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Sodomy Hussein posted:The Schumer bill apparently calls for more stringent use of paper ballots (some systems don't have a physical trail at all, which is nuts). Yeah the first few stories I read about this were all playing up the need for reporting attempts at foreign interference and making it an immigration offense to interference in elections but I'm reading that there is indeed a paper ballot requirement, which is great news and a massive why-wasn't-this-done-years-ago improvement over the status quo for sure. Doesn't entirely change my assessment that this is mostly a matter of theatrics that mostly exists to funnel money to contractors. Lord knows the Democrats have had many opportunities to address this and other voting integrity related issues. Still, it's my mistake for assuming that just because I hadn't read about it in the summaries therefore there was no paper ballot requirement. Whoops. Regarding the legislation, I'm not sure if this is the specific basis for the legislation that was just rejected but this proposal from last year seems solid so hopefully whatever Schumber is pushing is along these lines: quote:a)In general This is the kind of stuff that I think some posters thought the Russia-gate media circus would actually help with, but I think the overall impact was the opposite and that the fixation on Russian 'active measures' ended up distracting from the more mundane but important lessons of 2016. The Democrats live or die based on turnout and a stronger focus on every possible tactic to increase voter turnout and push back against voter suppression is at this point a matter of existential significance for the entire government.
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Jul 26, 2019 20:09
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I'm not sure why we need a complex expensive insecure failure-prone electronic voting system to solve the "Hanging Chad" problem that can be completely obviated by better paper ballot design and therefore doesn't exist elsewhere. Hell it wouldn't have even been a problem in 2000 if a bassackwards ballot layout hadn't caused thousands of erroneous for Buchanan instead of Gore. Brought to you by the same county whose bad design cost Democrats a Senate race last year (no big loss since Nelson was too much of an arrogant prick to even make a token gesture at campaigning and appealing to *spits* voters, but nevertheless these are solvable problems)
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Jul 27, 2019 00:02
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I think the advantage of the voting machines is that they create more of an opportunity for profit. A traditional paper ballot is too inexpensive to properly grit off of.
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Jul 27, 2019 00:27
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Sodomy Hussein posted:The Schumer bill apparently calls for more stringent use of paper ballots (some systems don't have a physical trail at all, which is nuts). luddite is the best option here sadly. paper ballots are cheaper, simpler, and more secure in pretty much every scenario compared to electronic voting the only real advantage of electronic voting machines is quick tallies, but if quick tallies is more important than accurate vote totals then I think your priorities are twisted Helsing posted:I think the advantage of the voting machines is that they create more of an opportunity for profit. A traditional paper ballot is too inexpensive to properly grit off of. oh yeah, there's this one too. support contracts, maintenance, yearly upgrades, and more make a lot of money for private firms selling bug-ridden voting machines
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Jul 27, 2019 00:47
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Helsing posted:You and I have both been posting in various iterations of the Russia-gate thread for going on two years and I've genuinely tried to follow your thinking here and yet for the life of me I really cannot pin down exactly what you actually belief or what exactly you think the significance of all these random tweets and news headlines is supposed to be. Today I walked past a news stand and saw 3 out of 4 papers with that article as the headliner above the fold. There are couple of things going on. About 30% is that I am watching a couple things: the story in the main stream papers (Eg. when I directly post times articles), the story that filters into D&D (and I've fallen off cross posting this, both moderately in interest and massively in available time), and the stories being told in response from various groups. I'm actively trying not have a opinion there. I'm trying to watch. About thirty percent is the gap between a portion of the left and things that are very obviously occurring. I am perturbed in a similiar way to you looking in the opposite direction. I think I get mostly the roots of it these days. Seperately there is some anger at active manipulation towards an end by a pretty small list of posters but that's mostly died down, and I think it's obvious who I thought was doing that. And I wonder how many of them were the same person. About thirty percent is me actually having an opinion, usually I think this pretty obvious when I do that. The remainder is along the lines of holy poo poo Uglycat was pretty drat close on Seth Rich. Helsing posted:I think the advantage of the voting machines is that they create more of an opportunity for profit. A traditional paper ballot is too inexpensive to properly grit off of. Paper is definately best but add a paper voter pamphlet and voting by mail. Washington State's model is by far the best in the country by a large margin. It's so easy. One can be informed about the candidates, some very entertaining (GoodSpaceGuy) and vote wearing only underwear, while drinking. I feel like the American people should be able to be sold on that.
