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It takes Russia pointing this out to make us lose trust in the U.S.? I think the U.S. has done this all on their own. Snowden was just the latest whistleblower

It takes Russia pointing this out to make us lose trust in the U.S.? I think the U.S. has done this all on their own. Snowden was just the latest whistleblower showing the world they can't be trusted. There were others before him, but it got swept under the rug. We all know the U.S. election system is flawed to a point of being broken and thus democracy as we like to believe it's supposed to work doesn't even exist. But everyone just accepts that's the way it is and carries on with life because "at least it's not North Korea." If you hadn't already lost faith in the U.S. election system years ago, then you've got your head in the sand. It might be a hard pill to swallow, but I think if Russia's plan is to make the U.S. wake up and smell the coffee, they're actually doing the U.S. people a huge favour.

altcognito 10y ago
> We all know rolls eyes, adjust your tinfoil hat. Look, even if you believe that dark, unseen forces control the world using the US as a conduit - it would appear that the world has been the better for it. Given a choice of world management between Russian and US in this regard, the choice is pretty straightforward. People who complain about Europe, the US and the general Western alliances management of the world are selling a pretty ugly alternative.
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Whether the US is a force for good is a completely different argument than whether it's untrustworthy and/or undemocratic.
  - altcognito 10y ago
    #1, Yes, I specifically called out his argument as being hollow, and supported only by an appeal to "everyone knows" - he's self selecting his audience. Even within that audience which implicitly accepts the government is more directly engaged in protection of sovereignty via clandestine means against it's own citizens -- that audience should probably consider the goals of the sources.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  I think many people of vietnam, cambodia, laos, indonesia, angola, nicaragua, grenada, most of the middle east, afghanistan, pakistan [1] and so on would strongly disagree. Potentially lesser evil out of 2 evils ain't no good choice. [1] http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
  - altcognito 10y ago
    Most of these countries (or regions) never took up capitalism, free markets, and liberalism. Being partners on either side of a proxy war obviously didn't help.
    - asveikau 10y ago
      So they deserved it then? Please keep in mind you're talking about many innocent bystanders being killed as an outcome of US foreign policy. I don't think it's entirely black and white in the other direction either but your comment strikes me as crass and indifferent towards human life, dehumanizing, confusing people with their larger society and government.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      The classic example of a generally stable and democratic country being overthrown into illiberalism and mass murder by the US is Chile, which was missing from that list.
      - rabeiusura 10y ago
        Would not call 73's chile stable, unless you consider current venezuela a stable country which i do not.
- pjc50 10y ago
  .. and there's the other half of the false dichotomy: if you're not with "us", you're against us. It's interesting that you choose to use the word "management" here - we in other countries are not left to make our own decisions, they're "managed".
  - altcognito 10y ago
    If, you believe what you say. If you believe Russia releasing hacks and influencing US elections -- how is that any different than what the US does? If you believe all that, you have to consider the results of Putin's Russia: Oligarchy & Nationalization, direct imperialism (Ukraine), the support of extremists/facists in foreign countries...
    - pjc50 10y ago
      Yes, Putin's Russia is terrible, and exporting problems. They're a contributor to the Syrian mess as well. That doesn't make it OK for the US to do it as well! This is what I meant by "false dichotomy". If anything, the US (and especially UK) use of domestic surveillance and extraterritorial interference makes it harder for us to argue that Russia should not do those things either.
DigitalJack 10y ago
"The Puzzle Palace" was written in 1982. It's by an insider, James Bamford, and about his discovering by happenstance that people at the NSA listening post he was stationed at were listening in on american conversations illegally. He also discovered that the Carter administration's justice department had opened a criminal investigation on the NSA, and through FOIA managed to get a copy of the file. It was pretty damning stuff. This was 1982. What changed because of this? https://theintercept.com/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/ https://theintercept.com/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/
- balabaster 10y ago
  That article was incredibly enlightening - thank you for posting the link!
at-fates-hands 10y ago
>> If you hadn't already lost faith in the U.S. election system years ago, then you've got your head in the sand. The only check on this is the separation of powers, and even then, career politicians, special interests, and tons of money have way too much influence. Add in the fact that the press were supposed to be the check on government and now they're firmly in bed with the political parties. All you get is the incredibly slanted, biased, and spun stories to influence you so all you get is their viewpoint. I can't imagine how I would see the world if I only read the New York Times and only watched MSNBC. If some of the fringe third parties would all come together and find a common platform, it would certainly replace my faith in the current system.
- cmdkeen 10y ago
  Career politicians, special interests and tons of money got comprehensively spanked in the Republic Primary process. Trump is an even worse choice - but he demonstrated that it is possible to beat the machine. Sanders came very close to doing exactly the same thing. The US system is significantly more favourable to insurgents than many.
