4 ms·

If you consider this national discussion about foreign interference in elections as part of a national grieving process about the surprising outcome of a specif

by gfodor 9y ago

If you consider this national discussion about foreign interference in elections as part of a national grieving process about the surprising outcome of a specific election, it makes a lot more sense and implies it is likely to pass once people have moved on.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Except for the fact that people interested in strategic matters have been discussing this and warning of the downsides since long before the electoral campaign in question.
moorhosj 9y ago
I’ve never heard of people being indicted as part of a grieving process. Isn’t it also possible that a bunch of people broke the law? If yes, then we should make sure to investigate that.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Certainly, but there are plenty of crimes that go uninvestigated due to lack of resources driven by lack of public interest. In fact even within the very narrow realm of election interference you can see that we are only directly pursuing specific forms by specific countries. It's hard to imagine this situation emerging in a scenario where the events of Nov 2016 did not unfold the way that they did. In particular, if there was no potential hope that the winning candidate could potentially be found guilty of crimes that would result in impeachment, I doubt you'd see anywhere nearly as much public interest in this subject. Thought exercise: if Mueller cleared Trump of any wrongdoing today, do you think people would be waking up tomorrow with as much fervor to go after these Russians? Do you think people would not suddenly be searching for reasons to call into question the integrity of this investigation at that point, despite holding it up as of utmost importance to our democracy up to now? It seems obvious that public interest in these Russian hijinx would plummet if they were no longer potentially useful vectors towards achieving political goals.
  - moorhosj 9y ago
    What point are you trying to make here? That the public only cares because the interference was successful and may have influenced the outcome? Seems to me like something the public should care about.
    - gfodor 9y ago
      The OP is right that ultimately in a free society, interference on the part of coordinated speech by external actors is not something that fundamentally can be avoided. It can be made illegal, and it can be prosecuted, but ultimately to try to change the paradigm in a way that prevents it would result in creating a closed society. This is a completely valid concern. My point is we shouldn't worry about this, because once the potential political implications of this investigation have been resolved, people will stop pressing our institutions to make radical changes to the way we live and work in order to prevent such interference. The reason Facebook is doing an overhaul, the reason big tech companies are speaking to Congress about this, etc, are because people are freaking out about it, and I think it's fair to say "this is a dangerous path we are going down" as the OP does. But if you consider the root cause for the sudden wave of public interest about this and the demand from the public to take action, and realize it's ephemeral and not a systemic crisis that will not go away until the issue being pressed is resolved, it's easier to sleep at night. There have been countless issues in American public discourse that suddenly become important due to a major emotional trauma felt by the populace, reactions to which, if played out indefinitely, could be damaging. This is not one of the instances, in my view, where urgency and fervor will remain for a long period. For example, the most likely outcome I believe is that it will turn out that we will get lots of indictments and new information about nefarious acts on the part of Russians, but people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed. Once that becomes clear, I expect the focus to shift somewhere else that could bear fruit towards ending the current administration via legal proceedings, or peter out. We have already seen this happen in bursts when it became reasonable to discuss that there were obstructions of justice -- suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.
      - 9y ago

by gfodor 9y ago

anigbrowl 9y ago

Except for the fact that people interested in strategic matters have been discussing this and warning of the downsides since long before the electoral campaign in question.

moorhosj 9y ago

I’ve never heard of people being indicted as part of a grieving process. Isn’t it also possible that a bunch of people broke the law? If yes, then we should make sure to investigate that.

gfodor 9y ago
Certainly, but there are plenty of crimes that go uninvestigated due to lack of resources driven by lack of public interest. In fact even within the very narrow realm of election interference you can see that we are only directly pursuing specific forms by specific countries. It's hard to imagine this situation emerging in a scenario where the events of Nov 2016 did not unfold the way that they did. In particular, if there was no potential hope that the winning candidate could potentially be found guilty of crimes that would result in impeachment, I doubt you'd see anywhere nearly as much public interest in this subject. Thought exercise: if Mueller cleared Trump of any wrongdoing today, do you think people would be waking up tomorrow with as much fervor to go after these Russians? Do you think people would not suddenly be searching for reasons to call into question the integrity of this investigation at that point, despite holding it up as of utmost importance to our democracy up to now? It seems obvious that public interest in these Russian hijinx would plummet if they were no longer potentially useful vectors towards achieving political goals.
- moorhosj 9y ago
  What point are you trying to make here? That the public only cares because the interference was successful and may have influenced the outcome? Seems to me like something the public should care about.
  - gfodor 9y ago
    The OP is right that ultimately in a free society, interference on the part of coordinated speech by external actors is not something that fundamentally can be avoided. It can be made illegal, and it can be prosecuted, but ultimately to try to change the paradigm in a way that prevents it would result in creating a closed society. This is a completely valid concern. My point is we shouldn't worry about this, because once the potential political implications of this investigation have been resolved, people will stop pressing our institutions to make radical changes to the way we live and work in order to prevent such interference. The reason Facebook is doing an overhaul, the reason big tech companies are speaking to Congress about this, etc, are because people are freaking out about it, and I think it's fair to say "this is a dangerous path we are going down" as the OP does. But if you consider the root cause for the sudden wave of public interest about this and the demand from the public to take action, and realize it's ephemeral and not a systemic crisis that will not go away until the issue being pressed is resolved, it's easier to sleep at night. There have been countless issues in American public discourse that suddenly become important due to a major emotional trauma felt by the populace, reactions to which, if played out indefinitely, could be damaging. This is not one of the instances, in my view, where urgency and fervor will remain for a long period. For example, the most likely outcome I believe is that it will turn out that we will get lots of indictments and new information about nefarious acts on the part of Russians, but people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed. Once that becomes clear, I expect the focus to shift somewhere else that could bear fruit towards ending the current administration via legal proceedings, or peter out. We have already seen this happen in bursts when it became reasonable to discuss that there were obstructions of justice -- suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.
    - 9y ago