Nicholas Kristof can’t understand why Trump continues to deny that Putin hacked into our election to help Trump. Why would Trump support Putin over the professionals at the CIA and FBI?
“Let’s be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but still profoundly damaging to our system. It’s not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an election. But if the C.I.A. is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who would be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog — a Russian poodle.
“In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely (and unfairly) mocked as President George W. Bush’s poodle, following him loyally into the Iraq war. The fear is that this time Putin may have interfered to acquire an ally who likewise will roll over for him.
“Frankly, it’s mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even as he excoriates everyone else, from C.I.A. officials to a local union leader in Indiana.
“Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States.
“Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager. Yet it’s notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with Russia’s “Order of Friendship.”
“Whatever our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia’s interference in our election by putting American foreign policy in the hands of a Putin friend?
“Tillerson’s closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump’s other Russia links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, accepted Russian money to attend a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A ledger shows $12.7 million in secret payments by a pro-Russia party in Ukraine to Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump family itself has business connections with Russia.
“It’s true that there will be counterbalances, including Gen. James Mattis, the former Marine commander who has no illusions about Moscow and is expected to be confirmed as defense secretary. But over all it looks as if the Trump administration will be remarkably pro-Putin — astonishing considering Putin’s Russia has killed journalists, committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and threatened the peaceful order in Europe.
“So it’s critical that the Senate, the news media and the public subject Tillerson to intense scrutiny. There are other issues to explore as well, including his role in enabling corruption in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. The same is true of his role in complicity with the government of Angola, where oil corruption turned the president’s daughter into a billionaire even as children died of poverty and disease at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
May I direct your attention to 2012 when candidate Romney said that he was the one most qualified to defend the USA against Russia. At the time, the left was only the floor laughing and the right was cringing in disbelief. After my initial amusement, I realized that Romney was not a fool and was probably talking about the threat posed by the Russian oligarchy, not any left over cold warriors, since surviving to become that powerful, to become an oligarch in Russia was a task that made Machiavelli’s operating environment look like a church picnic. It was a process of un-natural selection that favored the most vicious and remorseless pathologies that humans could bring to bear, to the point that it is not too strange to say that luck itself was selected for. Like Trump, Russian oligarchs only trust immediate family since all others will betray you. He seems to have studied their ways and history, and in my view is well versed in how their domestic media disinformation apparatus is constructed and functions. Never assume Trump is a clueless fool just because he acts like one. His “click bait” behavior is the perfect camoflage.
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On the floor, not only. Screw autocorrect.
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I totally agree that Trump shows signs of having studied evil regimes to learn from them. Meanwhile American liberal arts grads have been ransacking Shakespeare for ever more subtle gradations of racism, patriarchy, homophobia and gender non-conformity. Wake up liberals. We live in a dangerous world. Time to concentrate our mind on the important stuff. Job #1: preventing mass murder. Job #2: learning from our enemies to regain power.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/16/ah-so-putin-didnt-hack-those-emails-after-all/
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Duane, I think your own personal opinion is more credible than that link.
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Please explain why counterpunch and Whitney lack credibility.
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Maybe I just think very highly of your opinion, DS.
But, seriously, that’s nothing more than a biased editorial. And actually I think your own opinion rates higher than that.
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Thanks for the kind words, Akademos.
But if I may ask: Is not Kristof’s piece, then, also “a biased opinion”? And if not why not? What is the substantive differences in the two pieces? TIA, Duane
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Duane,
Put Kristof aside. Believe your own eyes and ears about Trump’s admiration for the tyrant Putin. He said so. He didn’t know that Putin invaded Crimea. He appointed Rex Tillerson because of his close friendship with Putin. If confirmed, he will surely recommend lifting the sanction imposed on Russia for invading a sovereign nation. Tillerson worked on an oil deal worth $500 Billion to Russia and ExxonMobil. It is on hold as long as sanctions remain. .
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Please understand I share the same disgust of Trump as I have for Billy the Gates, V. Putin, Georgie the Least, Madeline Albright and many others in positions of power, including the Clintons. That disgust for me goes back to Spiro Agnew, Nixon, Goldwater, etc. . . .
