Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/17/russia-vs-robert-mueller.html
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“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”
—Almost certainly not Mark Twain
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So damn desperate to defeat the Evil DemonCrats and the Hillabeastie that they jumped right into bed with the fookin Russians. Wow.
If Hillary had won with this much help from the Russians or Chinese, ‘conservatives’ would be stealing tanks and APCs from Natl Guard armories and ramming em into Apple stores (cuz they is so lib!) The party of Dunning Kruger ‘geniuses’
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Dear lord. This is what happened: they made some Facebook and Twitter posts. They shared them with regressive bigots. The bigots shared with other bigots. The bigots were motivated to vote for once.
Not only did we get took, we got took in the cheapest, easiest manner possible. I guarantee that the people who did this are rofl’ing at how stupid simple this all was. Shrewd my ass.
ETA: bolding mine.
EETA: that quote makes it look like I’m taking the piss out of you, Xeni. Not my intent.
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It feels like we are still all marching in formation, getting mowed down by enemy sniper fire in wave after wave like Redcoats, rather than engaging guerrilla operatives in kind. Disruption is far easier to execute than defending the status quo.
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Who could have seen that coming?
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Yeah, I kinda wish stories would surface of the CIA or whomever successfully waging an anti-Putin campaign/sowing Russian discord/etc. I imagine there is something like this happening, but with Putin’s approval ratings over 80%, nothing currently seems as effective.
Meanwhile, polls are showing American Republicans’ trust of the main stream media in the low teens. Honestly shocking really.
Here ya go:
22 years ago Time magazine ran just such a feature on how four Americans and an ex-pat Russian had managed the 1996 Russian presidential election to ensure a win for Boris Yeltsin. And apparently that was something to openly boast about.
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Yep, that’s a good one. I read that one a while back.
But I meant recently (e.g. 2016+) since Russia has amped up their activities. And I’d argue that Russia’s interfering at a new level. It’s not just “help the pro-Russia candidate” it’s more “monkey wrench the entire US system” ranging from scaring-mongering minorty groups, stoking anti-government rhetoric (e.g. Jade Helm), to undermining confidence in the press.
It seems like foreign ops under Trump are ineffective. He doesn’t seem to trust anyone else do carry out them, or, perhaps, vise-versa.
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Il Douche’s disinclination to undermine his bare-chested idol aside, there just hasn’t been much room over the past decade for the CIA or conservative consultants monkey-wrench Russian “democracy”. 25 years ago, American neoCon meddlers could work within something approaching a legitimate democratic system in Russia to help get their preferred candidate elected (as always, they backed the wrong horse, although Putin wasn’t running back then).
Now, though, Putin has the Russian political system locked down tight, the local media cowed into self-censorship, and the operators of the homegrown social network (Vkontakte) and search engine (Yandex) doing his bidding as a condition of doing business. Actual liberal democracies, even (and especially) ones as compromised as the U.S.'s or the UK’s, are much easier to undermine than illiberal sham democracies like Russia’s.
It’s also easier for a regime like Putin’s to co-ordinate intelligence operations (e.g. Butina), financial warfare (e.g. the banks and oligarchs that fund right-wing campaigns), foreign propaganda (e.g. RT and Sputnik), and disinformation campaigns (e.g. the Internet Research Agency’s paid trolls) to get the election results it wants or at least create chaos and divisiveness. They’re also a lot more competent than the American neoConservative bunglers who operated in the former Soviet Union decades ago.
As much as most Western liberals and progressives (some dupes and fools excepted) deplore and condemn Putin’s regime and its meddling, we’re stuck with it. Vigilance and defense of liberal democratic institutions at home are our only options for holding the line against the resurgence of right-wing populism currently being promoted in the West by Russia.
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Still happening…
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Oh noes! They’re going to ruin Mueller’s popularity! He won’t get invited to any cocktail parties!
As if it matters?
It may matter when the deplorables who refuse to trust any mainstream media start calling Mueller a lying stooge (and other things) and use such ad hominem attacks (previously proven successful in other cases) to sway enough people to refuse to believe whatever he reports. Because not only will it serve to cause further division, it may motivate even more of the fuckwits to vote for Individual-1 come 2020, as a knee-kerk reaction. Because those idiots really do ‘get’ ad hominem attacks. Far more than they ‘get’ truth, or even skepticism.
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Possibly. But I don’t think they could treat Mueller worse than Clinton, and she won* anyway.
Oh, so it’s ok if lots of people say “I believe the Russians more than I believe our own legal process or the media that reports on it” just as long as not so many believe it as to stop the right person winning*.
I hardly know where to begin… but let’s just agree that we hope Mueller actually wins as opposed to wins*.
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Has Trump tweeted “GOOD!” yet?
Never correctly.
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Nothing Mueller uncovers will mean a damn thing if he isn’t viewed as a credible, nonpartisan investigator by those who have the power to act on his findings (and by extension, by those who elected the people in power).
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