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> So yes, there was smoke and it was coming from a fire. There was collusion, and there was obstruction. It's been proven and documented. There may have been s

by skohan 5y ago

> So yes, there was smoke and it was coming from a fire. There was collusion, and there was obstruction. It's been proven and documented. There may have been some Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but the effort has always been to blame Russia for Trump's election. In my opinion this has been very damaging to American politics. It gave liberals and democrats an out to ignore the very real reasons for which Trump attracted a very real base of support leading up to that election. If you remove Trump's nationalistic rhetoric and racial dog-whistling, his populist messaging was not all that different form Obama's. If you ask me, a lot more good would have been done by actually reckoning with the fact that something like 30-40% of the voting population genuinely wanted him to be president rather than trying to live with the fantasy that Putin is so all-powerful that a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ad-buys were able to overthrow American democracy. > But at the same time we are someplace new when an actual coup plot is formed and executed by the sitting President of the United States. I agree that the events of Jan 6th were unprecedented, and uniquely disturbing. I think the leaders of the movement should have been brought up on treason charges. > Wars also start when leaders deliberately lie to masses of people, claiming their votes are being stolen when they aren't. Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? > It's true that there have been some temporary shortages of specific items, but in general I can go out and buy cream cheese today, and really anything else I would like. Material conditions are fine in America. I hope you are right, and that I was just particularly unlucky to encounter a series of market failures in a single 3-week period due to extraordinary circumstances.