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Jul 27, 2019 05:41
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BrandorKP posted:Today I walked past a news stand and saw 3 out of 4 papers with that article as the headliner above the fold. This is exactly the technique that creates a feverish impression that something was uncovered. It reminds me of how in the original Russia-gate thread I would regularly see posters saying that if you wanted proof of Russian interference "read the thread". They couldn't point to any specific post or news article, they just thought that anyone who had been reading the Russia-gate thread continuously would know that a deep and sophisticated criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government had either "stolen" the election or at least had been a significant and noteworthy reason for why Hilary lost. I read almost every page of that thread and suffice it to say there was no such smoking gun. In fact reading the thread regularly should have been raising alarms for more people because the shape of the story kept changing and the allegations were constantly shifting, and almost without fail every story about Russia-gate would eventually turn out to be hyped, and invariably hyped in a specific direction (toward the most alarmist conclusions regarding Russian interference). If this were just a media circus you'd expect stories to be wrong in every direction but of course this was more than just a media frenzy, which is why all the stories tended toward one direction and one conclusion. And yet for many of the people watching the thread every day only seemed to make the underlying evidence of conspiracy and collusion at the highest level seem more likely. Watching people say "read the thread" any time they were challenged on the Russia-gate narrative really impressed upon me how bad the situation had gotten. That's why I'm saying its not ideal to just post inflammatory headlines without any exegetical comments. Because in the absence of context these headlines are not neutral. quote:There are couple of things going on. About 30% is that I am watching a couple things: the story in the main stream papers (Eg. when I directly post times articles), the story that filters into D&D (and I've fallen off cross posting this, both moderately in interest and massively in available time), and the stories being told in response from various groups. I'm actively trying not have a opinion there. I'm trying to watch. If you want someone to be angry at for being manipulative you should really be pissed off at glowing-fish. He basically turned previous versions of this thread into a Fox News style operation. He acted as the relatively moderate and reasonable sounding equivalent of the semi-respectable news anchor - the Shepherd Smith figure in essence. But he'd use his posts to constantly insinuate that something very big and very sinister was going on and he'd pretend to be thinking really hard and be very concerned about the scandal, but all the while he'd also do this big pantomime about being extremely diligent and cautious and fact-oriented. Which was pretty misleading because in practice he was clearly signal boosting the crazier conspiracies and repeatedly suggested that people like Louise Mensch or Eric Garland. So much like the way that the more reasonable sounding news anchor hosts at Fox que up the insane ravings of the hard right opinion commentators, glowing-fish was the thin edge of the wedge, laundering insane sounding ideas and making them seem more palatable and reasonable. Though obviously blaming him too much is unfair since people very much wanted to believe. The result was a thread where a blatant fraudster like pillowpants could show up and actually get taken seriously as he assured people he was an investigative journalist with evidence that the KGB had infiltrated the Republican party in the 1980s and that Trump's campaign was an active measures campaign decades in the making. That guy got initially got a good reception. I don't think most posters turned on him until after 1) his first toxx failed and 2) he started literally claiming he was in direct contact with Mueller himself. People were genuinely pissed at me when I kept saying pillowpants was obviously lying and probably also terminally stupid. And lets not forget the multiple posters speculating that maybe some of the other posters on this forum were paid Russian trolls intentionally disrupting any online discussion of Russia-gate. And glowing-fish for his part didn't push back against any of this - his focus was entirely on pushing back against Russia-gate skeptics while creating an environment where the most ridiculous versions of the conspriacy theory would seem plausible and went mostly unchallenged by the thread regulars. I have to admit, the last two years have increased my cynicism to newfound levels. Posters on Something Awful came of age on the internet, our catch phrase used to be "the internet makes you stupid". I honestly never would have expected how many posters here would allow themselves to be manipulated into thinking about the internet in the same way as Rachel Maddow's audience of confused boomers. Which is frustrating because issues like foreign interference from billionaires or intelligence agents is an extremely important topic to discuss. The issues covered by Russia-gate sprawl across so many important contemporary issues and questions that urgently need to be talked about. But the effect of Russia-gate has actually been to dumb people down and seemingly make them less willing or able to talk about these issues in a way that would lend itself to an actual solution. Instead its become a new excuse for the security state and traditional media and political elites to try and reassert control of an increasingly fragmented and acrimonious civil society and a collapsing social order. A real accounting of Trumpism would have been a conversation focused on domestic media sources and dark money from American oligarchs gave Trump the edge at the end of the election, or perhaps unpack how instead of a pendulum swing back to the left Obama - the last politician who conceivably could have avoided this wreck - drove the country into a ditch. But no. An election in which FBI fuckery actively played a role in getting Trump elected somehow transmogrified into a situation where the FBI was the last line of defense against Russia fascism. Because liberals would rather appeal to the literal architects of the Iraq war to save them than countenance actually dirtying their hands with politics. quote:Paper is definately best but add a paper voter pamphlet and voting by mail. Washington State's model is by far the best in the country by a large margin. It's so easy. One can be informed about the candidates, some very entertaining (GoodSpaceGuy) and vote wearing only underwear, while drinking. I feel like the American people should be able to be sold on that. Strongly agreed.
