Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for calling her a "Russian asset"

Don’t say that about Gabbard! Her massive ego, sheer unlikeability, petty sense of entitilement, and a corrupt DNC didn’t help Trump get elected.

Yeah. She seems to be helping out her party of choice just fine.

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Tulsi Gabbard’s past efforts at institutionalizing conversion therapy for queer folks permanently disqualify her from holding any public office in my book, thanks.

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But in this case, if we’re both right, then I’m wrong! :slight_smile: (Since Clinton needs only to point to one perfectly normal usage of the word that they meant)

I retracted my point because asset can certainly mean something useful rather than something you own. That said, I 100% think that the phrase “Human Asset Management” suggests a relationship that denies the “human” part and focuses on the “asset” part.

Yeah, that’s so fucked up. I mean, I know libertarians who like her because she’s anti-war and I’m like: You like the person who thought that random regular people should be submitted to psychologists for brainwashing? Isn’t that sort of a libertarian nightmare?

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If Russian bots and fake news are trying to boost Gabbard, it would be a wasted effort, unlikely to make any difference – unless some useful idiot disruptor calls attention to it and blows it up, sucking oxygen from actual important issues.

Thanks Clinton, also a Russian asset.

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i’m just so goddamn happy someone admitted they made a mistake on the internet and seems to not be mad at me for disagreeing and trying to throw you every bone i can

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it’ not 2004 there’s candidates who let you smoke weed and not be drafted to drone brown people who aren’t idiots. i actually self identify as “left libertarian” but I avoid that term at all costs because i get painted with the goldcrazy brush

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Again, I don’t think that means what you think it means.

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Try “Anti-Authoritarian”?

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My problem with this, as a historian of the Cold War, is that it assumes that socialists in the US (and elsewhere) were merely puppets of Stalin, which is pretty much hogwash. it assumes that people who were living through this period, had no agency or did not make choices, based on the situation they were actually experiencing (vs. us, arm-chair pontificating about what they should have done). You can’t blame them for pointing out actual facts that were happening or attempting to benefit from it, as the US and British empire did the exact same thing about the oppression of the Soviet Union, or for people of good will seeking whatever support they could to end a violent segregationist state. Moreover, It was exactly THAT narrative that gave anti-integrationist yet more fuel for violently cruelty against their neighbors after the war.

We must not downplay the actual day to day violence of the American apartheid system, because it leads us to do stupid things like assume that racism is over now that we’ve had a black president.

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I agree with all of this. The point I was trying to make is that everything you said is just as true of the situation right now.

That is to say, there are many legitimate reasons that someone would not, and would never, support someone with Clinton’s record on war and the security state, that have nothing whatsoever to do with Russia, and painting the opposition as traitors is just as bad, just as authoritarian, just as nationalistic, and just as jingoistic now as it was then. The fact that the Russians are now, just as they were then, trying to mess with the US government doesn’t change that.

All that said, I still don’t think that suing people over political speech is a path we wand do go down.

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Your use of the term “Red Scare” not only doesn’t reflect the change of the ideology of the Soviet Union/Russia over the intervening period, but also downplays the fact that, in contrast to the period of McCarthyism, there are actual members of the US government being paid by Russians to undermine US democracy.

It’s not a “scare” when the threat is real, tangible, and proven.

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My point is that, calling specific political opponents enemy agents without very specific evidence that they are in the pay of a foreign power, is still bad, even if some government officials are actually in the pay of a foreign power.. There is specific evidence for that in the case of, say, Trump, but there is not in the case of Gabbard, so Clinton saying that about Gabbard is straight-up painting everyone who opposes her as an enemy agent, which is exactly what McCarthyism was about.

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Then just say that. Trying to use the shorthand of McCarthyism and the Red Scare obfuscates your point rather than enhancing it.

And agreed - the whole story is devoid of non-assholes. Now, if Clinton had instead accused Gabbard of interviewing for a job at Fox News, we’d have a different situation.

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@anon62122146 I have to agree. The article posted isn’t great history, from my POV, with regards to the red scare (which starts prior to McCarthyism).

I think your point that the Russians are indeed benefit and trying to heighten discord is pretty solid, though.

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You seem to have missed the point that accusing people of being in the pay of foreign powers without specific evidence is exactly what this situation with Gabbard is, and is also exactly what McCarthyism was. They are directly comparable, even if saying the same thing about Trump is not.

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Sorry, but as has been pointed out time and again above, that’s not actually what Clinton said. It was still a dick move, but she didn’t say Gabbard was in the pay of the Russians, she implied she was an “asset.” She implied the same thing about Jill Stein in the same interview, and I’m pretty sure Clinton doesn’t believe that Stein was being paid by the Russians. It is valid to say that a political opponent who draws votes away from one party to benefit another is an “asset” even if it is not intended.

The other, very key, difference between this example and McCarthyism is that Clinton is not an agent of the US government, in the way that Joseph McCarthy was.

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Who’s Tulsi gabbard? What’s a tulsi anyway? Is that the plural of tulsus? I thought that was SCP 3412. I give up.

She plays the tanpura:

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