4 ms·

Yes, I've heard it all before. People who were drawn in to the baseless Russiagate conspiracy theory, and all the other ones have said exactly the same thing to

Yes, I've heard it all before. People who were drawn in to the baseless Russiagate conspiracy theory, and all the other ones have said exactly the same thing to me as you are now. Sure, I'm a secular-heretic for wanting to see evidence for extraordinary assertions from people with obvious ulterior motives, rather than taking them on faith. So far, the conspiracy theorists have had a poor track record as far as I can see. That said, I don't engage or try to debate my friends on it, they have always become extremely upset by any debate on such topics. And they're not hurting anybody so my philosophy is just to leave them to their faith. I don't go around challenging people to prove the existence of God whenever they make a religious Facebook post either, I'm not that kind of asshole.

astrange 4y ago
> Yes, I've heard it all before. People who were drawn in to the baseless Russiagate conspiracy theory As you can read in the Republican-written Senate Intelligence Committee report, everything about Russiagate did in fact happen and it was 100% real. (except for the Steele dossier/pee tape) This essentially comes down to Trump realizing that if you say all your crimes in public, nobody will think it's a crime and it won't be reported as one, because you don't "seem like you have something to hide".
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I might be basically be picking at it with what I am about to say next, but was it not admitted that 'Steele dossier' itself was a rather elaborate disinformation campaign[1] as noted by Fiona Hill? I really don't be want to be this guy, but if we are going to have that kind of discussion here, we might as well discuss current state of knowledge. edit: All this is relevant, because that dossier itself was the basis for 'Russiagate'. I am ok with a rational counter-argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Risk_of_contamination_with_Russian_disinformation_considered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Risk_of_contami...
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > As you can read in the Republican-written Senate Intelligence Committee report, everything about Russiagate did in fact happen and it was 100% real. (except for the Steele dossier/pee tape) The conspiracy theory is that Trump colluded or conspired with Putin to hack the election. No evidence to support this has ever been produced. I know that may be difficult to accept, and I ascribe no malice to those who genuinely believe conspiracy theories, they are a powerful psychological trap.
  - astrange 4y ago
    When Trump told Russia to release his opponent's emails they'd hacked, and they did release them afterwards on the same day, he got away with it because he just did it in public on stage, and so cynics can't accept it because it's too obvious - it wasn't done on an encrypted Signal chat in a smoky backroom, so it must not be a conspiracy, so it must've been a coincidence. Plus his campaign manager was working for him for free and instead being paid by a GRU agent for their targeting data. You can try denying the Senate/Mueller reports on this, but you should read them, since they do say this.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      The joke he made at a political rally about Russia releasing Clinton's emails if they had them? That simply is not not evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election. Calling that evidence is like a climate denier calling an unseasonal snowfall evidence that global warming is false. And that's not what the misinformation peddlers at the time were claiming to be the evidence, either. Remember Adam Schiff's repeated false claims of "ample evidence" that he could not share but alleged were shown to the House Intelligence Committee that he chaired? That was the kind of inflammatory misinformation that drove the whole conspiracy theory. This is how conspiracy theories hook people, they tell people what they desperately want to be true, and they falsely claim there is this vast amount of solid, air-tight evidence, and it will all soon come out. That gets people invested, hooked, convinced that it is true. When things eventually get disproven much later and it turns out there is no such evidence forthcoming, the believers are so invested in it that they are incapable of accepting the reality, so they cling to whatever flotsam they possibly can -- "Trump did collude with Putin to hack the election, therefore this joke at a campaign rally must be a message to Putin, therefore it is irrefutable evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election". It works on probably a subconscious level, it is a very difficult to step back and see this when you are in the hole, let alone dig yourself out of it. No report into this including the vaunted Mueller Report has ever produced any evidence that Trump colluded or conspired with Putin to hack the election. I have read them. Mueller Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I, p. 181, second paragraph: For that reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.” The Office considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy—either under statutes that have their own conspiracy language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 1951(a)), or under the general conspiracy statute (18 U.S.C. § 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law—including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either under a specific statute or under Section 371’s offenses clause.

astrange 4y ago

> Yes, I've heard it all before. People who were drawn in to the baseless Russiagate conspiracy theory As you can read in the Republican-written Senate Intelligence Committee report, everything about Russiagate did in fact happen and it was 100% real. (except for the Steele dossier/pee tape) This essentially comes down to Trump realizing that if you say all your crimes in public, nobody will think it's a crime and it won't be reported as one, because you don't "seem like you have something to hide".

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I might be basically be picking at it with what I am about to say next, but was it not admitted that 'Steele dossier' itself was a rather elaborate disinformation campaign[1] as noted by Fiona Hill? I really don't be want to be this guy, but if we are going to have that kind of discussion here, we might as well discuss current state of knowledge. edit: All this is relevant, because that dossier itself was the basis for 'Russiagate'. I am ok with a rational counter-argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Risk_of_contamination_with_Russian_disinformation_considered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Risk_of_contami...
throwawaylinux 4y ago
> As you can read in the Republican-written Senate Intelligence Committee report, everything about Russiagate did in fact happen and it was 100% real. (except for the Steele dossier/pee tape) The conspiracy theory is that Trump colluded or conspired with Putin to hack the election. No evidence to support this has ever been produced. I know that may be difficult to accept, and I ascribe no malice to those who genuinely believe conspiracy theories, they are a powerful psychological trap.
- astrange 4y ago
  When Trump told Russia to release his opponent's emails they'd hacked, and they did release them afterwards on the same day, he got away with it because he just did it in public on stage, and so cynics can't accept it because it's too obvious - it wasn't done on an encrypted Signal chat in a smoky backroom, so it must not be a conspiracy, so it must've been a coincidence. Plus his campaign manager was working for him for free and instead being paid by a GRU agent for their targeting data. You can try denying the Senate/Mueller reports on this, but you should read them, since they do say this.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    The joke he made at a political rally about Russia releasing Clinton's emails if they had them? That simply is not not evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election. Calling that evidence is like a climate denier calling an unseasonal snowfall evidence that global warming is false. And that's not what the misinformation peddlers at the time were claiming to be the evidence, either. Remember Adam Schiff's repeated false claims of "ample evidence" that he could not share but alleged were shown to the House Intelligence Committee that he chaired? That was the kind of inflammatory misinformation that drove the whole conspiracy theory. This is how conspiracy theories hook people, they tell people what they desperately want to be true, and they falsely claim there is this vast amount of solid, air-tight evidence, and it will all soon come out. That gets people invested, hooked, convinced that it is true. When things eventually get disproven much later and it turns out there is no such evidence forthcoming, the believers are so invested in it that they are incapable of accepting the reality, so they cling to whatever flotsam they possibly can -- "Trump did collude with Putin to hack the election, therefore this joke at a campaign rally must be a message to Putin, therefore it is irrefutable evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election". It works on probably a subconscious level, it is a very difficult to step back and see this when you are in the hole, let alone dig yourself out of it. No report into this including the vaunted Mueller Report has ever produced any evidence that Trump colluded or conspired with Putin to hack the election. I have read them. Mueller Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I, p. 181, second paragraph: For that reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.” The Office considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy—either under statutes that have their own conspiracy language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 1951(a)), or under the general conspiracy statute (18 U.S.C. § 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law—including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either under a specific statute or under Section 371’s offenses clause.