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Jul 27, 2019 18:03
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Helsing posted:This is exactly the technique that creates a feverish impression that something was uncovered.. Uh it was though. Multiple people and organizations have been tied or convicted. Hell some of them were actively involved in other countries too.
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Jul 27, 2019 18:17
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That's exactly my point though. Hence the italicization. It's not just that something happened in a mundane sense. Something happened, and while exactly what the contours of that thing were change with time and depending on who you're asking, the point is that it was extremely significant and ought to take up more of your attention than most other news items. That's the something I'm critiquing. Many discrete acts such as Facebook ad purchases by the Internet Research Agency or twitter bots retweeting inflammatory comments were indeed shown to have happened. There were illegally acquired emails published through wikileaks which may have come from Russian government sources (though like so much of Russia-gate that's nowhere near as certain as most people seem to think). The media and some politicians and government officials wove these discrete events together into a story line about a Russian "attack on our democracy" that was comparable to September 11th or Pearl Harbour and implied that Trump himself was likely deeply compromised by Putin if not directly controlled by him. Of course the potency of the Something was greatest when the threat was comparatively amorphous and sprawling. That's not to say that the specific elements that were woven together to tell that story were all invented out of hole cloth or that some of the specific allegations aren't rooted in truth or that some of these events aren't actually connected. It's more a question of how the story coalesced into a specific narrative form, and the weight and significance attributed to specific parts of the story. And also a question of why men like Mueller who should be idling away in prison after his career at the FBI is instead being feted as a hero by the media and Democratic party. And of course it raises the question of what the political utility of this story was and how that factored into the ways in which it was promoted. Now all that having been said if you want to argue about specific aspects of the Mueller report or identify areas you think require further investigation or if you can present an alternative take on how this all fits together and why its actually not unreasonable to make 9/11 or Pearl Harbor analogies then by all means please proceed, and perhaps we can use whatever example you prefer as a way to ground this rather abstract discussion in something more specific.
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Jul 27, 2019 19:02
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What point are you trying to make? This poo poo you're dropping looks a lot like "OK well things happened, but it's not the specific strawman Thing I have in my head at this exact moment so it's still cool that I claimed nothing happened".
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Jul 27, 2019 19:07
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Allegations that Trump was deeply compromised and/or that the Russia-gate allegations constituted an "attack" on America comparable to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor were entirely mainstream and widely repeated and continue to be repeated in some areas, and these repetitions served an obvious political agenda so if you're going to claim that it's a strawman argument then you're just advertising your own ignorance.
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Jul 27, 2019 19:32
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Helsing posted:Allegations that Trump was deeply compromised and/or that the Russia-gate allegations constituted an "attack" on America comparable to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor were entirely mainstream and widely repeated and continue to be repeated in some areas, and these repetitions served an obvious political agenda so if you're going to claim that it's a strawman argument then you're just advertising your own ignorance. Trump is clearly deeply compromised. For instance several of his major campaign staff are now in jail. What are you even smoking my dude?
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Jul 27, 2019 19:49
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Just so that we are on the same page here, when you say that Trump is "deeply compromised" this means that you feel he is either a self conscious agent of the Kremlin or else the Kremlin has significant compromising information on him and therefore controls or heavily influences Trump's foreign and domestic policy? Or if that isn't your meaning then what exactly are you saying?
