5 ms·

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

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.
- moorhosj 9y ago
  ==people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed.== We have already seen someone within his administration get indicted (Flynn). Then we saw that person agree to a plea deal. Not sure what defines a "wave", but it's reasonable to think that Flynn was offered a plea deal in exchange for providing evidence on someone higher up than himself. Now, we have reports that Gates is locking in a plea deal (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/rick-gates-plea-deal-mueller-russia-investigation/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/rick-gates-plea-deal...), we don't know what/who he is trading for the deal. ==suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.== Here you are focusing on what the media reports instead of what the investigation has shown us. The investigation has now yielded 3 plea deals (one more being negotiated) and almost 20 indictments. These investigations aren't public (until indictments) and don't move at the media's preferred speed. Instead, they focus on things we can see and hear like Trump (and Nunes) actively obstructing justice.
  - gfodor 9y ago
    I should have phrased what I was saying better. The hope of many is that there's going to be some smoking gun that results in the prosecution of a sitting president for conspiring with the Russians to secure his election win. What we have had instead are indictments against campaign members for either process crimes (like lying to the FBI) or crimes committed well before the Trump campaign even existed (Manafort's money laundering.) And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing -- trying to cause chaos in the election. You can speculate all day long about the implications of plea deals and what they mean but it's all speculative and in general, if it's assuming some more nefarious scheme that suits a particular political agenda, in my view wishful thinking. It's a nice rhetorical trick by the media to say "former Trump campaign members have been indicted" to try to instill the narrative that actual crimes were committed by the Trump campaign towards influencing the election through coordination with Russians, but this rhetorical trick is in the same category as the "hacking the election" one cited by the OP -- deliberate framing to re-enforce a narrative that up to this point is still unproven.

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.

moorhosj 9y ago
==people who are hoping that there will be a wave of indictments against the current administration are going to be severely disappointed.== We have already seen someone within his administration get indicted (Flynn). Then we saw that person agree to a plea deal. Not sure what defines a "wave", but it's reasonable to think that Flynn was offered a plea deal in exchange for providing evidence on someone higher up than himself. Now, we have reports that Gates is locking in a plea deal (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/rick-gates-plea-deal-mueller-russia-investigation/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/politics/rick-gates-plea-deal...), we don't know what/who he is trading for the deal. ==suddenly Russian interference was no longer the focus of headlines.== Here you are focusing on what the media reports instead of what the investigation has shown us. The investigation has now yielded 3 plea deals (one more being negotiated) and almost 20 indictments. These investigations aren't public (until indictments) and don't move at the media's preferred speed. Instead, they focus on things we can see and hear like Trump (and Nunes) actively obstructing justice.
- gfodor 9y ago
  I should have phrased what I was saying better. The hope of many is that there's going to be some smoking gun that results in the prosecution of a sitting president for conspiring with the Russians to secure his election win. What we have had instead are indictments against campaign members for either process crimes (like lying to the FBI) or crimes committed well before the Trump campaign even existed (Manafort's money laundering.) And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing -- trying to cause chaos in the election. You can speculate all day long about the implications of plea deals and what they mean but it's all speculative and in general, if it's assuming some more nefarious scheme that suits a particular political agenda, in my view wishful thinking. It's a nice rhetorical trick by the media to say "former Trump campaign members have been indicted" to try to instill the narrative that actual crimes were committed by the Trump campaign towards influencing the election through coordination with Russians, but this rhetorical trick is in the same category as the "hacking the election" one cited by the OP -- deliberate framing to re-enforce a narrative that up to this point is still unproven.