Think about this. SUPPOSE that Vladimir Putin turns on CNN in his office, or looks at a translated copy of the Washington Post, or sees a subtitled tirade from Stephen Colbert or Rachel Maddow. All of them are saying, “Vladimir Putin rigged the US elections! He controls the Trump White House! That sneaky, diabolical genius is secretly pulling the strings and ruling the world!”
How do you think Putin reacts? By groaning to his aide, “Oh no, Sergei, they have seen through my plan and all is lost”?
Maybe. But I suspect he chuckles, and thinks, “Perfect. Everyone sees ME as an evil genius, while regarding the Americans as bumblers who can’t even run their own elections.”
Folks, Putin is not a genius, evil or otherwise. He’s just the latest in a long series of dim, cruel KGB thugs. He’s not a chess master! He’s not a puppeteer. He’s just a tinhorn dictator presiding over a dangerous but decaying country that can’t even crush weaker neighbors like Georgia or the Ukraine!
Did he have hackers playing silly tricks and planting bogus stories on social media? Sure, and Americans undoubtedly play similar tricks on our enemies. It’s not a big deal and never has been.
By treating Putin as a master manipulator, American liberals are BOOSTING his power and prestige all over the world.
I don’t really care about the US election. The world is a bit bigger than that. The US just needs to fix whatever it needs to fix.
Putin is exactly what a society needs as it transitions from whatever went before into a proto-democracy and early stage capitalist economy. There’s several decades of this to go before the organs of state of the Russian Federation mature into something stable.
In a sense he’s been fortunate in that the USA/CIA has given his army something to engage with in Ukraine. And Syria has validated the navy and airfore. So that’s smart.
Powerful oligarchs are unavoidable at this stage - exactly the same in early Victorian England, who paid for Downton Abbey, etc.
I like Putin; he sees the whole game, he reads the game and he plays almost everyone really very well - Angela Merkel has his number though, that’s for sure. I even like his humour. His is obv. brutal and murderous but it’s pragmatism in a brutal, murderous climate.
It’s a long, long road ahead but the Russian Federation is stable - thank goodness, and Putin has the lunatic fringes in check.
Yeah, being dictator for life with all of the previous control that the party members of the old Soviet Union had but with lots of money is certainly a big step up and putting them on the path to ‘proto-democracy’.
And you think it’s no big deal that our enemy interfered in our presidential elections?
No, you have it backwards. By successfully manipulating the American elections, Putin boosted his own power and prestige.
Trying to blame American liberals for wanting to get to the bottom of Putin’s actions rather than just quietly go along with it … is certainly convenient for the many Republicans who are benefiting from it but it does nothing to hide Putin’s obvious success.
Of COURSE I think Russia is our enemy. In fact, I thought so 5 years ago when a clown named Obama scoffed at Mitt Romney for asserting that fact at the debates.
The Democrats used to pretend that Russia was our friend, and that Dubya was responsible for all our problems- that’s why they created the big RESET button.
Putin is no mastermind and he didn’t make Trump president. Millions of foolish American voters did that. Putin played a few feeble games to sow discontent. Liberals want to pretend those feeble games are the reason Hillary lost.
In related news, Politifact has declared that Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss the entire Russia thing as “Fake News” is its Lie of the Year 2017.
I can’t help pointing out that astorian is just repeating Donald’s Big Lie when he (astorion) claims that talks of Putin’s manipulation is the product of crazy liberals trying to find an excuse for Hillary’s loss.
And you know … in light of the fact that everyone (except Donald) who has seen the evidence agrees that Putin interfered in American elections by manipulating our free journalism and free speech traditions, the OP’s article about “Russians who respect America’s journalism so much that they want Americans to stop talking about Putin’s manipulation of American journalism” doesn’t really pass the smell test.
I also can’t help remembering that the NYT was one of the groups who couldn’t stop talking about the “shadow” hanging over Hillary because of the stupid emails and Benghazi swiftboating.
In other words: it would be foolish to assume that the Russians have stopped trying to manipulate American journalism. We should be deeply suspicious of calls from Russia asking us to drop the subject.
Poitifacts’ article concludes:
Emphasis mine.
The Russian investigation is a matter of America’s national security. Who benefits from discrediting the investigation?
Exactly. Nobody here is saying Putin is a genius. We’re saying he’s smarter than Donald Trump. That’s not a big deal. I’m no genius but I’m smarter than Donald Trump.
We’re also saying that Putin’s smarter than a substantial percentage of the american populace - or at least he was smart enough (or well-trained enough) to realize that social media is a propaganda gold mine that can easily influence, galvanize, or neutralize people of many different ideological stripes. And yes, I’d go so far as to say that it’s extremely clear that the flood of fake news on social media threw the election to Trump. It’s not like he won by much; that close to the line even a small push in his favor would mean that he would have lost without the push.
It’s a bit like being “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
Everyone is vaguely aware that everyone spies on everyone else. Yes, countries get a bit uppity when they catch someone in the act, but it’s kind of tacitly accepted as part of the game of international politics. It seems that messing with others’ elections is along those same lines.
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that Russia, and the USSR before that, did some meddling in every US election going back several decades, or that we’ve done the same to them, and many other countries throughout the world.
But this is another attempt to divert public attention from the real issue. It’s no big deal that a foreign power tried to influence an American election. The big deal is that an American presidential campaign (and probably an American presidential candidate) accepted the assistance of a foreign power in winning an election.
What Russia did wrong is a trivial issue and I’d have no problem dismissing it. What Trump did wrong is a serious issue and needs to be fully investigated and made public.
I don’t really know what “accepted the assistance of” means. The big hubub was over whether Trump had “colluded” with Russia. That word “collusion”, remember? That’s what Meuller is supposed to be investigating.
Well, it might be that he’s investigating someone in the Oval Office for *obstruction of justice *with respect to the collusion. Sort of like a shoplifter shooting at a cop so he won’t get arrested for shoplifting. Not real smart.
Oooooh, so POLITICO says Russian trickery is a huge deal!!! That changes EVERYTHING. If POLITICO, a completely neutral, unbiased group concerned only with facts says so, the case is closed.
The same applies, IMHO, to how Nazism and white supremacy are being treated by the left in the US by painting them as an existential threat.
Obscure creeps with a handful of followers have been unwittingly elevated to a (anti) heroic proportions.