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Jul 27, 2019 20:05
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fishmech posted:Trump is clearly deeply compromised. For instance several of his major campaign staff are now in jail. What are you even smoking my dude? Yeah for tax fraud, campaign finance violations (lol) and lies, nothing related to the Russian government. But you know that, so just keep arguing in bad faith like you always do.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:12
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Vodos posted:Yeah for tax fraud, campaign finance violations (lol) and lies, nothing related to the Russian government. But you know that, so just keep arguing in bad faith like you always do. Don’t forget the real estate/white collar/mob crimes and also rape and pedophilia lol.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:13
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Vodos posted:Yeah for tax fraud, campaign finance violations (lol) and lies, nothing related to the Russian government. But you know that, so just keep arguing in bad faith like you always do. Do you remember what those campaign finance violations involved? Hint! It included money from foreign countries. Helsing posted:Just so that we are on the same page here, when you say that Trump is "deeply compromised" this means that you feel he is either a self conscious agent of the Kremlin or else the Kremlin has significant compromising information on him and therefore controls or heavily influences Trump's foreign and domestic policy? Or if that isn't your meaning then what exactly are you saying? Trump openly says he loves Putin my dude, repeatedly. This is not hard to suss out but you seem to be terminally aggrieved that it wasn't following some particular sub-subsection of a flowchart.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:14
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The Mueller report literally said that they couldn't find any actual cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, but I guess that if the continued belief in the conspiracy theory requires memory holing the very thing that was hyped up as the final vindication for the believers for literal years then the worst crazies are going to go there.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:21
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fishmech posted:Trump openly says he loves Putin my dude, repeatedly. This is not hard to suss out but you seem to be terminally aggrieved that it wasn't following some particular sub-subsection of a flowchart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPX-wuplDvc
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Jul 27, 2019 20:23
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Cerebral Bore posted:The Mueller report literally said that they couldn't find any actual cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. fishmech posted:Trump openly says he loves Putin my dude, repeatedly. Because if the Trump campaign had successfully coordinated with the Russian government, they would’ve said so on live television years ago. loving DJT Jr. was literally like “yo here are the emails where I attempted to contact this Russian lady but failed,” they’re literally too stupid to conspire properly. At most Trump is a useful idiot to Russia that dovetails into what they want, but he’s too stupid to be an active participant in some kind of elaborate scheme. Paul Manafort was always going to be the focal point of any kind of real conspiracy and they didn’t even prove that so lol Mueller is useless. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Jul 27, 2019 20:25
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Everybody who still believes the Russia conspiracy theory should really take a long hard look at themselves given that the case for your opinion at this point is fishmech yelling about how some dudes went to jail for unrelated crimes and pretending that liking someone means that they can mind control you at any time.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:41
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Seems like the real conspiracy theory is that you weirdos decided to make up your own conspiracy theory of how all the crimes involving Russia don't count, because I don't know, it hurts your feelings if they do count? Like the fact that we're getting "they don't give you the Nobel for attempted chemistry" defenses out of this is pretty wild. Might as well go ahead and say Richard Nixon was innocent.
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Jul 27, 2019 20:44
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The problems with Mueller from the start were that he is a Republican and more importantly yet, obsequious to power. His not making any determination whatsoever surprised even Barr. According to Mueller, "when the president does it, then it's temporarily legal" is sound law, after which probably nothing happens anyway, despite Republicans own-goaling that during the testimony. Thus the president committing crimes remains a "conspiracy theory" to Mitch McConnell and the local anarchists and Marxists, and Barr, who got the job entirely because he loudly mused that he would make the Russia investigation go away, was able to immediately spin the report. The Trump/Russia scheme is not elaborate; nothing about Trump is, he's a corrupt real estate developer, which is almost redundant. It's that Trump has business interests in Russia (because the emoluments clause is now meaningless), and his campaign was run by a bag man for the Russian government. Mueller decided not to interview Trump "because it would take too long," and cites the Trump campaign successfully shutting the gently caress up during questioning in the report, followed by not granting anyone immunity to testify. The story coming out of the report and Mueller's testimony is that Mueller sucks, despite everyone dreaming that he would end this nightmare even when he was part of the machinery that got us here. The entire thing has become a good lesson on what a fluke Watergate was.
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Jul 27, 2019 21:03
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Cerebral Bore posted:pretending that liking someone means that they can mind control you at any time. Got the order the wrong way around there What other reason could you possibly have for openly liking Putin
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Jul 28, 2019 02:44
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fishmech posted:What point are you trying to make? This poo poo you're dropping looks a lot like "OK well things happened, but it's not the specific strawman Thing I have in my head at this exact moment so it's still cool that I claimed nothing happened". The point Helsing made about the reception of the poster pillowpants was, by itself, pretty noteworthy. It is definitely meaningful that so much obvious nonsense was credulously believed and trusted. The past couple years have also seen the publishing of a lot of extremely bad journalism related to this topic. To be honest, the way the media has dealt with the "Russiagate" topic is probably more interesting and meaningful than anything to come from the conspiracy itself. Helsing posted:I have to admit, the last two years have increased my cynicism to newfound levels. Posters on Something Awful came of age on the internet, our catch phrase used to be "the internet makes you stupid". I honestly never would have expected how many posters here would allow themselves to be manipulated into thinking about the internet in the same way as Rachel Maddow's audience of confused boomers. I think this is less an SA thing and more something related to the cultural and socioeconomic circumstances of many D&D posters. These folks aren't really any more or less better at critical thinking than any other random American, but value "the idea of" being a fact-oriented critical thinker (and associate the concept of critical thinking more with tone/image than content). This leads to a situation where, instead of "Because of the facts, I have been lead to believe X," people flip the order around and assume that the things that "feel correct" to them must be fact-based by default. Obviously I'm making this sound dumb, and it is dumb, but otherwise smart people can easily end up doing this when the media environment they rely on treats certain things are obviously true. This is why any time this topic is discussed, the conspiracy being true is basically treated as the null hypothesis, and other people carry the burden of somehow proving that (for example) Russia's Facebook and Twitter activity didn't have a significant impact. The default belief is that the conspiracy is true, because the people and sources many liberals trust treat it as such. Somfin posted:What other reason could you possibly have for openly liking Putin A lot of right-wingers like Putin. Trump is a right-winger. I don't see what's confusing about this. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Jul 28, 2019 |
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Jul 28, 2019 06:11
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Somfin posted:Got the order the wrong way around there Trump wants to be a strongman, Putin is the kind of strongman Trump wants to be and Trump is a suck-up by nature, which is why he likes Putin. Trump is also too dumb to keep up political kayfabe, which is why he openly likes Putin.
