Did you change your vote based on Russian Interference?

Except that it didn't have to be about people switching to vote for the other party. All it had to do was get would-be Hillary voters to not vote at all.

 

or just running Hillary as the only candidate was enough for plenty of people to stay home.

Time to move on from this. Its been a year and a half and you liberals still can't move on.

 

When did the OP became a liberal?

Its been a year and a half and you are still repeating trump lines.

 

Trump said that? neat. I dont follow Trump. Thanks for enlightening me.

 

you do understand that one of the two situations is illegal and inimical to the functioning of the system, while the other is not and is perfectly allowed, right? generally if you want to start an investigation, some actual crime has to be alleged or at least suspected...

If collusion between media and political parties was illegal, "EIB Network" and Fox News would have been shut down 20+ years ago instead of spawning a massive growth market for intentionally slanted news organizations.

private Americans can collude with any other private Americans they want to collude with.

 

I believe the estimate was that Russian operatives were spending $1-2 million per month on their influence campaign. That's about what the NRA has averaged, but the NRA has done that month in and month out for 20 years. The Russians only sustained that spending for about a year. VW, if you count their marketing and branding expenses, probably spends much more than that, though they probably spend only a tiny fraction on social media engagement.

Even if Russian influence incrementally shifted the public discourse, I don't think the election is illegitimate. These were still US citizens voting of their own free will. No matter how large, I don't think a simple influence campaign invalidates an election.

I've been reading Twelve Who Ruled about the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (which is great, btw). It's interesting to read history now that I'm old enough to have some perspective. What is particularly interesting in the book is to read about the Foreign Plot (in which some revolutionaries were denounced because they were associated with foreigners who had been drawn to the revolution) and compare and contrast with our current day Foreign Plot. The truth is accusing your political enemies of working with foreign powers is a trick as old as dirt and has worked countless times. Which is not to say that all foreign plots are made up for political expediency, because plotting with foreigners is also an old trick that often works. In the French Revolution, they were in year 4 of self-inflicted anarchy and faced invasion from the rest of Europe -- they were completely wound up and paranoid. Any hint of collusion with foreign kings meant the guillotine because if they ever succumbed to any treachery, the revolutionaries themselves would be executed. Here and now, the stakes are not so high, which maybe allows us to look at things more objectively. But even so, you do see a bit of the foreign plotter paranoia. Imho, the idea that the election itself and Trump's presidency has no legitimacy because of Russian meddling is a bit of paranoia. I think the danger you mention is there -- that it can turn into a form of McCarthyism where this convenient accusation can be tossed at Hillary Clinton or whoever the next politicians are because it worked with Trump. There is something 'there' with Trump. But people will need the wisdom to discern where there is something 'there' and when it's a political trick. Wisdom is not our strong suit.

If by "people" you mean @JumpMan.

 

Hack, steal, release. Propaganda, lies. Spread hatred, sow distrust, cause harmful divisiveness. What our military call "active measures". If VW or any other foreign entity engage in such behaviors to interfere with our election and democracy, we need to deal with that. Right now it's Putin.

These "active measures" I'm sure involve the Russian's "cyber war" army, which by some reports, have more than 1000 hackers. I don't know if we know the number, but I'm assuming they also employ thousands to monitor, create and spread their "attacks" on western democracy. The estimate you provided might just be "ads" buy, but that's clearly do not take into account the costs of their activities. Wouldn't surprise me if they spend a few hundred of millions per year.

And if you notice, Putin is doing this to other countries as well. Some of those other countries are taking serious actions to defend their election and democracy. We are not, at least not from the top. Our inaction/and actions might invite others bad actors to join the game. This should really not ever be a left vs right issue. Just dumb that it is.

 

Well, that's interesting. I don't agree with it, though. There are lots of choices people make of their own free will that we protect them from or want to protect them from in the future. Subprime mortgages and payday loans, for example. I know it's not an apples to apples comparison, but we do protect people from themselves.

In this case, I think it's important to protect the country from itself. Since, for the foreseeable future, presidential elections will be close just as this one was, so any influence no matter how incremental can swing an election. There needs to be a definitive consequence from this. If not for Trump, then for Russia. If for neiether, Trump needs at least a political neutering.

This is true. I made it a point to separate myself from everyone else that participates in this debate, but some people need to something to rage about so they'll extrapolate.

 

I agree about consequences. As I've argued here before, even if we don't actually lob missiles, our president should have put Russia in legitimate fear that we might lob missiles for trying to meddle in our elections. Obviously, he hasn't done that. I consider what Russia has been doing to be an act of war and our response should be very grave. I still don't think that voids our elections though. Yes, influence campaigns can swing an election. But, we have a multitude of simultaneous influence campaigns going on. Lots of nonprofits, PACs, and opinionated billionaires all throw in money to influence the outcomes of elections; they buy influence beyond the strength of their numbers. But we call that free speech. Russia is an illegitimate player who should not be allowed to have inputs, but you get in a very gray area when you say the outputs -- how US citizens think and vote -- are therefore polluted, because they have been subject to many inputs with varying levels of legitimacy. In the end, for a democracy to work, you have to trust in the voter no matter how stupid, foolish, and evil they are. In the French Revolution (sorry, it's been on my mind), the Committee of Public Safety established their dictatorship by suspending elections to protect the Sovereign People from electing counter-revolutionaries. Its a bad road. Unless the ballot counts are actually faked, you have to call elections legitimate. Even if we discover that Trump very intentionally conspired with Putin to gain his help to win the election, the election is still valid. It's just that our president is a crook that should be impeached and imprisoned, but he was still the 45th president for a while.