I just am pointing out that this supposedly angelic nation, this light on the hilltop is not as innocent, actually a hell of a lot more guilty of mass murders of innocents than most in America will admit (even if they know which the vast majority don’t).
The world can be a very ugly place and all those mentioned above and many more have made it worse not better.
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Do you trust Craig Murray? His unverified statements are the basis of that Counterpunch story that the DNC emails weren’t hacked.
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Let me follow the logic. The DNC emails were “not hacked.” Wikileaks found them on the web?
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As I understand it from the Counterpunch article and some skimming of the coverage on the Internet, Murray claims that he obtained the Podesta emails directly from a source associated with the DNC in a meeting in September. He also asserts that the DNC emails that Wikileaks published over the summer were “leaks” from an insider rather than “hacks,” but I don’t think he gives any basis for his knowledge on that point. Murray does not identify the “source” who allegedly gave him the documents (ironically, given that the Counterpunch article complains that newspaper reports of the Russian hack do not identify the papers’ sources within the CIA), so his version of events would appear to be unverifiable. I also believe Assange himself was asked to confirm Murray’s account, and declined to do so, saying that Murray is not authorized to “speak for Wikileaks.”
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Well, involving a dog and having a cute title generates broad appeal.
On the more substantive side, when you look into each author’s soul, in one you get the sense of a purplish blue color, in the other the number 23 keeps coming up. Then we must consult Tobin’s Spirit Guide, or Dan Aykroyd.
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Duane,
This website is aligned with Putin. Why believe Greenwald rather than CIA and FBI. He is shilling for Putin.
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Counterpunch is “aligned” with Putin? What does that mean? And no I’m not being facetious this time.
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The CIA are the most skilled liars, manipulators, prevaricators and any other pejorative term one can think of on this planet. Why would I believe them?
Please show me a reference to where the FBI has weighed in on this fiasco, because as far as I know they haven’t.
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FBI agrees with CIA.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/clinton-blames-putins-personal-grudge-against-her-for-election-interference/2016/12/16/12f36250-c3be-11e6-8422-eac61c0ef74d_story.html?client=safari
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From the article you linked:
““Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” Brennan said, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.
The CIA and the FBI declined to comment on Brennan’s message or on the classified intelligence assessment that CIA officials shared with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, setting off a political firestorm. . . A few days after the Senate briefing, a senior FBI counterintelligence official briefed the House Intelligence Committee but was not as categorical as the CIA briefer about Russia’s intention to help Trump, according to officials who were present. The FBI official’s more cautious presentation of the intelligence to the House panel left some Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the room with the impression that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.”
That certainly doesn’t sound like the “FBI agrees with the CIA” to me. Especially since that is the CIA’s assessment of the meetings and not the FBI’s or DNI’s. Maybe you’re reading something into it that I don’t see/read but that certainly isn’t any proof of Russian involvement in my book. It’s just more of the same nonsense, no proof of anything and the anonymous sources that will never be identified, the CIA has been and is trying to sell about this big ado of nothing.
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If Russia interfered in our presidential election, that is a very big deal.
Trump is Putin’s president. Not mine.
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Yes, it would be quite a big deal. I just don’t interpret the “evidence” the same way as you.
Just like the CIA has unfortunately done in other countries elections since the 1950s. Have you/do you consider those to be big deals. If so then how can one necessarily believe what the CIA is saying now, considering the lies of denial that Langley has propagated over the years about those “interferences”? May I suggest William Blum’s (he worked in the State Department in the 60s) “Killing Hope”. Or Chalmers Johnson’s (who served in the Korean War and as an analyst for the CIA in the late 60s & early 70s) Trilogy of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. As he said “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.”
And I don’t agree with the “Trump is Putin’s president”. I don’t see the evidence in the fashion you do. Again more likely the result of our life experiences as I’ve mentioned before.
Just how it is for me from this currently frozen part of Eastern Missouri.
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As between Putin’s word and the word of our government, I believe the latter.
If you trust Putin, we live in different worlds.
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Please don’t put words in my mouth, Diane. I have never said anything about “trusting Putin”. EVER!