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Jul 28, 2019 08:15
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Ytlaya posted:A lot of right-wingers like Putin. Trump is a right-winger. I don't see what's confusing about this. Cerebral Bore posted:Trump wants to be a strongman, Putin is the kind of strongman Trump wants to be and Trump is a suck-up by nature, which is why he likes Putin. Trump is also too dumb to keep up political kayfabe, which is why he openly likes Putin. It was a joke, folks. I think one of the problems that a lot of folks run into when talking about Russian interference is that both sides are able to talk about their own specific version of what happened and mock the other one for not getting it. Like, here: Ytlaya posted:Russia's Facebook and Twitter activity didn't have a significant impact. Are you saying that Russia did stuff on Facebook and Twitter to attempt to alter the outcome of the election? Are we admitting that this happened? What more does there need to be for there to be a conspiracy?
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Jul 28, 2019 12:05
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Somfin posted:It was a joke, folks. Jokes are supposed to be funny, hth. Somfin posted:Are you saying that Russia did stuff on Facebook and Twitter to attempt to alter the outcome of the election? Are we admitting that this happened? What more does there need to be for there to be a conspiracy? A conspiracy requires at least two parties, and the specific conspiracy that's been alleged literally all over mainstream media for years by now is that Trump and Russia conspired to steal the election from poor Hillary. Hence, there are two elements that have to be true here, firstly that Trump and Russia actually did cooperate and second that Russian activities actually had a meaningful impact on the election. The Mueller Report killed the first element, and the second we've known to be pretty obvious bullshit given what we know of how the Russian interference actually worked, i.e. it was a total clownshow. The only possible confusion here comes from the true believers having to pivot to new conspiracy theories once the bottom fell out from the old one while pretending that they still are the same nebulous Russia conspiracy.
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Jul 28, 2019 12:49
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Cerebral Bore posted:that Russian activities actually had a meaningful impact on the election This seems like an unnecessary goalpost move. A deliberate conspiracy doesn't need to be successful.
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Jul 28, 2019 13:38
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Somfin posted:This seems like an unnecessary goalpost move. A deliberate conspiracy doesn't need to be successful. That's what literally everybody who uncritically believed the Russiagate stuff was claiming for about three years or so, so I suggest you take it up with them.
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Jul 28, 2019 13:45
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Cerebral Bore posted:That's what literally everybody who uncritically believed the Russiagate stuff was claiming for about three years or so, so I suggest you take it up with them. Wait, are you saying that everybody but you thought it was successful? Or are you saying that everybody but you thought that conspiracies need to be successful in order to fit the definition? You're obliquely referencing something and there's a lot of potential candidates.
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Jul 28, 2019 14:01
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Somfin posted:Wait, are you saying that everybody but you thought it was successful? Or are you saying that everybody but you thought that conspiracies need to be successful in order to fit the definition? As I literally said already, the specific conspiracy that has been pushed by liberal types for years now rests on the generally unquestioned assumption that Russian influence was successful in swinging the election. There's no obliqueness here. This poo poo has been repeated almost daily on mainstream media, so I assume that you have heard of it. In fact, the very act of questioning the success of Russian interference used to be enough to get your shouted down and called a secret Russian agent on this here subforum.
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Jul 28, 2019 15:51
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1-4 % guys. The fuckery being written off : can encourage or discourage turnout in a group by that amount. It doesn't change minds. It make a small subset of people more or less motivated to vote. loving testing is being done, has been reported on, and the point of disagreement about its effectiveness between groups looking at it seems to be only if it can be done stupid cheap or not. It's not going to matter in the next presidential election. It's going to matter in the senate elections. I would think that it's also going to be happening domestically from both sides, at a scale that makes anything that happened in 2016 by foreign groups, look small. Personally I think this will all make it less effective. It's like a business that comes up with a new business model. Once competitors widely copy it, it stops being lucrative in the way it was. The really amazing thing to me is that we started doing it first (eg. loving centcom Arab Spring example from the other thread) and just expected it would never happen to us.