ModernMech 5y ago
I'm not really here to relitigate the 2016 campaign. I have a lot of thoughts on it but I'll spare you them here. If you're genuinely interested let me know and I'll shoot you an e-mail. But I will say this much because it relates to my previous post directly: > trying to live with the fantasy that Putin is so all-powerful that a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ad-buys were able to overthrow American democracy. I will note that the Russian GRU was able to hyper-target Facebook advertisements in large part because they were receiving updates on who to target from the Trump campaign. I think it's a fantasy to suggest that Putin can overthrow democracy this way, but that's not really what happened. Trump and Putin coordinated through public channels and behind closed doors through intermediaries (let's not forget that Trump's son, son-in-law, and aforementioned campaign manager turned GRU liaison, met with a Russian spy at Trump's residence to discuss an explicit cooperation deal). Putin couldn't have done what he did alone -- he needed a willing, like-minded, yet distant partner in one of the two major political parties in America, and he found one in Trump. > Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? It's was entirely warranted to question the results of our electoral system, and honestly it was Trump's right to do so after the 2020 election as well. I think it is important to probe weaknesses in our system and to fix them where appropriate. But after that probing is done and the vote is certified legitimate, the questioning needs to cease. However, when a candidate has exhausted all legal remedies, they can't continue to call into question the results of the vote. That's where this all fell apart. Trump lost his claims in 62/63 cases and that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't, and look where that got us. I think no one should listen to Clinton anymore, and I never wanted her to be President, but she has a point about Trump's legitimacy. The legitimacy of a leader in the US is usually established by the results of an election, but what if material crimes are committed to win the election? And once a leader is elected, are the legitimate for their term or can they lose that legitimacy through abuse of their power? Trump aided and abetted the hacking of his opponent and then lied about his campaign's direct involvement with the organization that did the hacking, both to the American people and the FBI. He lied about the fact that at the time, he was in talks with Putin about building a Trump Tower Moscow, with a penthouse gift dedicated to Putin. After he was sword into office, he swiftly used the authority granted by the American people to quash the investigation into that very malfeasance. He also obstructed the subsequent Special Counsel investigation by destroying evidence, lying to investigators, and attempting to quash it as well. This behavior is not the legitimate exercise of trust placed on our leaders, it's a pattern that more closely resembles a prolific serial criminal covering his tracks.
- skohan 5y ago
  The question I always ask myself when this topic comes up is, Trump and Russia colluded to do what? I want to be clear that, if Trump's campaign in any way worked with a foreign power for the purpose of furthering it's electoral interests, that is something which is quite shocking, and anyone involved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, I think a logical leap which is often made, and which it appears that you may me making, is that if 1) Trump worked with Russia for the purpose of winning the election, and 2) that Trump in the end did win the election, that 3) working with Russia caused Trump to win the election. This last part is where we run into a bit of trouble. Returning to the original question: Trump and Russia colluded to do what? Let's take it for granted that Trump's campaign met with Russian government agents, talked strategy, and funneled information which could be used for targeted advertising and other purposes. In this scenario, what exactly is Russia doing which is aiding the Trump campaign which any Super PAC would not be able to do? The answer is not very much. It's not like Russia hacked into the voting system and changed votes. Trump was, with his message, able to convince a large enough share of the population to take the electoral college, to vote for him. In other words, Trump is the primary reason Trump got elected. Russia at best put a finger on the scale, or added a little bit more fuel to a fire which was already burning. To make an analogy: let's say that I made my house out of matchsticks, and you came along and set it on fire with a magnifying glass and sunlight. Yes you might have committed an act which triggered this event, but who is primarily responsible for my house being burned down?
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    If any of this is shocking to you, please I implore you to read in full the Mueller Report and the Senate Intel report I linked earlier. These reports are nonpartisan and bipartisan respectively, and were directed by Republicans who were appointed and/or elected by Republicans. Read the raw text without any media filter or paraphrasing, especially the Mueller Report Vol I and the Senate Intel Report on Russian Active Measures Vol. V. > I think a logical leap which is often made, and which it appears that you may me making, is that ... working with Russia caused Trump to win the election. I can assure you I'm not under any delusion that this is the cause of Trump winning. I'm not even sure it helped that much. I believe the proximal cause of Hillary's loss was actually the Comey announcement that happened mere days before the election. If you look at the polls, you can see her favorability dropped significantly after that announcement but then started to bounce back (but not quite to the level it was at before the announcement). Given how tight the contest was, and how that announcement visibly affected polling, there's a big question in my mind that had Comey not done that, she might have won. > Trump and Russia colluded to do what? Here's what the Mueller report says: [T]he investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts. It goes on to say: [T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. So we know why they were engaged in this relationship; Russia didn't want a Clinton presidency, and Trump wanted to be President. While the Mueller report "did not establish" that the Trump campaign "conspired" with Russia to do this, it's important to note that: 1. Conspiracy is a technical legal term, this was always an unlikely scenario and not at all what the mainstream and serious jurists were alleging. It's worth noting that the directive to focus the investigation on "conspiracy" came from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, who also intoned to Trump privately that he would "land this plane", referring to concluding the Mueller investigation in a light favorable to Trump. When the report was released, it was AG Bill Barr who released the second quote above and withheld the first one from the public, a move that a federal judge wrote lacked "candor". 2. "The investigation did not establish members..." is not the same as "The investigation established members did not...". Most of the media and all of the GOP read the former and pretended it was the latter. This is especially disturbing because the reason the Muller report says it could not establish these facts was in part because witnesses lied, destroyed evidence, and obstructed the investigation, hence the entire second volume of the report (this is why obstruction is a crime on its own, because if you are allowed to obstruct an investigation with impunity, you can get away with almost anything). This is where the Senate report picks up and fills in more details about actual coordination between Trump and Russia via Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort. > In this scenario, what exactly is Russia doing which is aiding the Trump campaign which any Super PAC would not be able to do? They hacked the Democratic National Committee and handed the hacked materials over to Wikileaks for distribution. PACS can't do that. Also unlike PACS, the Russian GRU isn't subject to any American campaign finance laws which are in place to provide transparency to the electoral process. > Trump was, with his message, able to convince a large enough share of the population to take the electoral college, to vote for him. In other words, Trump is the primary reason Trump got elected. Russia at best put a finger on the scale, or added a little bit more fuel to a fire which was already burning. I'm definitely not going to deny that! Trump is certainly able to convince people to follow him on his own. But that's not what happened so we have to consider everything in context. For instance, what was Trump's message during the latter part of the campaign? He spent a lot of time talking about "Crooked Hillary" and the primary evidence he had to point to regarding her "crookedness" was "her e-mails". And then what would he do? He would pivot to Wikileaks and talk about how much he loved Wikileaks. He would talk about how much corruption is in the hacked e-mails, when really they were quite banal. Nonetheless, there was a conflation that happened between Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server and the DNCs hacked e-mails. This made "Hillary Clinton's Hacked E-mails" front page news for weeks before the election. A lot of people I know just flat out assumed they were e-mails from her State server and that they revealed massive corruption, without ever reading them or investigating it past a headline or soundbite. And let's not forget when the first e-mails from John Podesta were released by Wikileaks: just 1 hour after the Trump access Hollywood "pussy grabbing" tape was released by the Washington Post. This provided a nice distraction for everyone who didn't want to confront Trump's on-camera admission of his proclivity to rampantly sexually assault women. So is that a finger on the scale? Yeah it is. Is anything about this illegal? Some of it, not all of it, and not the worst parts. And even the stuff that is illegal is almost impossible to prove. So there's no criminal case to bring here. More than anything it proves that some laws should be passed to codify some norms. Honestly, the Trump-Russia issue is pretty moot at this point. I used to worry about what it would mean for future elections. Here, a candidate colluded with a foreign government to circumvent our standard electoral process in order to gain an advantage on his opponent. He then won and leveraged his power to hide what he did, and he got away with it. This just incentivizes the commission of crimes to gain power. Once you gain power, you're beyond prosecution, so why wouldn't you engage in this behavior, when the plus side is becoming the leader of the most powerful and richest nation on Earth? But back to something you said: Trump was, with his message, able to convince a large enough share of the population This is why I am so concerned right now, because you are so right. Trump is able to convince a large portion of the population through his words alone of almost anything. His message right now is that elections are rigged. The DNC did the rigging during the 2020 election and that was in effect a coup against the US government, which he conflates with himself. And people are convinced of that. They are so convinced of that they were happy to assault the Capitol a year ago. Now it seems like the whole idea of elections is quaint. Campaign finance laws seem quaint. Voting seems quaint. They've figured out they don't need any of that; they even realized they don't need to campaign on a platform. All they need to do is control state elections boards, and just ignore the result of the vote in a few key states. Cause a contested election, and kick it to the House delegations where Republicans are a majority. Anyway, I'm sorry to give you this wall of text but you kept responding to me so you asked for it :P
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
> Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? ...no, I don't believe the Clinton campaign has ever claimed that. They do believe that Russia put its thumb on the scale, at that the Trump administration—even as beneficiaries, yes—should have punished Russia diplomatically for their behavior.
- skohan 5y ago
  I found this article[0] which quotes her saying: > If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president In reference to WikiLeaks making her private emails available. I will grant you this is not exactly the same as claiming the results of the election were not legitimate. But it does seem to directly blame foreign interference for her loss. To me the question of foreign interference is way less important than the question of why this election was even close, or indeed why Trump even made it as far as the nomination. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-blames-russian-hackers-and-comey-for-2016-election-loss/2017/05/02/e62fef72-2f60-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-blam...
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    > I will grant you this is not exactly the same as claiming the results of the election were not legitimate. But it does seem to directly blame foreign interference for her loss. But I think that's a very important distinction! If a foreign power attempts to influence our elections through underhanded means, the US should retaliate diplomatically, regardless of who won. Note, that doesn't mean the winner should be called into question. > To me the question of foreign interference is way less important than the question of why this election was even close, or indeed why Trump even made it as far as the nomination. I think they're both important. I also think that foreign interference is one part (key word) of the answer.
    - skohan 5y ago
      A robust democracy would not be so vulnerable that one of the candidates' actual private emails being made public would not swing the election. We live in an adversarial world, and America will always have enemies. If we are so fragile that a 3rd rate hack can get a tin-pot dictator elected, the fragility is the problem, not the attack itself.

