things. I think they will cooperate sometimes and will be at odds sometimes.
My own personal thing is…I am like Moe hearing the words “niagra falls” when i hear the DEM-msm talking about russia. Its so obviously a hypocritical bullshit stance coming from THEM. It appalls me. Sets me off. Ni..ag..ra Falls…step by step….
w
vAugust 2, 2018 at 1:52 pm #88882Billy_TParticipantWell i agree with the thrust of that article, as yall know.
I dont think i agree that trump is putin’s puppet though. I think putin and trump share some ideas, and disagree on some things. I think they will cooperate sometimes and will behttp://theramshuddle.com/reply/88882/edit/ at odds sometimes.
My own personal thing is…I am like Moe hearing the words “niagra falls” when i hear the DEM-msm talking about russia. Its so obviously a hypocritical bullshit stance coming from THEM. It appalls me. Sets me off. Ni..ag..ra Falls…step by step….
w
vI agree about a lot of that, WV. I don’t think Trump is Putin’s puppet, per se. But he does exhibit a strange reluctance to ever, ever criticize him by name. Trump shows no such reluctance when it comes to a host of Americans, black and brown people, NFL players, NBA players, Democrats, European leaders, NATO, the EU and the Media. And not only is he okay criticizing everyone but Putin, he seems to love going after them aggressively, viciously, and without concern for their safety. See his most recent rally and the mob surrounding Jim Acosta from CNN.
I think it’s safe to say that Trump owes a lot to Putin. The evidence points to that being the survival of the Trump family business. He had gone bankrupt six times and was pretty much down for the count. No one would lend to him, because he stiffed so many banks.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, he was buying up golf courses and other real estate with cash. Out of the blue. His son Eric said it was Russian money, and I think Mueller has all the evidence he needs to prove this.
To me, it’s always been about debt to Putin. Business arrangements. Owing a ton to him. And the illegalities involved whenever anyone deals with oligarchs from any country, including America. It’s not a question of “treason,” in my view. It’s a question of Trump’s repeated breaking of the law, before, during and after the campaign.
He needs to be held accountable.
August 3, 2018 at 2:07 am #88908ZooeyModeratorWell i agree with the thrust of that article, as yall know.
I dont think i agree that trump is putin’s puppet though. I think putin and trump share some ideas, and disagree on some things. I think they will cooperate sometimes and will be at odds sometimes.
My own personal thing is…I am like Moe hearing the words “niagra falls” when i hear the DEM-msm talking about russia. Its so obviously a hypocritical bullshit stance coming from THEM. It appalls me. Sets me off. Ni..ag..ra Falls…step by step….
w
vWell…I don’t think Trump is Putin’s puppet in a “Your wish is my command” sort of way. Putin can’t “order him around.” I think – as Billy said – he owes whatever solvency he has to Putin though. They basically conduct business together with Trump being a junior partner in each transaction. Putin arranged loans, and set Trump up with revenue in order to launder money of Russian oligarchs, and perhaps more importantly, has the ability to shut Trump down financially. Furthermore, I don’t think Putin wants a puppet per se. He isn’t trying to run the United States. He is trying to manage and expand his own empire, and Trump proves more useful in that regard than, say, Hillary Clinton would have. Or any of the other candidates. He has real leverage on Trump, and he is using it. But he can’t just say, “Say ‘this.’ Do that. Walk in front of the Queen. Break up with Angela Merkel.” But he has Trump’s full attention, and he uses it wisely, and Trump gave him a heads up before they blew up some of Syria.
August 3, 2018 at 10:20 am #88926wvParticipantWell i agree with the thrust of that article, as yall know.
I dont think i agree that trump is putin’s puppet though. I think putin and trump share some ideas, and disagree on some things. I think they will cooperate sometimes and will behttp://theramshuddle.com/reply/88882/edit/ at odds sometimes.