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Jul 28, 2019 16:08
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BrandorKP posted:1-4 % guys. Buddy, I have some bad news for you about the "going to" part. Because domestic election fuckery is already happening at a scale that utterly dwarfs anything that foreign governments could ever accomplish.
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Jul 28, 2019 16:41
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Somfin posted:Wait, are you saying that everybody but you thought it was successful? Or are you saying that everybody but you thought that conspiracies need to be successful in order to fit the definition? No matter how hard you try you're not going to memory hole the fact that the mainstream media and many many posters on this thread were united in their expectation that Mueller would reveal a vast criminal conspiracy, not wrap things up after putting a few GOP operatives away for process crimes. And to repeat myself, you can't just talk about this story without discussing how the narrative was constructedi n the media, and how that narrative necessarily crowded out other stories and also were presented as organically leading to a specific set of approved solutions - trust the CIA and FBI, kill traffic to alternative news sites, re-establish tight elite control of political parties, build an alliance between moderate Republicans and Democrats, escalate America's military confrontation with Russia - that all got signal boosted and given additional urgency thanks to the widely spread perception that an extremely serious and effective attack was carried out on American "democracy". Suffice it to say this left other stories - about the flood of domestic dark money that Trump received in the summer before the election, or the irresponsible role of cable news, or the abject failures of the Democratic party, or the pathetically bad record of "resistance" from Congress since Trump took office, or the actually much more alarming levels of influence that countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia exercise over not only this administration but also past administrations - on the wayside and has also primed a new generation of liberals to treat all criticism of the US security state is Russian "disinformation". BrandorKP posted:1-4 % guys. The best documented example of this "fuckery" so far was a Democratic aligned firm that used bots to create the fake impression that the Roy Moore campaign was receiving support from Russia. Of course that story was really inconvenient to the overall purpose of the Russia-gate hysteria so after it was initially reported on everyone has gone about more or less totally ignoring it and continuing to warn about how the Internet Research Agency 9/11ed American democracy with Buff Bernie memes. So if anything Russiagate has made it more difficult to discuss the actually issue of election manipulation. Besides which, do you know what the best counter to that kind of campaign would be? A Democratic party that was actually serious about raising turnout through massive investments in GOTV infrastructure and policies that are designed to appeal to the base rather than win over moderate suburban Republicans who are temporarily horrified by Trump's lack of decorum but who we can reliably anticipate will swing back to the GOP in a cycle or two (assuming they even do vote against Trump at all in 2020). One of the most effective voter registration operations in recent memory was ACORN and its advantage to the Democrats should have been obvious. ACORN was hit by a fake scandal that was purposefully designed to make it into a scary racialized menace that would frighten "moderate voters". The Democrats were at the height of their power and influence back then, it was 2009 and Obama was riding high. The Democrats still allowed ACORN to be destroyed because they were just that fixated on not spooking moderate voters. This was at the height of their loving power. I wonder if ACORN would have made a difference in some of those tight 2016 races? We'll never know. Because instead of investing in organizations like ACORN the Democrats want to keep their grifting operation going, and that means running campaigns mostly aimed at voters whose desires aren't going to gently caress with the need to keep the donors pleased. And if you don't recognize by now that the practical function of Russia-gate is to keep shelving those conversations about the Democratic party indefinitely then you haven't been paying attention.
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Jul 28, 2019 16:55
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Somfin posted:Are you saying that Russia did stuff on Facebook and Twitter to attempt to alter the outcome of the election? Are we admitting that this happened? What more does there need to be for there to be a conspiracy? A country putting non-zero effort towards influencing public opinions in another country isn't remotely uncommon, and it's even less uncommon if you expand the definition to powerful private entities (which you should). Pretty much all major countries have always done this, including the US. It is completely unremarkable absent any reason to believe it's having a significant negative impact. In light of the fact that domestic efforts have a harmful impact that is orders of magnitude greater, it makes even less sense to care about this (and any reasonable person should be concerned at how disproportionate the media focus is on this issue relative to stuff like the "domestic dark money" issue Helsing mentioned).
