Interesting conspiracy theory, but I’ll go with Occam’s razor.
Good point. This would strengthen Putin’s own position internally.
Good point. Russia’s version is a ‘managed democracy’, dirty laundry is at least kept behind closed doors.
In any case, I can’t help but feel a tinge of schadenfreude at the way in which Putin slooowly and very publicly unfriends his little wannabe.
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It’s not really a conspiracy theory that Russians are feeding fake news and misinformation to Twitter and other social media platforms. It’s reality. One could argue that there are very good reasons for this type of Russian activity, which have nothing to do with undermining America; but the easiest, simplest, Occam’s-Razor-iest answer is that, yes, they are deliberately creating chaos and discrediting American governance.
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I quibble with your point that this is the secondary goal. I think this is the primary and most important goal for Putin. I think Putin wants to retain control of Russia, so the important thing to him is that when Russians look at America they think, “Wow, democracy isn’t working over there.”
During the USSR people in Russia could look at the west and think, “It’s so much better than it is here.” People can point to lots of reasons the soviet era ended, but keeping the faith of the populace is a pretty major thing for anyone who wants to stay in power. Putin wants Russians to look at the west and say, “It is not any better there than it is here.”
All the other stuff, I think, is just in service of that goal. Unless he actually has global power ambitions. I’m far from convinced of that, though.
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“We’re gonna need a bigger bus …”
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Zero-sum? When you authorize the killing of journalists and jail opponents in order to stay on top, that doesn’t look zero-sum to me.
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That’s possible. I think it’s also possible that Russia’s squirting out a little of this and a little of that may be intended to pressure Trump into trying harder to work for and protect Russia’s interests.
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FTFY.
Democracy is still the best not working form of government.
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Depends. Are you a loyal Republican, or a filthy traitor? /s
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Negative-sum then.
Likely true, but I think that was icing on the cake. If Hillary had eked out a win Russia still would have managed to undermine faith in both our President and our electoral process, so anything they accomplish beyond that is a bonus.
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Do you mean the plot of the movie or the production?
Or nato, specifically. Western Europe should be afraid.
It is not beyond possibility that the Trumpists are maintaining a steady stream of leaks in order to maintain passivity amongst Liberals. So long as they have hope of a judicial solution, they are unlikely to act.
They apparently do not believe in Masha’s Rule 3.
There is a slim possibility of impeachment or indictment. But even if it happens, it is going to require vigorous street action to ensure that the outcome is more than just replacing Trump with a slightly less unstable fascist, or Trump using executive authority to defy the challenge.
America hasn’t been democratic for a long time. There’s a good argument that it has never been democratic.
Slavery, Jim Crow, Southern Strategy, gerrymandering, voter suppression, workday voting. The lack of a real union movement effectively disenfranchises the working class.
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Putin’s spokesman… Trump
These are two different people?
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I would not try to argue with you too hard about it, but given your moral and ethical standards, are there many countries which would qualify as a democracy?
To elaborate:
I would certainly find much to be criticised in the US of A which puts a stress on democracy, and less so in my own direct environment, which I by no means would want to spare from criticism but which I know better and understand better culturally speaking. By given some time to reflect on the matters, I would concede that the US are, in fact, a democracy which ticks most boxes in the qualification test. And at least until 9/11, I would assume they were more democratic than most large industrialised nations in the sense of political culture.
Well, it’s something to work towards.
As students for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program in campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.
(apologies for quoting the compromised second draft. I can’t seem to find the original)
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It’s a spectrum, not a binary. But as with most spectrums, despite the grey area in the middle, there are still cases that are clearly to one side or another.
All democracies are imperfect. Australia has an extremely robust electoral system and about as close to a genuine universal adult franchise as is possible, but we still have problems. Almost all of our media is owned by Murdoch, and the crumbling of the union movement over the last thirty years has left us highly vulnerable. If America falls to fascism, Australia will probably follow.
Most of the Western world is close enough to the democratic side of the spectrum to qualify as a legitimate democracy, IMO, although that status is fragile. Most of central and eastern Europe isn’t.
The only period in which the Confederacy approached legitimate democracy was during Reconstruction.
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