My own personal thing is…I am like Moe hearing the words “niagra falls” when i hear the DEM-msm talking about russia. Its so obviously a hypocritical bullshit stance coming from THEM. It appalls me. Sets me off. Ni..ag..ra Falls…step by step….
w
vI agree about a lot of that, WV. I don’t think Trump is Putin’s puppet, per se. But he does exhibit a strange reluctance to ever, ever criticize him by name. Trump shows no such reluctance when it comes to a host of Americans, black and brown people, NFL players, NBA players, Democrats, European leaders, NATO, the EU and the Media. And not only is he okay criticizing everyone but Putin, he seems to love going after them aggressively, viciously, and without concern for their safety. See his most recent rally and the mob surrounding Jim Acosta from CNN.
I think it’s safe to say that Trump owes a lot to Putin. The evidence points to that being the survival of the Trump family business. He had gone bankrupt six times and was pretty much down for the count. No one would lend to him, because he stiffed so many banks.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, he was buying up golf courses and other real estate with cash. Out of the blue. His son Eric said it was Russian money, and I think Mueller has all the evidence he needs to prove this.
To me, it’s always been about debt to Putin. Business arrangements. Owing a ton to him. And the illegalities involved whenever anyone deals with oligarchs from any country, including America. It’s not a question of “treason,” in my view. It’s a question of Trump’s repeated breaking of the law, before, during and after the campaign.
He needs to be held accountable.
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Yeah, i tend to agree mostly.
We could talk about Trump forever. And its hard not to think about what he ‘represents’. What he’s a ‘reflection of.’
Just seems like, if yer gonna end up in the late-stages of a Corporotacracy, yer gonna end up with a Reagan, and a Bush, and a Clinton-Obama…and a Trump.
Wouldnt surprise me if we ended up with a Bernie as well. But I think the Bernie part would be temporary and wouldnt really change the trajectory of things.
How in the world could a corporotacracy be reversed, Billy? How in the world could that ever happen? Magic? 🙂
Too many people are too ‘dummed-down’ now. There aint enuff people who see through enuff of the propaganda.
At any rate, in the meantime Trump is like the crazy captain on the old star trek show. The one that was zooming the ship full speed ahead toward the planet-killer in space.
w
vAugust 3, 2018 at 10:31 am #88927wvParticipantWell i agree with the thrust of that article, as yall know.
I dont think i agree that trump is putin’s puppet though. I think putin and trump share some ideas, and disagree on some things. I think they will cooperate sometimes and will be at odds sometimes.
My own personal thing is…I am like Moe hearing the words “niagra falls” when i hear the DEM-msm talking about russia. Its so obviously a hypocritical bullshit stance coming from THEM. It appalls me. Sets me off. Ni..ag..ra Falls…step by step….
w
vWell…I don’t think Trump is Putin’s puppet in a “Your wish is my command” sort of way. Putin can’t “order him around.” I think – as Billy said – he owes whatever solvency he has to Putin though. They basically conduct business together with Trump being a junior partner in each transaction. Putin arranged loans, and set Trump up with revenue in order to launder money of Russian oligarchs, and perhaps more importantly, has the ability to shut Trump down financially. Furthermore, I don’t think Putin wants a puppet per se. He isn’t trying to run the United States. He is trying to manage and expand his own empire, and Trump proves more useful in that regard than, say, Hillary Clinton would have. Or any of the other candidates. He has real leverage on Trump, and he is using it. But he can’t just say, “Say ‘this.’ Do that. Walk in front of the Queen. Break up with Angela Merkel.” But he has Trump’s full attention, and he uses it wisely, and Trump gave him a heads up before they blew up some of Syria.
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I dunno, Z. Maybe, but I dunno. I dont trust anyone’s view of Putin these days. I dont trust my “OWN” view of Putin. I’m not sure we really understand him.
For example i hear things like “putin is trying to expand his empire” — and maybe there is some evidence of that — but there’s other narratives that might be true as well. And one of those narratives is that he’s not ‘expanding’ his ’empire’ at all. He’s just trying to resist the never-ending American-Expansion. I mean where is this russian empire exactly?