(Man, since the presidential election coverage began here there have been many times that I’ve had to admonish those who choose to put words in my mouth, attributing to me things I never said. I don’t remember that ever happening to me before the presidential election coverage here)
At the same time I don’t trust the CIA. Why would I trust the world’s best liars, prevaricators, dissemblers, concocter of falsehoods, etc. . . even if they are supposedly on “my side”. They aren’t on my side, they are on the side of the oligarchs, money handlers, dictators, etc. . . .
As I listen and take in what you have to say now about public education after you had been what I considered the “enemy” in the public school battle, so I listen to those former employees/analysts for the CIA who have chosen to enlighten this country as much as they can about the abuses of that agency, W. Blum, C. Johnson, Ray McGovern and others who have rejected that darkness that is the CIA in favor of the light of openness in government.
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Yes, they’re holding off on specifics and debriefings (of electors for ex.) until further investigations are completed.
Doesn’t look good.
You a Three Days of the Condor fan?
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Akademos,
I’ve heard of that movie, have never seen it. I’ve never been much of a TV or Movie watcher. I’m a reader and “experiencer”. While I can appreciate all the hard work and effort that goes into those two endeavors, I prefer to mediate my environment in my own way and time.
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Duane,
Art transcends its media, despite McLuhan.
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Yes,
Putin did hack those emails.
It is amusing to see American leftists circling the wagons to protect the vicious tyrant Putin, as if he were an old style idealistic Communist. In fact, communism is dead in Russia. Putin is a cold calculating dictator, who has stashed away billions of dollars as he and his friends loot Russia.
Read Putin’s Kleptocracy.
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No doubt that Putin is a “cold calculating dictator” and there is no doubt about his stashing billions. Not that any good democratic (notice the small d) capitalist would stash away billions of less than honestly gained dollars. If you haven’t read “Shadow Elite” to see just one example of the type of help that Putin and his ilk received from the good ol capitalists of the US of A, you should.
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Who are those “American leftists circling the wagon”? Again, a serious question.
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Wilson:
“3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions…”
” 4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true…”
“The charge of ‘fake news’ currently at the fore of American political chatter is held forward on its own and is tied to the related charge that the Russian government ‘hacked’ the recent presidential election. Both charges proceed from the oppositional premise that some functioning state of affairs, some normalcy, preceded these onslaughts. The follow-on premise is that this hallowed state of affairs was diminished by ‘external’ malevolent forces.
Functionally, the use of such oppositional reasoning serves to delimit the realm of related discourse. The term ‘fake news’ infers that there exists ‘real’ news. The charge of a hacked election infers that said election was otherwise free from untoward influence. In political terms the charge of illegitimacy infers, and is intended to confer, legitimacy upon the purveyors of ‘real’ news and those levying the charges of political interference.
Cui bono?…”
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NB,
Is the term “oppositional reasoning” the same as “dichotomous or binary thinking”? If not A then and only then B? Black vs white with no grey? From where does that type of thinking come? Is it a solid onto-epistemological basis in viewing/interpreting the world around us? Communism vs capitalism? Command economy vs supposedly free market?
Is that not a fool’s or perhaps better said a simpleton’s way of thinking? Or am I just deluded in thinking that black and white are are not the two sides of the same coin and where does the demarcation line begin and end? Which shade and tone of black and white do we use?
(By the by, what you quote is my summation of Wilson’s work, albeit with kindly help from Wilson himself to make sure that I am understanding and summarizing his work correctly.)
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DT = 💩tin 💩dle
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Russian hacking into US servers is nothing new, according to ex-CIA intelligence officers. The US & Russia have hacked each others servers for years. These officers suggest that the NSA has the capability to track the origin of leaks and can identify anyone, Russia, or not, attempting to interfere in US elections.
These officers offer an insider critique of the DNC leak here:
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/cia_whistleblower_john_kiriakou_critiques_the_cias_20161216
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/william_binney_ray_mcgovern_intel_experts_russia_hacking_20161213
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This is the first time however that Russian hackers picked our president.
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You’re blowing my mind Diane, blowing my mind! (to use an expression from the 60s)
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This is what some kids do when caught doing or saying something not so smart. They do or say something very unpredictable with the implicit or explicit challenge that if others are really so smart, why can’t they figure that nonsense out. Have seen adults do this too.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/national-security/china-said-it-would-return-a-seized-us-naval-drone-trump-told-them-tokeep-it/2016/12/18/9e3f6f82-c4d3-11e6-9a51-cd56ea1c2bb7_story.html?client=safari
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http://www.salon.com/2016/12/18/donald-trumps-questionable-intelligence-all-those-false-claims-about-his-academic-record-and-derision-of-others-bespeak-profound-insecurity/
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Hence his whole “they can’t figure me out” meme and M.O.