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    It was interesting to see how the "establishment" Republicans tried at every turn to thwart and remove Trump from the process, but in the end relented (however much it pained them) because that's what the voters said they wanted. The "establishment" Democrats were the same except they succeeded in placing their candidate ahead of what many believe their base really wanted.
    - fixermark 10y ago
      Given the outcomes of these scenarios, it's hard to see pure democracy as an advantageous model from this example.
geggam 10y ago
Why do people insist on calling the US a democracy ? It is a Constitutional Republic with the only democratic process being the representatives you elect .... represent you ... sometimes... if they feel like it.... unless they have been bribe^H^H^H^H lobbied to do otherwise.
- dpark 10y ago
  Because it is a democracy. When you democratically elect representatives, it's a democracy. If you elect incompetent, or corrupt, or evil representatives, it's still a democracy.
  - thinkdevcode 10y ago
    While I see what you are saying, the OP to your post has it correct. You can say a republic is a bastardized form of democracy, but the reverse is not true. You can look at one of the few true democracies that has ever existed as an example - ancient Greece. Every citizen[1] could vote and put forward changes to laws or even create new laws (obviously with a majority vote). [1] A citizen was considered to be any person born of Greece, white and male.
    - schoen 10y ago
      I think you're thinking of the Athenian democracy, because Greece wasn't politically unified at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy I doubt that the Athenians had the present-day concept of "white people". Wikipedia says that citizens "had to be descended from citizens", so maybe at least in a certain era nobody known to be descended from people coming from outside of Athens could be a citizen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Citizenship_in_Athens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Citizenship... Edit: looking at one of the references, it seems that there was a year when explicit citizenship lists were drawn up based on all free men who lived in Athens (maybe with some kind of ethnic exclusion at that time too?). From then on until Pericles, children could be added to the list if their fathers were on the list. After Pericles, children could be added to the list if their mothers and fathers were on the list.
pjc50 10y ago
We all know That was the point I was trying to make with "unignorable public fact" - "we" don't "all" "know" that, for various values of those words. Would you expect TV anchors to say things like "Well, I'm standing outside this polling place, but I'm not really sure what the point is because elections are broken"? Millions of people get involved in fighting elections like they mean it. Consensus about this kind of thing is a real problem, because the landscape is polluted with lies and delusions. Edit: I specifically said "lose faith in the US election", not "lose faith in the US [generally]"; it's one thing if the bad policy is the result of legitimate elections, it's quite another if either the vote is widely rigged (hacking voting machines), subject to intimidation. People ending up believing it's rigged when it actually wasn't is just as bad, it's the kind of thing that leads to political violence.
- balabaster 10y ago
  Oh, I don't mean it's rigged or hacked or subject to intimidation. I feel like it's legitimately hamstrung/broken. Equally I haven't lost faith in the U.S. - there are millions of amazing Americans. I've just lost faith in the U.S.'s a). ability to elect the person they really want in charge because the voting system is broken and b). the person they _do_ elect doesn't have any meaningful power anyway because the senate is purposely designed to restrict any meaningful power.
  - morley 10y ago
    The US political climate is most certainly not in a great place, but I wouldn't blame our system of checks and balances. In fact, I'd say that it's working as intended. It would be a horrible scenario if a president could easily override the will of Congress or the Supreme Court.
marcosdumay 10y ago
> But everyone just accepts that's the way it is and carries on with life because "at least it's not North Korea." They aren't Brazil either, or even most places in Europe. Were I an US citizen, I'd be very wary of people trying to fix Democracy¹. They have a pretty good quality of life, and any attempted change can go very badly very easily - the more "let's fix things" is the change, the easier it could go badly. 1 - Hell, I'm wary of them here at Brazil! Because, you know, we aren't North Korea either, nor Venezuela. That said, we recently got a very good and very safe fix applied - the trick is that nobody was claiming it was a fix for Democracy, it was some people "just doing their work" on unforeseen ways.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Part of the question is the basic mechanics of democracy: does everyone actually get a vote, and does the count accurately reflect votes cast? "Fixing" that should be less controversial than it is. Far too many voting machines are still insecure, and one of the candidates is pre-accusing the other of fixing the election.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    But it is not whether it should be fixed that is controversial. It is how you fix it. And there's plenty of danger with most fixing procedures. And yes, there's also some propaganda for not fixing it at all. That's what support voting machines (at least here). But, again, how do you fix the problem that makes propaganda viable? For the specific problem of voting machines, candidates accusing others may be the best avenue for moving people in the correct direction.
  - M2Ys4U 10y ago
    >Far too many voting machines are still insecure And they always will be. It's impossible to have a secure voting machine.
    - pelasaco 10y ago
      well, paper doesn't make it secure either..