I think to really understand Putin we have to separate his domestic authoritarianism from his foreign policy. I think those two things get conflated a lot. People know he’s a repressive-authoritarian (in some ways) and then they assume that means his foreign policy is malevolent. But there’s lots of reasonable narratives on this stuff. Lots of complexities. I aint ready to jump on any of the mostly-american-narratives just yet.
Putin fascinates me. Zn likes to point out we dont have much info from the russian dissidents. True, but that wouldnt really affect the analysis of putin’s Foreign policy. The dissidents would have a lot to say about Putin’s domestic policy. Which we already know is repressive in some ways. Though Putin has also done good stuff in russia. Its not easy to put all this together. I resist the simple narratives on Putin.
Trump is way more easy to understand in my view. He’s Vince McMahon with Power. There’s just so much less to trump than his office would imply.
w
vAugust 3, 2018 at 10:34 am #88928Billy_TParticipantYeah, i tend to agree mostly.
We could talk about Trump forever. And its hard not to think about what he ‘represents’. What he’s a ‘reflection of.’
Just seems like, if yer gonna end up in the late-stages of a Corporotacracy, yer gonna end up with a Reagan, and a Bush, and a Clinton-Obama…and a Trump.
Wouldnt surprise me if we ended up with a Bernie as well. But I think the Bernie part would be temporary and wouldnt really change the trajectory of things.
How in the world could a corporotacracy be reversed, Billy? How in the world could that ever happen? Magic? :>)
Too many people are too ‘dummed-down’ now. There aint enuff people who see through enuff of the propaganda.
At any rate, in the meantime Trump is like the crazy captain on the old star trek show. The one that was zooming the ship full speed ahead toward the planet-killer in space.
w
vTrump was at it again during his rally in Penn. Lying his asss off, stirring up hatred against the Press, which I honestly think is going to result in reporters getting killed.
Another bizarre thing associated with this: He asked his own National Security team to give a presser on the Russia threat, and they were unanimous in saying that Russia interfered in 2016 and are trying to subvert the election now. Again, this is his own, hand-picked crew.
But at his rally, he played all of his greatest hits again and said it was all just a hoax.
The people who work for him must all suffer from whiplash by now, and probably need those neck braces.
August 3, 2018 at 10:37 am #88929Billy_TParticipantAs for the corporatocracy . . . I have no idea how to kill it, and like those old bug spray commercials, we need to kill it dead. It’s destroying the planet. Though, as you know, I think it goes deeper than just corporations. I think it’s capitalism itself that does this, that guarantees this.
Could Sanders counter it? Maybe a bit. It’s going to take generations of people like him to put the final nail in the coffin of capitalism, for a host of reasons, including the dumbing down you speak of. But also because capitalists have managed to set up a system of taxpayer bailouts which keeps the system going even after it should go down for the count, forever, by all rights.
No economic system in world history, in fact, has ever set up so many fail-safes — all on our dime.
August 3, 2018 at 10:53 am #88932Billy_TParticipantI dunno, Z. Maybe, but I dunno. I dont trust anyone’s view of Putin these days. I dont trust my “OWN” view of Putin. I’m not sure we really understand him.
For example i hear things like “putin is trying to expand his empire” — and maybe there is some evidence of that — but there’s other narratives that might be true as well. And one of those narratives is that he’s not ‘expanding’ his ’empire’ at all. He’s just trying to resist the never-ending American-Expansion. I mean where is this russian empire exactly?
I think to really understand Putin we have to separate his domestic authoritarianism from his foreign policy. I think those two things get conflated a lot. People know he’s a repressive-authoritarian (in some ways) and then they assume that means his foreign policy is malevolent. But there’s lots of reasonable narratives on this stuff. Lots of complexities. I aint ready to jump on any of the mostly-american-narratives just yet.