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As teachers we probably all have had those students who are so off-the-charts bad that we simply cannot keep up with prosecuting their crimes. The kid is tardy, disrupts ten times, makes animal noises and then hurls chocolate milk at a classmate… Normally there would be consequences for each one of those, but for THIS kid, we pick the chocolate milk incident and let the others slide. Otherwise we’d be doing disciplinary paperwork all day every day. Trump is that kid. He probably honed his technique of overwhelming the enforcers of law and decency in elementary and middle school.
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It occurred to me that another interpretation of the relationship between Trump and Putin is a linking of two powerful Oligarchy’s to enhance their shared business interests. Of course, it does seem like a fools errand that will curse us to “live in interesting times.”
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Many Americans are more loyal to Putin than to Obama and even our Constitution. Coastal liberals cannot conceive how this can be so, but I saw this even before the rise of Trump. Putin is macho, white, Christian (nominally), Muslim-bashing and gay-bashing; Obama is the enemy. Putin is the leader of the only nation they really belong to: the White Christian Nation. I blame the schools for failing to instill an attachment to our democratic, pluralistic nation, which now looks as old-school, analog and obsolete as newspapers. Why should we have believed that globalization would be restricted to trade and information? Political parties and leaders have been globalized too. The Internet is gerrymandering Earth into new nations.
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“Political parties and leaders have been globalized too.”
See the book “Shadow Elite” by Janine Wedel to understand how it is done.
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My comment below — when I posted the link directly to the Kristoff article: http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Donald-Trump-The-Russian-in-General_News-America_Donald-Trump-Lies_Donald-Trump-Wins_Election-161218-952.html
My comment:
“When I was teaching, I introduced the concept of THE ESSENTIAL QUESTION — the type of query where the answer reveals the observable reality, and thus leads us to KNOW what we must do.”
Here is that question, which Diane Ravitch asked on her blog, when she posted a link to the Kristoff piece”Why would Trump support Putin over the professionals at the CIA and FBI?”
and here, I say this:
The answer is clear, and we cannot wait to be rescued. We must be vigilant and DEMAND that the CONGRESS do its job. It is not enough to talk endlessly about what this man, who breaks all the rules, is doing.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/To-Trump-rules-are-made-t-in-Best_Web_OpEds-America_Corruption_Culture_Practices-161217-413.html
This is what he is doing, and it is just a place to start.
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/donald-trump-violated-federal-law-by-threatening-electoral-college-members/26730/
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I suppose it’s “comforting” that even a lazy conservative journalist like Nicholas Kristof now believes that Russia hacked the presidential election and American voters. Because Kristof has gotten things wrong so many times before.
IN eduction, Kristof has often leaned on the “research” of Eric Hanushek to support his sloppy thinking. Hanushek is a conservative economist who rarely if ever has a positive thing to say about public schools and who’s been caught numerous times fudging and distorting data to make it support his predetermined conclusions.
Hanushek infamously discounted the Tennessee STAR study findings on small class size because the researchers, meticulous in assigning students randomly to smaller, control, and larger class sizes hadn’t given students achievement tests BEFORE they entered kindergarten. What a tool.
Hanushek has argued that if we can only fire the worst 10 percent of teachers then test scores would soar, and American economic competitiveness would miraculously be restored. And pigs will fly.
As to Russian hacking, I’m disappointed to see some commenters here questioning the validity of the hacking. Here’s what Thomas Rid, professor at Kings College London and an expert on cyber and security issues has to say about it:
“In 2016 the world witnessed a historically unprecedented spy-versus-spy showdown. The stage was the U.S. presidential election. The prize was the integrity of the American democratic process. The winner of round one: Russia…the amount and the quality of the evidence that is already available in the public domain is extraordinary…intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, around a dozen private cybersecurity firms, and a few independent researchers have caught Russian hacking groups in the act…Even if the U.S. Intelligence Community were presenting a live specimen of a 400-pound Russian government hacker right there in the White House briefing room, a good number of people—the president-elect probably among them—would still refuse to accept the evidence.”
