If you look at explanations for historic events, WWI, Great Depression, WWII, is there really a need for some great shadowy conspiracy to explain them? I really don’t think so.
Conspiracy crap just takes your eye off the ball. Really, really try to stick to what you know and really, really don’t go off board unless it’s an extreme case. IMO, yes I think a lot of bad things can happen when everyone is acting in some semirational self interest, as we saw with WWI, Great Depression, WWII. I don’t think we are immune from that today. Sad but true. So positing that we need unknown nefarious actions to explain bad things is taking your eye off the ball.
Ok…so there’s no actual evidence that any particular official is a Russian asset. So, is it ok to accuse an official of being a Russian asset?
There’s clear evidence that Maria Butina attempted to influence American politics through her contacts with the NRA. What’s the actual evidence that she actually successfully subverted the NRA to a significant degree? What policies did the NRA undertake due to her influence? How did that impact actual U.S. government policy?
Between that and the sinister “oligarchs with dual loyalties”, we’re getting into really mushy areas of indirect influence. Again, I’m not arguing that Russia doesn’t want to influence U.S. politics or that it hasn’t tried or that it isn’t continuing to try.
I’m just objecting to accusing Republican officials of being Russian assets without any actual evidence.
Yes, but ignoring overt acts just makes you strike out as you close your eyes.
The thing is, these are not unknown acts. We know about them. We just are pretending that they don’t matter because they can’t be all that bad if we know about them, right?
Yes, it’s mushy, but that doesn’t invalidate the concerns that people have. We’re not discussing matters of direct quid-pro-quo; we’re discussing influence and aligned interests. It’s a mushy subject, with a lot of vagueness. The absence of hard evidence doesn’t remove the concern.
Prove that money in politics corrupts politics. I’m sure that you’d sometimes have a hard time proving that, too, except that common sense tells us that it does, even when we don’t see hard evidence in the form of a videotape showing a governor grabbing a suitcase full of cash under the table while agreeing to issue a casino license.
I would agree that we can’t randomly accuse the GOP of being completely under the thumb of the Kremlin - I don’t think that’s what’s being suggested (at least not what I’ve read).
I responded to specific posts by @Horatius and @Ann_Hedonia which made specific allegations.
You jumped in to respond to me. I keep bringing up Horatius and Ann_Hedonia and the specific points they made in their specific posts because that’s who and what I was responding to.
I’ve been trying ever since your first response to understand what exactly you think I’m wrong about. I genuinely can’t figure out what you’re trying to argue with me about. I’m not even sure we do disagree. At this point I think our interaction is generating more heat than light.
I’m not going to go back through the whole thread for every cite, but Horatius made at least one or two other posts along these lines, and a couple of other posters seemed to be supporting this idea.
This thread has gotten very frustrating for me. I responded to specific allegations in specific posts by specific posters, and I’ve gotten replies from other posters, trying to argue with me about positions I never took, and then being confused when I reference the allegations I was responding to.
And this unceasing cry for “evidence” sort of overlooks a few points here:
As long as the blackmail is working, we’re not going to see conclusive evidence.
As long as the subjects of the blackmail are in control of significant parts of the government, we’re not going to get a thorough investigation that would lead to conclusive evidence.
No fair moving the goalposts here. An attempted crime is still a crime. An unwitting crime is still a crime. If we caught someone attempting something, we don’t know if that’s all they were planning.
It is entirely feasible that the NRA would allow Russia to approach a Republican Congressman saying “Hey buddy, good news and bad news… the bad news is that your NRA donations from 2016 actually came from Russia, and we have receipts. The good news is that nobody has to know about this if you play ball.”
What’s the ball? I don’t know. A lot of espionage is just collecting as many balls as you can until you get Yahtzee or whatever.
I did not see those as being the kind of specific allegations that you made them out to be.
They can defend their statements if they wish to, but you asked me to, so I explained my understanding of them.
If you are arguing that my understanding of them is incorrect, that’s fine, maybe I didn’t fully understand their positions. However, I have laid out my position, based on what I understand the defensible interpretation of their statements to be, and that is what I am willing to defend.
To lay out, in short, my position, we are under attack by enemies both foreign and domestic. We have elected officials and others in power who are acting in ways that are harmful to our democracy, and they are not doing this because it is in the best interests of the country, or even their constituents, but because they see reward in following the authoritarians, and punishment in opposing them. Some may have been individually compromised, and I would speculate without evidence that that has occurred on some level, but it is not a necessary condition, the environment itself, that of corrupt favoritism and threats, both of which are done in public, is more than enough to undermine our institutions and government.
I see his statement as being speculation without evidence. Based only on actions that these people have taken in public. It is not a speculation that , if true, can be proven with the information that is available to us little messageboard creatures.
But yeah, the fact that people went from calling him a clown to praising him, that he could insult someone’s mother and wife and still get unwavering loyalty, indicates that there is likely something greater at play here than simple politics.