by skohan 5y ago

ModernMech 5y ago

I'm not really here to relitigate the 2016 campaign. I have a lot of thoughts on it but I'll spare you them here. If you're genuinely interested let me know and I'll shoot you an e-mail. But I will say this much because it relates to my previous post directly: > trying to live with the fantasy that Putin is so all-powerful that a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ad-buys were able to overthrow American democracy. I will note that the Russian GRU was able to hyper-target Facebook advertisements in large part because they were receiving updates on who to target from the Trump campaign. I think it's a fantasy to suggest that Putin can overthrow democracy this way, but that's not really what happened. Trump and Putin coordinated through public channels and behind closed doors through intermediaries (let's not forget that Trump's son, son-in-law, and aforementioned campaign manager turned GRU liaison, met with a Russian spy at Trump's residence to discuss an explicit cooperation deal). Putin couldn't have done what he did alone -- he needed a willing, like-minded, yet distant partner in one of the two major political parties in America, and he found one in Trump. > Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? It's was entirely warranted to question the results of our electoral system, and honestly it was Trump's right to do so after the 2020 election as well. I think it is important to probe weaknesses in our system and to fix them where appropriate. But after that probing is done and the vote is certified legitimate, the questioning needs to cease. However, when a candidate has exhausted all legal remedies, they can't continue to call into question the results of the vote. That's where this all fell apart. Trump lost his claims in 62/63 cases and that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't, and look where that got us. I think no one should listen to Clinton anymore, and I never wanted her to be President, but she has a point about Trump's legitimacy. The legitimacy of a leader in the US is usually established by the results of an election, but what if material crimes are committed to win the election? And once a leader is elected, are the legitimate for their term or can they lose that legitimacy through abuse of their power? Trump aided and abetted the hacking of his opponent and then lied about his campaign's direct involvement with the organization that did the hacking, both to the American people and the FBI. He lied about the fact that at the time, he was in talks with Putin about building a Trump Tower Moscow, with a penthouse gift dedicated to Putin. After he was sword into office, he swiftly used the authority granted by the American people to quash the investigation into that very malfeasance. He also obstructed the subsequent Special Counsel investigation by destroying evidence, lying to investigators, and attempting to quash it as well. This behavior is not the legitimate exercise of trust placed on our leaders, it's a pattern that more closely resembles a prolific serial criminal covering his tracks.

