Stop trying to make “T” happen.
Ha ha – it’s either find something to laugh about or apply for political asylum elsewhere.
First, everything about Trump is infuriating to me, so it’s hard to single out anything, but I find it especially disturbing that Russia clearly tried to influence our election, and probably will make attempts in the future to do so, and this hasn’t really generated the universal outrage it should have. Right and left should be united over this and should be working to make sure it never happens again. Trump just wants to pout, bully, and handwave this off and the collective Right is going along with it. They really have sold their souls, and they have no problem selling our Democracy down the river too.
I think we underestimate how cynical many Americans have become about our own election process. Voting doesn’t seem to matter, people already don’t trust the voting system has integrity, many believe elections are stolen all the time. Why should there be more outrage when the people screwing over the powerless are different than before.
KevinC
3500
Putin has to feel pretty good about all this, honestly. Given how much the US has fucked with the rest of the world, I can’t say we don’t deserve this happening to us.
I just have to brace for 2020 (perhaps 2018). The Russians or other foreign governments don’t need to elect a particular candidate, they just need to fuck with the voting machines in obvious ways to completely destroy the credibility of any election.
Someone posted this article about Putin’s long game in one of the relevant threads back when it was published. It’s amazing to see how quickly. Putin was able to accomplish pretty much all of his goals for destroying America’s influence and standing in the world and undermining democracy in general. I would imagine even he is astonished at how quickly things came unraveled once Trump and the Republicans in congress got in the picture.
The scary thing is: “What happens when Putin dies?”
Breakdown by country. Check out Russia and Israel.
JD
3504
As always, things like will only seem like vindication to Trump’s base - if the rest of the world doesn’t like it, he must be doing something right.
Ewww, really? I can’t tell if that’s just a throwaway comment or if you really feel that way and I should push back. But good lord, I disagree vehemently. We “deserve” to have our system of government undermined by an oligarchy of Russian thugs? What did we do to deserve that? Are you talking about the underhanded stuff we did while fighting the Cold War? Blind support of Israel? Slavery? The annihilation of Native Americans? The Kardashians?
You don’t really mean that, do you?
-Tom
While we certainly have done our fair share of government tampering over the years, and inflicted both The Kardashians, and Trump on the world. A much of America interference with governments has been in favor of democratic institutions. This is not something Russia or China ever do, and it is rarely been practiced by European countries.
KevinC
3507
Just a throwaway comment, but I was referring to all the times we’ve covertly interfered with elections in other countries (not to mention just outright ousting governments to suit our interests). The whole situation sucks, but it’s a very small taste of our own medicine.
Clay
3508
I agree with your sentiment and with Tom’s distaste for it. The list of countries we’ve meddled with is – well, it includes pretty much every other country on the planet. We’ve been meddled with before, but never so publicly as with the Russia election hacking. From the perspective of “Do Unto Others…” it stings to have them do it to us, but our post-WWII (and pre-, for that matter) behavior, as a country, pretty much made it inevitable.
[quote=“Strollen, post:3506, topic:127454”]…much of America interference with governments has been in favor of democratic institutions.
[/quote]
As much as this is an absurd comment, it’s completely true.
I can’t agree with this at all. There’s no equivalence between Russia’s goals today and our goals during the Cold War, which is what I presume you’re talking about. Similarity between methods? Perhaps. But that’s like drawing equivalence between both sides in a war because they’re each killing soldiers.
Our objective during the Cold War was to secure stability so that democratic institutions – “our interests”, as you put it – could flourish. Sometimes that meant sweeping aside an Allende or a Castro, and you could say that was a dick move, sure, but do you deny it was for noble reasons? We were fighting an ideological war and sometimes self-determination was one of the casualties.
I don’t see what Russia is doing as something we deserve for our part in the Cold War.
-Tom
Springing from a country that was thrown into countless years of bloody civil war and strife by American meddling, I can assure you there was NOTHING good or just to be found in American “meddling” in central America. We didn’t like how their election turned out so we assassinated our way up and down political food chains until such “dangerous” international powers as fucking Guatemala were torn apart and cowed.
I’m not at all saying that I wished Trump/Russia on us, but cosmicly? If I believed in karma, I’d use this as prime example number one. The CIA was a monstrous, inhumane organization back in the day (and, like most intelligence / law enforcement agencies, probably still is), and our country’s leadership’s tacit endorsement of their antics is a black stain on our national character.
… I mean, sure? Or put it another way: if you start from the assumption that the primary driver of US policy was a purely selfish desire to protect its interests (which includes, say, in the case of Cuba, the desire to curry favor with a bunch of rich people mad at Castro because he Touched Their Stuff) it explains a lot more of post WW2 US history than the assumption that the US’s main concern was nobly promoting Freedom. Because, whaddaya know, the US was in most cases perfectly happy to stop with undemocratic strongmen client states willing to kiss our ass instead of actually holding out for Freedom.
In some cases promoting US interests and Freedom coincided, say in the case of the Marshall Plan. But those were pleasant accidents where interest and principle happened to coincide.
Anyway, all this talk of We Had It Coming misses the point. Sure, it’s fun to snicker when the guy whole burglarized the who neighborhood 30 years ago gets his own house burglarized. But the actual action item is - who’s gonna stop that new neighborhood burglar and prevent him from breaking into your house?
KevinC
3512
Tom, if you haven’t, I would urge you to give a serious look to what the US was doing throughout the 20th century. Because I think the entire hemisphere would vehemently disagree with your characterization of US intentions (let alone results), both prior to and during the Cold War.
Thanks, you put it better than I did. I don’t wish any of this shit either. Trump is awful, this whole thing is awful, and I’m legitimately worried about the future in a way that I haven’t ever been before.
Like you said, though, from a cosmic/karma perspective… well, we can be angry. We can fight back. We can try to secure our democratic systems. And I hope we do all of those things, but we can’t exactly be morally outraged or take the high ground here. We like to point fingers at nations like Japan and how they whitewash their history, but sometimes I wish that US citizens would take a good, long, look in the mirror.
I’m genuinely sorry for any thread derailing caused by what was just an offhand comment on my part. I’ll try to best to zip my lips on the topic going forward.
Uh. Armando (e: and Kevin!) beat me to it, but this is really not at all correct outside of possibly a few photo ops.
American foreign policy has pretty much been the same as any foreign policy since the first farms were planted: Do whatever you can get away with to further your goals. The human cost is an element of that calculus, sure, but only on the “whatever you can get away with” side – there has rarely if ever been any kind of moral imperative driving decisions.
I mean, on balance are American goals probably less destructive and awful than imperial Europe, Russia, China, or Japan? Sure, maybe. But the USA shares direct responsibility, if not the majority of the direct responsibility, for the impoverishment and daily violence consuming an entire fuckin’ hemisphere. Let’s not pretend that what we’ve done to Latin America is all that much better, if at all, than what Russia has done in Chechnya and Afghanistan, or China in wherever it is that they like to violently oppress their ethnic minorities.
I thought it was common knowledge that the CIA installed dictators throughout Central and South America in order to keep Communism from taking hold. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile#The_1970_Election
So, yeah, this is a taste of our own medicine. It never would have worked, however, if the Republican party weren’t full of traitors and 1/3 of the population wasn’t Evil alignment.
I think Kevin’s comment was more along the lines of what we all feel: the pendulum is swinging back, and it hard to watch it. Nobody here wants this to happen, unless we have some Russian intelligence workers here that enjoy gaming and talking about it. But surely there are many outside the US that do indeed hope for our fall from grace. And for some of them, it is indeed karma, as they see it.
VAT LUDICROUS CONCEPT, COMRADE
