Trump Thread

[AE Bravo]

I’ve reached my free WP limit, so I’ll reflect on those as soon as it restarts tomorrow. This has been an eye-opening discussion (for me) so far. Although I think there's some miscommunication.

Or if this estimation of your mindset is wrong, then what's your argument?

That the problem isn’t the fact that Trump is a liar, but that he comes from a system whose tradition is to lie to further its interests. Demonization of Russia (or the kindred China demonization) is a convenient means to weaken Trump and externalize evil rather than fixing what is broken internally. In Empire as a Way of Life, William Appleman Williams talks about how “empire turns a culture away from its own life as a society or community” and the “imperial propensity to externalize evil.” Acting like Russia is the only threat when a bigger one is right above you approaches hysteria yes. Outside powers don’t create divisions and mistrust, they may exploit them.

Or, maybe they've lost their minds and are chasing shadows despite their training and experience, and are not so brilliant or sound of judgement as you to conclude otherwise.

And you know more than the Atlantic Council members who say that Trump has been tough on Russia. But anyway.

In fact, with time the government has come to confirm a fairly wide-ranging effort to target power systems throughout the country, at a minimum for espionage. To be fair, North Korea is reportedly implicated as well here, and Russia surveils utilities throughout the world, not merely America. And to be extra fair, the US has previously gone so far as to conduct a successful attack on industrial controls themselves through Stuxnet. To be extra-extra fair, Russia was recently successful with an attack of similar depth on the Ukrainian power grid.

I don’t see how these are good measuring sticks for hacks on election infrastructure.

The news of these actions have unfortunately been equally abused against Russia by the disinformation you claimed was spreading in favor of them, which I was taking issue with the one-sided way you put it. For example, the basis for the January Intelligence Community Assessment was that the Russians had hacked the guidance systems of the Ukrainian artillery, which was contradicted by both the Ukrainian military and the British International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Stories of Russian interference in France and Germany were not discredited. Provide strong proof that it could not have been Russia, or that it was someone else; otherwise, that's a lie.

I don’t understand how you can call this a lie unless there have been drastic changes lately I haven’t heard of. The stories were thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services.

Though if you can present some hard facts that would be great too.

The last quoted sentence is an example of why you make me so frustrated. Why on earth would you type that sentence? Around 20 states so far have reported Russian attempts or successes in penetrating to varying extents their voting framework. Twenty means fewer than 50 FFS. That we know of. To suggest that if 2 states report no evidence of Russian breaches in their own systems, no state was breached, is insultingly dumb.

Yes but did the other states refute it? That would actually be helpful to my ‘motivated reasoning.’

As for the campaign itself, a few names pertaining to the Middle East and its economic interests vis-a-vis the US and Russia:

Prince
Flynn
Kushner
Papadopoulos
McFarlane
McFarland
Nader
Barrack

How is this unusual? I’m absolutely shocked that the US and Russia are negotiating their designs over the middle east. I’m shocked that they brought them to the table after their growing influence there. Come on…

The fact that there are challenges in the world you could enumerate does not obviate the existence or importance of other, additional challenges. They have to be placed against each other and synthesized, not dismissed, to be effectively addressed. Geez, talk about Oppression Olympics.

Fair enough.

For that matter, how could one possibly think that the influence of billionaires and elite lobbyists is a threat to free and democratic elections, but oligarchs and autocrats actually concretely capturing a US Presidential campaign IS NOT a problem???? It's a clear bloody manifestation of the underlying sickness!

No. It exposed the underlying sickness. The dirt was already there.