Putin fascinates me. Zn likes to point out we dont have much info from the russian dissidents. True, but that wouldnt really affect the analysis of putin’s Foreign policy. The dissidents would have a lot to say about Putin’s domestic policy. Which we already know is repressive in some ways. Though Putin has also done good stuff in russia. Its not easy to put all this together. I resist the simple narratives on Putin.
Trump is way more easy to understand in my view. He’s Vince McMahon with Power. There’s just so much less to trump than his office would imply.
w
vOne thing that a lot of Americans overlook, when they think of empire and Russia . . . It’s massive. Russia is the largest empire on earth, easily, even before the annexation of Georgia and Crimea. It’s just freakin’ huge. It dwarfs Europe, and our empire as well, in terms of land mass.
(Not the same, of course, as trying to quantify overall influence/imperialism. America dominates there mostly via Capital and being the world’s leading evangel of the capitalist system.)
As for its form of imperialism versus ours. I think it would do a hell of a lot more if it had the means. It doesn’t. Its total GDP is well under two trillion and it spends a fraction of what we spend on defense. Our economy is more than ten times bigger. This is why, IMO, it focuses on cyber so much. It’s cheap. It can be very cheap. As is “social hacking.” Compromising people using everyday forms of personal interactions.
I’m of the “pox on all their houses” school, for the most part, when it comes to discussing geopolitics. But I also think it’s a mistake to see Russia and forget what they likely want to do, but can’t. I think we’re the leading imperialists primarily because we’re the world’s hegemon economically too. I don’t see Russia as being less imperialistic if they had the same means.
August 3, 2018 at 11:55 am #88937wvParticipant…and they were unanimous in saying that Russia interfered in 2016 and are trying to subvert the election now. Again, this is his own, hand-picked crew. …
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Ok, but you already know my thing on this. How do you ‘subvert’ a corporotacray’s ‘election.’
It was already subverted before it began. The corporate money and corporate propaganda, and corporate media and corporate support systems already subverted it.
I mean what was left for the russians to subvert? Putin wanted Trump instead of Hillary. He wanted corporate-puppet A instead of corporate puppet B.
I suppose thats a type of subversion…but..really? A ‘big story’ ?
w
vAugust 3, 2018 at 1:35 pm #88948Billy_TParticipant…and they were unanimous in saying that Russia interfered in 2016 and are trying to subvert the election now. Again, this is his own, hand-picked crew. …
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Ok, but you already know my thing on this. How do you ‘subvert’ a corporotacray’s ‘election.’
It was already subverted before it began. The corporate money and corporate propaganda, and corporate media and corporate support systems already subverted it.
I mean what was left for the russians to subvert? Putin wanted Trump instead of Hillary. He wanted corporate-puppet A instead of corporate puppet B.
I suppose thats a type of subversion…but..really? A ‘big story’ ?
w
vMy thing isn’t really about what Russia did or what Russia wants, though I think we should defend ourselves from their attacks.
My main thing is to hold Americans accountable if they accepted help from Russia, and that goes for anyone, from any party, not just Trump.
For me, the reason why this is a huge story is because of that. Because we have someone in the White House who very likely — I actually have no doubt whatsoever — willingly accepted, and/or solicited, help from foreign agents to win an election, thus breaking our election laws. He then lied repeatedly about having any contacts at all with the Russians, finally admitted to the contacts, then engaged in a sustained effort to undermine the investigation into his law-breaking.
IMO, the acceptance/solicitation of help, the endless lies and coverup, and the subsequent obstruction of justice . . . by the current president . . . is huge. To me, it dwarfs Watergate. It makes Nixon look like a choirboy in comparison.
August 3, 2018 at 1:38 pm #88949Billy_TParticipantSide issues matter to me a lot, too. Trump’s dangerous attacks on the media, which I think will get reporters killed, and his successful gaslighting of 90% of the GOP — all of this is big story. The money laundering, the massive debt to Russian oligarchs, the financial crimes, etc. This matters to me.
It’s not so much about Russia. It’s what Americans have done and are doing. But I still don’t want our elections messed with any more than they already have been, regardless of source.
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