I agree. You used whataboutery to dismiss the actions of the Kremlin by saying, in essence “but you do it too”. To suggest that the actions from Russian during the last election cycle can be framed as “my government legitimately keeping up its influence” ignores the reality of what took place. You further deflect by suggesting that I and others are complacent when our own government acts badly which is just painting pictures without knowing the subject. Of course I and many other have a problem when our government does something untoward. However, those actions are not being discussed here. What is being discussed is the actions of Russia in manipulating our election process.
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Don’t make things complicated with unfashionable morality or tedious ethical consistency.
After all, if you say “Rather than singling out the normative behavior of one race/creed/nation or other official propaganda target while ignoring the similar/identical/worse behavior of races/creeds/nations that are approved by one’s gods/leadership/peers, this issue should be seen as the inevitable consequence of a larger problem that needs to be addressed” that just proves you are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor.
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Fake News, Is Work Of Moose and Squirrel.
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Actually I don’t regard myself as very moral. My view is this: people who use the term “whataboutery” are appealing to an absolute standard of morality, a prescriptivist view, and saying “it doesn’t matter if everybody does it, it’s wrong.”
Whereas a fairly objective historian might be descriptivist and say "this is how great powers behaved in 1914 (or whenever) and in seeking to assign causes leave morality out of it except where someone violated the norms. Assigning causes is very different from assigning guilt.
Today if I see Russia, China, the US, France, GB all pulling more or less the same kind of stuff despite being the permanent members of the UN Security Council (and how long can GB possibly stay there?) my reaction is a weary shrug and the feeling that they’re all as bad as one another. I see no point in trying to grade them on a scale of good or evil. It’s obvious, however, that some people (like @anotherone) see that as anti-US prejudice.
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That must be your filter at work or perhaps you claim to read minds while failing to read text. I don’t see it as anti-US. I see the attitude “everyone does it” as misdirection from the issue at hand. If you would like to discuss the bad actions of the U.S., U.K. or anyone else, feel free to find a discussion on that topic and go to town. Have fun. This post however is about Russian meddling in our presidential election. Being an apologist by pointing out the “they did it too” aspect of the story simply serves to distract from the topic at hand while attempting to normalize the action of Russia with regards to this specific event.
But that directly implies the issue at hand is special pleading for one or more players. Personally, I consider such special pleading to be destructive chicanery. If purported “election meddling” is a problem when Russia does it, refusing to discuss the general case amounts to either willful blindness or outright deceit.
I mean no disrespect to yourself and do not mean to put words in @Enkita’s mouth - my intention is to point out that there’s more than one way to look at this…
The topic is the unsubstantiated and grandiose claims of an individual Russian. But my post was just mocking the partisan propaganda memes embedded in the topic post and in the discussion here, so I’m at least as far offtopic as you are. 
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Mostly Russia wanting to make sure our confidence in the electorial system is broken.
How am I ignoring anything unfavorable to my point of view? Really, I would like you to point out how staying on topic and not distracting ourselves with pointless “they do it too” arguments is special pleading. If the topic was U.S. meddling in to Russian elections, I’d be right there saying it’s a problem and arguing “the Russians do it too” to be a matter of goal post moving and normalization though equivocation.
And what is the subject of those grandiose claims? That Russia meddled in our election and we could not stop them? That sound about right?
I just did that. If I failed to get the point across, I am sorry, I am not a great writer.
Exactly right!
Perhaps we should return to the topic. Like, for example, “did this Russian say this because he knew that the resulting furor would help prevent any election-winning coalition from forming in the USA?” or “do you think this Russian was telling what he believes is truth, or just gleefully repeating stuff from Huffington Post?” or even “do you think this Russian knew he’d make bOINGbOING?”…
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I don’t think there’s much interference from Russia, but you are right about authoritarian actions of the government. Sadly there’s a lot of examples of this. Currently there’s a lot of worry about higher education reform, that may be used to control and politicize universities - there are propositions that rector will be chosen by Ministry of Education instead of being elected by university professors. This would be seen as an attack on universities autonomy and on academia in general. For the context universities in Poland have quite large autonomy, for example police cannot enter university campus without rector’s approval. If final draft of reform will have propositions I’ve mentioned, I hope that outrage in academia will cause government to rethink it’s position.
You are right, and from social policies side they are definitely right wing, but their economical policies are complete opposite of US right wing. The “war on drugs” aspect also isn’t that important here - in 2016 they voted to legalize medical marijuana. I think that “Christian democracy”(with additional authoritarianism) is the best fitting description.
There are real extreme far right movements in Poland, and they are far more worrying:
It’s related to current government - the conflict is mostly around presidential aircraft crash that occurred near Smolensk in Russia:
Leader of ruling Law and Justice party lost his brother there, and there are various tensions ranging from problems with post-accident investigation to wild conspiracy theories propagated by Polish senior government officials.
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