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Accurate or not, foreign influence is something to worry about. Let's be honest here. Governments don't release intelligence on foreign leaders in some sort of
by jonathankoren 10y ago
Accurate or not, foreign influence is something to worry about. Let's be honest here. Governments don't release intelligence on foreign leaders in some sort of magnanimous and innocent gesture to help inform the foreign populace. No. They do it for influence. They choose what to release and when.
For the sake of argument, let's say that your had evidence that a major candidate for office in a strategically important foreign country was engaged in, or had recently engaged in some tawdry or perhaps illicit affair. What do you do with it? Realpolitik dictates that all that matters is that if it's more advantageous for the candidate to lose or not. If you want the candidate to lose, but he's winning, you release it. If not, you don't. Sure, it's transparency, but it's outside influence, for your gain, not the foreign country's.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoSo what? You appear to be defending the idea I originally mocked, that this is a good thing when the New York Times does it and a bad thing when Pravda does it. You won't ever be able to make that argument coherently; all information releases serve the goals (or are intended to) of the person releasing the information, and those goals are never your goals. Why are Russia's US federal policy goals more nefarious than Salt Lake City's US federal policy goals? If they are, how does it matter?
- jonathankoren 10y agoI am defending the idea you mocked. Why does it matter who's releasing the information? Because they're not us. It's that simple. It's same reason why you can talk shit about your proverbial sister, but no one else gets to. If you don't understand the concepts of national sovereignty and self-determination, I can't help you.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoYour argument here is not compatible with your argument two levels up. You've retreated from the idea that foreigners talking to us is bad by any metric, and gone to the more defensible (?) idea that it makes you personally indignant. Good luck.
- jonathankoren 10y agoIf you think ice changed position, you never understood it to begin with. Thanks for playing!