skohan 5y ago
The question I always ask myself when this topic comes up is, Trump and Russia colluded to do what? I want to be clear that, if Trump's campaign in any way worked with a foreign power for the purpose of furthering it's electoral interests, that is something which is quite shocking, and anyone involved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, I think a logical leap which is often made, and which it appears that you may me making, is that if 1) Trump worked with Russia for the purpose of winning the election, and 2) that Trump in the end did win the election, that 3) working with Russia caused Trump to win the election. This last part is where we run into a bit of trouble. Returning to the original question: Trump and Russia colluded to do what? Let's take it for granted that Trump's campaign met with Russian government agents, talked strategy, and funneled information which could be used for targeted advertising and other purposes. In this scenario, what exactly is Russia doing which is aiding the Trump campaign which any Super PAC would not be able to do? The answer is not very much. It's not like Russia hacked into the voting system and changed votes. Trump was, with his message, able to convince a large enough share of the population to take the electoral college, to vote for him. In other words, Trump is the primary reason Trump got elected. Russia at best put a finger on the scale, or added a little bit more fuel to a fire which was already burning. To make an analogy: let's say that I made my house out of matchsticks, and you came along and set it on fire with a magnifying glass and sunlight. Yes you might have committed an act which triggered this event, but who is primarily responsible for my house being burned down?
- ModernMech 5y ago
  If any of this is shocking to you, please I implore you to read in full the Mueller Report and the Senate Intel report I linked earlier. These reports are nonpartisan and bipartisan respectively, and were directed by Republicans who were appointed and/or elected by Republicans. Read the raw text without any media filter or paraphrasing, especially the Mueller Report Vol I and the Senate Intel Report on Russian Active Measures Vol. V. > I think a logical leap which is often made, and which it appears that you may me making, is that ... working with Russia caused Trump to win the election. I can assure you I'm not under any delusion that this is the cause of Trump winning. I'm not even sure it helped that much. I believe the proximal cause of Hillary's loss was actually the Comey announcement that happened mere days before the election. If you look at the polls, you can see her favorability dropped significantly after that announcement but then started to bounce back (but not quite to the level it was at before the announcement). Given how tight the contest was, and how that announcement visibly affected polling, there's a big question in my mind that had Comey not done that, she might have won. > Trump and Russia colluded to do what? Here's what the Mueller report says: [T]he investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts. It goes on to say: [T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. So we know why they were engaged in this relationship; Russia didn't want a Clinton presidency, and Trump wanted to be President. While the Mueller report "did not establish" that the Trump campaign "conspired" with Russia to do this, it's important to note that: 1. Conspiracy is a technical legal term, this was always an unlikely scenario and not at all what the mainstream and serious jurists were alleging. It's worth noting that the directive to focus the investigation on "conspiracy" came from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, who also intoned to Trump privately that he would "land this plane", referring to concluding the Mueller investigation in a light favorable to Trump. When the report was released, it was AG Bill Barr who released the second quote above and withheld the first one from the public, a move that a federal judge wrote lacked "candor". 2. "The investigation did not establish members..." is not the same as "The investigation established members did not...". Most of the media and all of the GOP read the former and pretended it was the latter. This is especially disturbing because the reason the Muller report says it could not establish these facts was in part because witnesses lied, destroyed evidence, and obstructed the investigation, hence the entire second volume of the report (this is why obstruction is a crime on its own, because if you are allowed to obstruct an investigation with impunity, you can get away with almost anything). This is where the Senate report picks up and fills in more details about actual coordination between Trump and Russia via Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort. > In this scenario, what exactly is Russia doing which is aiding the Trump campaign which any Super PAC would not be able to do? They hacked the Democratic National Committee and handed the hacked materials over to Wikileaks for distribution. PACS can't do that. Also unlike PACS, the Russian GRU isn't subject to any American campaign finance laws which are in place to provide transparency to the electoral process. > Trump was, with his message, able to convince a large enough share of the population to take the electoral college, to vote for him. In other words, Trump is the primary reason Trump got elected. Russia at best put a finger on the scale, or added a little bit more fuel to a fire which was already burning. I'm definitely not going to deny that! Trump is certainly able to convince people to follow him on his own. But that's not what happened so we have to consider everything in context. For instance, what was Trump's message during the latter part of the campaign? He spent a lot of time talking about "Crooked Hillary" and the primary evidence he had to point to regarding her "crookedness" was "her e-mails". And then what would he do? He would pivot to Wikileaks and talk about how much he loved Wikileaks. He would talk about how much corruption is in the hacked e-mails, when really they were quite banal. Nonetheless, there was a conflation that happened between Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server and the DNCs hacked e-mails. This made "Hillary Clinton's Hacked E-mails" front page news for weeks before the election. A lot of people I know just flat out assumed they were e-mails from her State server and that they revealed massive corruption, without ever reading them or investigating it past a headline or soundbite. And let's not forget when the first e-mails from John Podesta were released by Wikileaks: just 1 hour after the Trump access Hollywood "pussy grabbing" tape was released by the Washington Post. This provided a nice distraction for everyone who didn't want to confront Trump's on-camera admission of his proclivity to rampantly sexually assault women. So is that a finger on the scale? Yeah it is. Is anything about this illegal? Some of it, not all of it, and not the worst parts. And even the stuff that is illegal is almost impossible to prove. So there's no criminal case to bring here. More than anything it proves that some laws should be passed to codify some norms. Honestly, the Trump-Russia issue is pretty moot at this point. I used to worry about what it would mean for future elections. Here, a candidate colluded with a foreign government to circumvent our standard electoral process in order to gain an advantage on his opponent. He then won and leveraged his power to hide what he did, and he got away with it. This just incentivizes the commission of crimes to gain power. Once you gain power, you're beyond prosecution, so why wouldn't you engage in this behavior, when the plus side is becoming the leader of the most powerful and richest nation on Earth? But back to something you said: Trump was, with his message, able to convince a large enough share of the population This is why I am so concerned right now, because you are so right. Trump is able to convince a large portion of the population through his words alone of almost anything. His message right now is that elections are rigged. The DNC did the rigging during the 2020 election and that was in effect a coup against the US government, which he conflates with himself. And people are convinced of that. They are so convinced of that they were happy to assault the Capitol a year ago. Now it seems like the whole idea of elections is quaint. Campaign finance laws seem quaint. Voting seems quaint. They've figured out they don't need any of that; they even realized they don't need to campaign on a platform. All they need to do is control state elections boards, and just ignore the result of the vote in a few key states. Cause a contested election, and kick it to the House delegations where Republicans are a majority. Anyway, I'm sorry to give you this wall of text but you kept responding to me so you asked for it :P