Sadly, some here are among the disbelievers.
Rid added this:
“We are facing a deep identity crisis of Western liberal democracy and the values that undergird it.”
That is an understatement.
Does anyone think it’s way beyond time for an emphasis on civid education in American public schools? Might it be that the emphases on “college and careers” and SATs and ACTs and STEM and Advanced Placement courses have been terribly misguided?
Anyone?
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“America its them bad Russians
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars
from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants
In Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our filling stations…”
Allen Ginsburg, “America” 1956
The more things change…
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Michael Fiorillo,
Allen Ginsburg wrote when Stalin was alive. He was one of the worst mass murderers in history. But diehard Communists defended the USSR because they believed that it represented a beautiful ideal.
Now, Communism no longer exists in Russia. It is an oligarchy with no idealistic pretenses. Putin kills journalists who dare to criticize him. He persecutes and jails gays. He arrests and imprisons his fellow billionaires and strips them of their property.
Please read Putin’s Kleptocracy, and explain why you believe anything that Putin says.
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Diane, everything you say about Putin might be true. Much of it is, but that has absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand.
First, Ginsburg’s poem was written after Stalin died in 1953 and second, it addresses the deception and addled group think (“creating weapons that don’t work for enemies that don’t exist”) of the Cold War, which is on devastating display in the liberal witch-hunting for reasons why Hillary lost the election. Apparently, the bubble liberals live in is so air tight that they simply must look elsewhere for reasons why Hillary lost, instead of (horrors!) taking a drive through rural and Rust Belt America.
Third, I don’t have to believe anything Putin says or support him in any way to see the preposterousness and desperation of claims that he engineered Hillary’s loss. Her billion-dollar election machine, which urged that “Pied Piper” candidacies like Trump’s be encouraged (and which Bill Clinton actually did), along with their demented decisions to not have her visit Wisconsin or campaign aggressively in Michigan, did a fine enough job of that.
As I’ve said previously, Democrats underestimate Trump at their peril, and he’s happy to have them continue their obsession with this nonsense, since there are still a handful of states Republicans don’t control, and this is just the sort of thing that guarantees their continued success.
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Lots of smart essays and opinions out there like this one…
Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy? – The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-threat-to-democracy.html?emc=edit_th_20161217&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717&_r=0
BUT….
This says it all very simply.”This Is Not Normal! by Charles Chew
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/donald-trump-this-is-not-normal.html?ref=opinion but those ties it to what we know here at this site, that the ‘deep state’ (the cabal, the oligarchs o the billionaires boys club…whatever you choose to name it) knows that it must get a citizenry while they are young.
When I experienced the assault on my practice I was a celebrated educator, http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
and it was 1998 when ‘they’ used their ploy to get me out.
Today, I got a call from a NYC teacher, about to enter her 4 th year, and finding herself finger-printed and photographed in a police station when a para-professional made a false allegation, AND because the uNION at the site refused to do its job, saying “since both are union members we can’t settle it here… they never tried to search for the facts at the site, in the MOMENT!
THE principal knew exactly how to rid the school of the 60k of this teacher’s benefits should she reach tenure.!
This, SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER THIS happened to me: http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
when I was the top english teacher in the state of NY, not just the city.
This continues, a decade after Len Isenberg nailed the ploy and the process used to empty tens of thousands of LA teachers.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-continues-to-target-teachers.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
With the institutions starved for funds, and emptied of its experienced PRACTITIONERS, it was a simple step to declare them failing, but it started with utterly destroying the CIVIL RIGHTS of teachers. Period.
That it STILL CONTINUES, is because the MEDIA fed the ‘fake news’ issued by Duncan and clones, and ranted about those bad teachers and the need to test, test test.
We saw how repeating lies gave us Trump…but this came first.
And to this day, despite sites like this one which nailed the horror that teachers faced in NYC, http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html and this one where teachers across the nation reported the assaults
http://endteacherabuse.org the war on teachers remains the hidden scandal of our time.
No one with the pulpit dares to point the finger at HOW top-down administrations across15,880 districts in 50 states were ALLOWED TO persecute teachers by the SIMPLE REMOVAL of access to representatives who would stand up for their legal rights to confront lies.