altcognito 10y ago

> We all know rolls eyes, adjust your tinfoil hat. Look, even if you believe that dark, unseen forces control the world using the US as a conduit - it would appear that the world has been the better for it. Given a choice of world management between Russian and US in this regard, the choice is pretty straightforward. People who complain about Europe, the US and the general Western alliances management of the world are selling a pretty ugly alternative.

794CD01 10y ago
Whether the US is a force for good is a completely different argument than whether it's untrustworthy and/or undemocratic.
- altcognito 10y ago
  #1, Yes, I specifically called out his argument as being hollow, and supported only by an appeal to "everyone knows" - he's self selecting his audience. Even within that audience which implicitly accepts the government is more directly engaged in protection of sovereignty via clandestine means against it's own citizens -- that audience should probably consider the goals of the sources.
saiya-jin 10y ago
I think many people of vietnam, cambodia, laos, indonesia, angola, nicaragua, grenada, most of the middle east, afghanistan, pakistan [1] and so on would strongly disagree. Potentially lesser evil out of 2 evils ain't no good choice. [1] http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
- altcognito 10y ago
  Most of these countries (or regions) never took up capitalism, free markets, and liberalism. Being partners on either side of a proxy war obviously didn't help.
  - asveikau 10y ago
    So they deserved it then? Please keep in mind you're talking about many innocent bystanders being killed as an outcome of US foreign policy. I don't think it's entirely black and white in the other direction either but your comment strikes me as crass and indifferent towards human life, dehumanizing, confusing people with their larger society and government.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The classic example of a generally stable and democratic country being overthrown into illiberalism and mass murder by the US is Chile, which was missing from that list.
    - rabeiusura 10y ago
      Would not call 73's chile stable, unless you consider current venezuela a stable country which i do not.
pjc50 10y ago
.. and there's the other half of the false dichotomy: if you're not with "us", you're against us. It's interesting that you choose to use the word "management" here - we in other countries are not left to make our own decisions, they're "managed".
- altcognito 10y ago
  If, you believe what you say. If you believe Russia releasing hacks and influencing US elections -- how is that any different than what the US does? If you believe all that, you have to consider the results of Putin's Russia: Oligarchy & Nationalization, direct imperialism (Ukraine), the support of extremists/facists in foreign countries...
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Yes, Putin's Russia is terrible, and exporting problems. They're a contributor to the Syrian mess as well. That doesn't make it OK for the US to do it as well! This is what I meant by "false dichotomy". If anything, the US (and especially UK) use of domestic surveillance and extraterritorial interference makes it harder for us to argue that Russia should not do those things either.

DigitalJack 10y ago

"The Puzzle Palace" was written in 1982. It's by an insider, James Bamford, and about his discovering by happenstance that people at the NSA listening post he was stationed at were listening in on american conversations illegally. He also discovered that the Carter administration's justice department had opened a criminal investigation on the NSA, and through FOIA managed to get a copy of the file. It was pretty damning stuff. This was 1982. What changed because of this? https://theintercept.com/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/ https://theintercept.com/2014/10/02/the-nsa-and-me/

balabaster 10y ago
That article was incredibly enlightening - thank you for posting the link!

at-fates-hands 10y ago

>> If you hadn't already lost faith in the U.S. election system years ago, then you've got your head in the sand. The only check on this is the separation of powers, and even then, career politicians, special interests, and tons of money have way too much influence. Add in the fact that the press were supposed to be the check on government and now they're firmly in bed with the political parties. All you get is the incredibly slanted, biased, and spun stories to influence you so all you get is their viewpoint. I can't imagine how I would see the world if I only read the New York Times and only watched MSNBC. If some of the fringe third parties would all come together and find a common platform, it would certainly replace my faith in the current system.

cmdkeen 10y ago
Career politicians, special interests and tons of money got comprehensively spanked in the Republic Primary process. Trump is an even worse choice - but he demonstrated that it is possible to beat the machine. Sanders came very close to doing exactly the same thing. The US system is significantly more favourable to insurgents than many.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  It was interesting to see how the "establishment" Republicans tried at every turn to thwart and remove Trump from the process, but in the end relented (however much it pained them) because that's what the voters said they wanted. The "establishment" Democrats were the same except they succeeded in placing their candidate ahead of what many believe their base really wanted.
  - fixermark 10y ago
    Given the outcomes of these scenarios, it's hard to see pure democracy as an advantageous model from this example.