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

> Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? ...no, I don't believe the Clinton campaign has ever claimed that. They do believe that Russia put its thumb on the scale, at that the Trump administration—even as beneficiaries, yes—should have punished Russia diplomatically for their behavior.

skohan 5y ago
I found this article[0] which quotes her saying: > If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president In reference to WikiLeaks making her private emails available. I will grant you this is not exactly the same as claiming the results of the election were not legitimate. But it does seem to directly blame foreign interference for her loss. To me the question of foreign interference is way less important than the question of why this election was even close, or indeed why Trump even made it as far as the nomination. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-blames-russian-hackers-and-comey-for-2016-election-loss/2017/05/02/e62fef72-2f60-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-blam...
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  > I will grant you this is not exactly the same as claiming the results of the election were not legitimate. But it does seem to directly blame foreign interference for her loss. But I think that's a very important distinction! If a foreign power attempts to influence our elections through underhanded means, the US should retaliate diplomatically, regardless of who won. Note, that doesn't mean the winner should be called into question. > To me the question of foreign interference is way less important than the question of why this election was even close, or indeed why Trump even made it as far as the nomination. I think they're both important. I also think that foreign interference is one part (key word) of the answer.
  - skohan 5y ago
    A robust democracy would not be so vulnerable that one of the candidates' actual private emails being made public would not swing the election. We live in an adversarial world, and America will always have enemies. If we are so fragile that a 3rd rate hack can get a tin-pot dictator elected, the fragility is the problem, not the attack itself.