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Jul 28, 2019 18:51
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Helsing posted:No matter how hard you try you're not going to memory hole the fact that the mainstream media and many many posters on this thread were united in their expectation that Mueller would reveal a vast criminal conspiracy, not wrap things up after putting a few GOP operatives away for process crimes. And to repeat myself, you can't just talk about this story without discussing how the narrative was constructedi n the media, and how that narrative necessarily crowded out other stories and also were presented as organically leading to a specific set of approved solutions - trust the CIA and FBI, kill traffic to alternative news sites, re-establish tight elite control of political parties, build an alliance between moderate Republicans and Democrats, escalate America's military confrontation with Russia - that all got signal boosted and given additional urgency thanks to the widely spread perception that an extremely serious and effective attack was carried out on American "democracy". You've got a lot of pet issues here that have nothing to do with anything and are making it clear that you're impossible to communicate meaningfully with on this topic, in that you don't accept American democracy or any "mainstream" news source. You're essentially become a Green Party chud. Bigger news stories crowd out other, just-as-important information. That's... Not as insightful as you think it is. quote:Suffice it to say this left other stories - about the flood of domestic dark money that Trump received in the summer before the election, or the irresponsible role of cable news, or the abject failures of the Democratic party, or the pathetically bad record of "resistance" from Congress since Trump took office, or the actually much more alarming levels of influence that countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia exercise over not only this administration but also past administrations - on the wayside and has also primed a new generation of liberals to treat all criticism of the US security state is Russian "disinformation". The American left, moderates included, is more distrustful of Israel because of Netanyahu's apartheid and open alliance with Republicans (who love Netanyahu because he's doing what they'd like to do here) than at any other time in history. When you have this little faith in the ability of people to critically analyze information it's a wonder why you even bother being involved in politics; but "involved" is a strong word when the starting point is "It's all hopelessly corrupt, don't bother." quote:The best documented example of this "fuckery" so far was a Democratic aligned firm that used bots to create the fake impression that the Roy Moore campaign was receiving support from Russia. Of course that story was really inconvenient to the overall purpose of the Russia-gate hysteria so after it was initially reported on everyone has gone about more or less totally ignoring it and continuing to warn about how the Internet Research Agency 9/11ed American democracy with Buff Bernie memes. So if anything Russiagate has made it more difficult to discuss the actually issue of election manipulation. The point of contention here isn't that Russia is the only organization performing dirty tricks. No one actually thinks that. I mean really, you think the overriding problem is that people trust politicians too much? quote:Besides which, do you know what the best counter to that kind of campaign would be? A Democratic party that was actually serious about raising turnout through massive investments in GOTV infrastructure and policies that are designed to appeal to the base rather than win over moderate suburban Republicans who are temporarily horrified by Trump's lack of decorum but who we can reliably anticipate will swing back to the GOP in a cycle or two (assuming they even do vote against Trump at all in 2020). Yeah we had that in 2008 and 2012 (even if Obama profited nicely from being mistaken for a revolutionary), it was nice. quote:One of the most effective voter registration operations in recent memory was ACORN and its advantage to the Democrats should have been obvious. ACORN was hit by a fake scandal that was purposefully designed to make it into a scary racialized menace that would frighten "moderate voters". The Democrats were at the height of their power and influence back then, it was 2009 and Obama was riding high. The Democrats still allowed ACORN to be destroyed because they were just that fixated on not spooking moderate voters. This was at the height of their loving power. Someone used a dirty trick to destroy a Democratic GOTV operation--making Democrats bad! quote:It is completely unremarkable absent any reason to believe it's having a significant negative impact. It's a testament to Trump's political operation that so-called leftists and Trump are now reading out of the exact same playbook, everything from "it's just a conspiracy theory" to "it had no real effect" to "there's no THERE there" to "no collusion." But not too surprising as they've both found the sources who say everything they want to hear in far "left" commentators. You're fully in bed with Trump, but it's dark and you think those are Greenwald's hands. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/26/8931950/trump-russia-meddling-mueller-gidley-no-impact "Well lots of things we don't like influence American voters, making this not a real problem" is more whataboutism. Trump's campaign openly, publicly coordinated with a criminal Russian hacking operation. This isn't disputed, even by the Trump campaign. The argument of "Well that's something, but have you guys heard about THE EVILS OF CAPITALISM?" is laughable. Two wrongs don't make a who cares. The fact that politicians and their minions are somewhere right now performing spin doesn't make these problems irrelevant.
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Jul 28, 2019 19:57
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Sodomy Hussein posted:
I'm sorry who was it that voted to destroy a Democratic GOTV operation with zero investigation of the allegations being made while Democrats had a supermajority government
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Jul 28, 2019 20:04
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Ytlaya posted:A country putting non-zero effort towards influencing public opinions in another country isn't remotely uncommon, and it's even less uncommon if you expand the definition to powerful private entities (which you should). Pretty much all major countries have always done this, including the US. The question isn't whether or not it worked, the question is whether or not Trump's campaign knowingly conspired with a foreign government.