geggam 10y ago

Why do people insist on calling the US a democracy ? It is a Constitutional Republic with the only democratic process being the representatives you elect .... represent you ... sometimes... if they feel like it.... unless they have been bribe^H^H^H^H lobbied to do otherwise.

dpark 10y ago
Because it is a democracy. When you democratically elect representatives, it's a democracy. If you elect incompetent, or corrupt, or evil representatives, it's still a democracy.
- thinkdevcode 10y ago
  While I see what you are saying, the OP to your post has it correct. You can say a republic is a bastardized form of democracy, but the reverse is not true. You can look at one of the few true democracies that has ever existed as an example - ancient Greece. Every citizen[1] could vote and put forward changes to laws or even create new laws (obviously with a majority vote). [1] A citizen was considered to be any person born of Greece, white and male.
  - schoen 10y ago
    I think you're thinking of the Athenian democracy, because Greece wasn't politically unified at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy I doubt that the Athenians had the present-day concept of "white people". Wikipedia says that citizens "had to be descended from citizens", so maybe at least in a certain era nobody known to be descended from people coming from outside of Athens could be a citizen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Citizenship_in_Athens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Citizenship... Edit: looking at one of the references, it seems that there was a year when explicit citizenship lists were drawn up based on all free men who lived in Athens (maybe with some kind of ethnic exclusion at that time too?). From then on until Pericles, children could be added to the list if their fathers were on the list. After Pericles, children could be added to the list if their mothers and fathers were on the list.

pjc50 10y ago

We all know That was the point I was trying to make with "unignorable public fact" - "we" don't "all" "know" that, for various values of those words. Would you expect TV anchors to say things like "Well, I'm standing outside this polling place, but I'm not really sure what the point is because elections are broken"? Millions of people get involved in fighting elections like they mean it. Consensus about this kind of thing is a real problem, because the landscape is polluted with lies and delusions. Edit: I specifically said "lose faith in the US election", not "lose faith in the US [generally]"; it's one thing if the bad policy is the result of legitimate elections, it's quite another if either the vote is widely rigged (hacking voting machines), subject to intimidation. People ending up believing it's rigged when it actually wasn't is just as bad, it's the kind of thing that leads to political violence.

balabaster 10y ago
Oh, I don't mean it's rigged or hacked or subject to intimidation. I feel like it's legitimately hamstrung/broken. Equally I haven't lost faith in the U.S. - there are millions of amazing Americans. I've just lost faith in the U.S.'s a). ability to elect the person they really want in charge because the voting system is broken and b). the person they _do_ elect doesn't have any meaningful power anyway because the senate is purposely designed to restrict any meaningful power.
- morley 10y ago
  The US political climate is most certainly not in a great place, but I wouldn't blame our system of checks and balances. In fact, I'd say that it's working as intended. It would be a horrible scenario if a president could easily override the will of Congress or the Supreme Court.

marcosdumay 10y ago

> But everyone just accepts that's the way it is and carries on with life because "at least it's not North Korea." They aren't Brazil either, or even most places in Europe. Were I an US citizen, I'd be very wary of people trying to fix Democracy¹. They have a pretty good quality of life, and any attempted change can go very badly very easily - the more "let's fix things" is the change, the easier it could go badly. 1 - Hell, I'm wary of them here at Brazil! Because, you know, we aren't North Korea either, nor Venezuela. That said, we recently got a very good and very safe fix applied - the trick is that nobody was claiming it was a fix for Democracy, it was some people "just doing their work" on unforeseen ways.

pjc50 10y ago
Part of the question is the basic mechanics of democracy: does everyone actually get a vote, and does the count accurately reflect votes cast? "Fixing" that should be less controversial than it is. Far too many voting machines are still insecure, and one of the candidates is pre-accusing the other of fixing the election.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  But it is not whether it should be fixed that is controversial. It is how you fix it. And there's plenty of danger with most fixing procedures. And yes, there's also some propaganda for not fixing it at all. That's what support voting machines (at least here). But, again, how do you fix the problem that makes propaganda viable? For the specific problem of voting machines, candidates accusing others may be the best avenue for moving people in the correct direction.
- M2Ys4U 10y ago
  >Far too many voting machines are still insecure And they always will be. It's impossible to have a secure voting machine.
  - pelasaco 10y ago
    well, paper doesn't make it secure either..