So, we have good evidence that Russia is trying to infiltrate the U.S. government and U.S. civil society. We know they’d like to subvert officials. We can’t prove they haven’t done so. Therefore, it’s ok to make allegations and insinuations, without specific evidence, that specific individuals are actually Russian assets. I’m pretty sure there’s a term for that…
A couple of specific posters made specific allegations, or speculations if you prefer, that the behavior of specific individuals, most notably Ted Cruz, were only explicable by having some sort of hidden motive, whether that was Russian subversion or some sort of blackmail scheme.
All I’ve been saying this entire time is that their motives are right out there in the open. It’s bog standard human psychology and politics. Bog standard human psychology and politics can lead to terrible outcomes. But there’s no need to appeal to Russian subversion or secret blackmail schemes. That’s what I was arguing.
Again, I was responding to specific posts by specific posters. You responded to me.
Literally the only thing I disagree with in that whole paragraph is “Some may have been individually compromised, and I would speculate without evidence that that has occurred on some level…”
I think our institutions and government are also undermined when we speculate, without specific evidence, about how our political opponents are actually assets of foreign powers, or that their policies and public statements and actions are actually the result of criminal blackmail schemes.
My problem with this statement is that it’s not falsifiable. We can just assume anybody is being blackmailed until…we see evidence that they are being blackmailed.
If the evidence has to be falsifiable then that means that nobody is ever allowed to speculate about blackmail, because the public never gets the evidence until the trial. That doesn’t quite seem right either.
I have no problem with it. We’re not sending anybody to jail. We’re just talking about what we think based on what we’ve seen, a lower but acceptable standard of evidence for a casual message board conversation.
It’s not falsifiable by you or me. It could be falsified by, say, the FBI taking a good hard look at some of these people.
Trump had no motivation to look into the people who were supporting him, no mater how bizarre their complete about-face regarding Trump was. Biden? Not so much.
At this point, yes, it’s speculation that Cruz, or anyone else, has been compromised by some Russians, or someone else. But it’s a reasonable speculation based on his actions, and that could be used as the beginning of an investigation, if and when someone with the actual means to carry out such an investigation decides such is needed. We’re almost certainly wrong in some details (not least of which because you could make a case for multiple possible blackmailers), and maybe I’m completely wrong, but that’s not how I would bet.
C’mon, this is the new Trump supporter logic — it’s unfair to begin an investigation without proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
I thinks it’s fair to say that Trump specializes in intimidation tactics and that people often fail to speak up against him because they do not want those tactics directed at them. I think one would have to be brainwashed or willfully blind not to see that.
While the National Enquirer was in business, I think it’s fair to say that they suppressed reporting that would be damaging to Donald Trump. Furthermore it is well-documented that they acted in a duplicitous, if not illegal, manner in order to silence people that wanted to speak out against Trump.
It is also fair to say that the National Enquirer frequently published negative stories about opponents of Donald Trump, and those stories were frequently timed with surgical precision in order to help advance Trump’s business and political goals. This type of a reporting is an intimidation tactic by itself, and those stories send a strong message to people that might consider opposing or contradicting Donald Trump.
So I think that it can be established that the National Enquirer functioned as a media outlet for Trump. So, I guess the only thing that is really speculative is whether the National Enquirer ever coordinated with Trump and his associates to use their reporting for blackmail purposes.
We know that they did at least once, with Joe Scarborough. It was an ultimately ineffective attempt because they had nothing current, while his affair may have been scandalous if it had been revealed while he was married — now that he and Mika are both officially divorced, there is no scandal and it didn’t take any great act of courage for Joe to call his bluff. But the damage - and intimidation- also happened when the NE was using their constitutionally protected reporters to stalk and harass the couple and their friends and family.
I also detected Jared Kushner’s greasy Saudi-scented fingerprints all over the Jeff Bezos blackmail scheme, which was much more serious and ultimately took out the National Enquirer. And when I’m weighing circumstantial evidence, I’m allowed to consider that Kushner comes from a family that was engaged in criminal activity, and that his father actually went to prison for extortion. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say…and Kushner’s actions ( his Chris Christie vendetta) indicate that he lays the blame with the prosecutors that nailed his dad rather than with his dad. So we know he doesn’t think extortion is wrong.
So I think I’ve made a good circumstantial case. I don’t think it’s happening anymore because the Enquirer was a essential part of the scheme. Also Trump doesn’t need an Enquirer anymore, his power is so entrenched he can just make up whatever stuff he wants to use against people that cross him - and his followers will believe him. Apparently Pence will soon be arrested and John Roberts is a pedophile. It’s delicious watching him turn on his toadies.
It’s also worth noting that, contra Matlock Law School, circumstantial evidence is totally admissible in court, and prosecutors get convictions all the time with it. I mean it’s not uncommon at all to convict solely on circumstantial evidence, if it’s sufficiently convincing.
It’s always nuts to me when somebody suggests that we, the denizens of an internet message board, cannot speculate on the crimes of any public figure without first possessing the keys to the evidence locker. That’s just silly.