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Jul 28, 2019 20:31
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Somfin posted:The question isn't whether or not it worked, the question is whether or not Trump's campaign knowingly conspired with a foreign government. Well I was told for like three years straight that the Mueller report would descend from the heavens and provide answers that are true beyond any doubt to questions like this, and it said no.
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Jul 28, 2019 20:47
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Cerebral Bore posted:Well I was told for like three years straight that the Mueller report would descend from the heavens and provide answers that are true beyond any doubt to questions like this, and it said no. You seem to be missing the point of my posts in favour of going off on a tangent about Democrats. Which is fine, you do you, but it makes it difficult to respond.
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Jul 28, 2019 21:01
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Sodomy Hussein posted:You've got a lot of pet issues here that have nothing to do with anything and are making it clear that you're impossible to communicate meaningfully with on this topic, in that you don't accept American democracy or any "mainstream" news source. You're essentially become a Green Party chud. Bigger news stories crowd out other, just-as-important information. That's... Not as insightful as you think it is. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that I "don't accept... any "mainstream" new source". What does that even mean? I think people should pay more attention to the editorial agenda of the mainstream news (just as they should toward any alternative or foreign media) and tend to think journalism these days suffers from low standards but I think that mainstream papers regularly produce factually accurate and important stories. As for saying that my skepticism toward American democracy makes me "impossible to communicate meaningfully with". Uhm, all I can say is lol to that. quote:The American left, moderates included, is more distrustful of Israel because of Netanyahu's apartheid and open alliance with Republicans (who love Netanyahu because he's doing what they'd like to do here) than at any other time in history. Can you unpack the significance of the sentence I bolded and explain why you think it contradicts what I was saying? Because that seems entirely compatible with my agument. As far as involvement, I would not hang around this thread getting into these arguments if I didn't think effective communication was possible or had no interest in other people's opinions. I actually think people should be much more involved rather than less, though obviously I have my own specific ideas of what the most effective form of involvement would be. quote:The point of contention here isn't that Russia is the only organization performing dirty tricks. No one actually thinks that. I mean really, you think the overriding problem is that people trust politicians too much? I don't know what exactly it would mean to call it the "overriding problem" because these issues are hard to disentangle but yes absolutely I would say that unwarranted faith in mainstream politicians and a reluctance to recognize just how deeply corrupted the upper levels of government has become is a massive part of the problem and very relevant to this discussion. I actually think you sort of alluded to this issue yourself with your previous comments about how much misplaced trust in Mueller there was. quote:Yeah we had that in 2008 and 2012 (even if Obama profited nicely from being mistaken for a revolutionary), it was nice. I mean yeah, a worthwhile political party should be able to defend institutions that are vital to its defense rather than folding like a cheap suit. The fact that this retreat was largely motivated by the fear of spooking moderates is actually pretty indicative of why the Democratic party is incapable of challenging the GOP as it drifts further and further rightward. quote:It's a testament to Trump's political operation that so-called leftists and Trump are now reading out of the exact same playbook, everything from "it's just a conspiracy theory" to "it had no real effect" to "there's no THERE there" to "no collusion." But not too surprising as they've both found the sources who say everything they want to hear in far "left" commentators. You're fully in bed with Trump, but it's dark and you think those are Greenwald's hands. Ok, so we both think that the other person is wrong and have different interpretations of how events here fit together and of what is or isn't relevant. I guess the only solution is to actually make arguments and refer to evidence and see if we can actually convince each other? If you want to have a thorough discussion of the scale of the alleged interference, how efficacious it might have been, what the correct response would be, etc. then I'm completely game. quote:The argument of "Well that's something, but have you guys heard about THE EVILS OF CAPITALISM?" is laughable. Two wrongs don't make a who cares. The fact that politicians and their minions are somewhere right now performing spin doesn't make these problems irrelevant. We're talking about the American and Russian governments here so I don't know how "wrongs" even come up in this discussion? I'm talking about whether the reporting on Russiagate is proportionate to the harm that was supposedly caused. Fixating on a particular story has the necessary opportunity cost that you can't spend as much time on other stories. If Russia spent $1 to "interfere" in the election I guess that would technically be a "wrong" but obviously it'd be pretty stupid to spent two years reporting on it to the exclusion of everything else, so presumably even you will agree there is some threshold for relevance here, which means what you're implicitly arguing is that Russiagate crosses the threshold of relevance and was worth spending this much time on.
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Jul 28, 2019 21:07
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