07-13-2018, 12:05 PM
(07-12-2018, 12:19 PM)hollodero Wrote: So... I can get on board with your stance on Russia, and the smaller differences don't need to be dragged out too far. We're actually quite close, and incremental ease of sanctions as some kind of "reward" is fine with me too.
Glad to hear it.
Quote:But with these points, there's strong disagreement. I cannot acknowledge a point like "Maxine Waters would have a field day" as a valid reason to distort the truth, telling falsehoods, slamming the institutions, offending guys from Clapper to Brennan etc., to not admit the country was targeted by a cyber attack.
Fred sort of addressed this, but he got the main point wrong. You can't hand your political opponents weapons to use against you. I'm not saying it's morally right, but it is the reality of our political system. I also can't imagine that Austria's is much different. In our sound byte era of politics any admission by Trump that Russia helped get him elected would be endlessly looped. It would be a political disaster for the GOP. You can admit it in private and make efforts to prevent future occurrences, but you cannot admit it publicly.
Quote:That's as if the Democrats were a bigger threat to national security than the Russian propaganda war. If one sees it that way, he acted for the best of the country. But since I don't, I see Trump's actions as putting his own interests over the interests of the country, and that is a presidential failure. Because Russian cyber attacks ARE a matter of national security, that have to take precedence over political gains.
Neither party acts for the good of the country, they act for the good of themselves. Neither party has a plurality of US citizens, they do what they feel they must to either gain or maintain power. Occasionally a party platform will aid or hinder certain parts of the population. It's mostly giving the appearance of doing something without actually achieving anything of substance.
Quote:The propaganda attacks are easy to address. And only folk who want to believe what they believe over the truth and that read news accordingly would see that differently. Russian attacks are well-documented, we know about the troll farms, we know about the hacking, we know about all the connections, Trump just chooses to call that fake news and some of his followers choose to believe him over the agencies and the journalists. There's no excuse for that course of action from Trump, none. He's president of the USA, not just the chief republican, and the former has to be more important than the latter.
I've already addressed this, but I will point out that if the reverse were true, Russia aided Hillary and she had won, there is zero chance she would publicly acknowledge it for the same reasons.