Simple, because it was the union that allowed it to happen, and until they are HELD ACCOUNTABLE, by being EXPOSED, then they will not change…and teachers like Gordon Easton, (LOGO here: http53498) will write:
Dear Diane: Can’t you do a blog on me. I have been bullied and stripped of my Constitutional Rights by the Newport-Mesa Dysfunctional School District. I know that your focus seems to be on Charter Schools right now. However, I am in need of conveying the horrible treatment that I have received by a school district. That is newsworthy too!”
Yeah, Gordon, it is THE STORY OF US ALL, but it will never make the news as the entire system is OWNED BY THE EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf Also http://https://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/24/the-educational-industrial-complex/
and NO one with the PULPIT to tell the people what is happening to our teachers, will do do….they all have their reasons…even as WE GO DOWN!
Yes, we will have a citizenry ignorant of science, of the history of the world and our own Constitution, easily conned into believing the outrageous lie of a charlatan and electing him to run our nation at this dangerous moment in history.”
AFTER ALL, LOOK WHO GETS TO WRITE THE CURRICULUM BESIDES GATES
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Why can’t you believe both that Hillary made mistakes AND that Russian interference was a factor in her loss?
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I can easily imagine Russian interference/attempts to interfere with the election. What I have a harder time accepting is the reliability and certainty of the claims being made, especially since there continue to be very few specific facts supplied as proof. It’s an unending series of accusations and assumptions, and I shouldn’t have to say they’re not the same thing. Yet people keep holding on to them, as if by attributing almost occult powers to Putin we can therefore avoid looking at ourselves.
The a-historicism, insistence on US exceptionalism and seemingly willful need to blame some Other for our situation is not only frustrating, but dangerous. In the ’90’s the Clinton State Department (to say nothing of what the CIA was doing behind the scenes) openly campaigned for the drunkard and thief, Boris Yeltsin, to be re-elected in Russia, despite his shelling Parliament building with artillery. Or was that OK, because he represented “our” oligarchs and “our” model of trade and development? If you didn’t notice, that worked out in a catastrophically bad way, and it could be argued that it led directly to the emergence Putin as a political phenomenon. Should anyone be surprised that a nationalist strongman emerged in Russia, given the deep crises the country and state faced in the 90’s?
Based on the US’ long history of interfering in other countries’ elections, if the Russians succeeded in hacking ours, I also have to say: chickens, meet roost.
Let’s try a thought experiment: assuming Putin the Bogey Man personally hacked the DNC emails and swayed the election for Trump, what does that say about the condition of US democracy, and the underlying strength of Hillary as a candidate? Even granting every hypothetical reed that holds up the claim of Russian interference, how weak and hollowed out must our democracy be for it to be tipped over by some hacked emails? That’s a much more frightening prospect than the cartoonish story of the big, bad Russian Bear stealing “Hillary’s turn” at the White House.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not with Vlad’s hackers (real or imagined), but with ourselves.
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Michael,
I don’t share your distrust of US government intelligence agencies. Putin had good reason to prefer Trump to Hillary. Trump praises Putin, Trump likes Putin, Trump is a dumb bunny about foreign affairs, Trump did not know that Russia invaded Crimea. Trump picked Putin’s good friend Tillerson as Secretary of State. Trump threatens to break up NATO, one of Putin’s goals. All the leaks target Hillary. None target Trump. Trump is Putin’s president, not mine.
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@ Ponderosa:
Certainly, we can say that Hillary Clinton made campaign mistakes. But guess what? So did The Vulgar Talking Yam. Lots of them. Yet, in the end, all of those mistakes did not hurt him. Why not?
Two likely reasons. One, the false narrative about Clinton created by conservatives over the course of decades and heightened to fever pitch during the campaign. The false narrative was front and center at the Benghazi, emails, and the Clinton Foundation stories. Two, the selective leaking by Russian intelligences agencies of hacked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and their creation and spread of fake news, which were aided and abetted by the Republican National Committee, Republican operatives, conservative websites, and by Trump himself.
The “rubes” got duped. The country got sold down the river.
This ain’t going to be pretty. It’s likely to be pretty bad.
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