Russians Hacked Minds

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Clarissa

January 7, 2017

Fivethirtyeight’s analysis of a Surveymonkey data-set shows that Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 election if registered Democrats had turned out and voted in larger numbers — in other words, Hillary’s failure to convince registered Democrats to vote, rather than abstain, lost her the election.

This is why I’m indifferent to the current hoopla over Russians owning the Wikileaks. This is so much bigger than the Wikileaks. Over the years, I’ve seen crowds of Liberal journalists, bloggers and Facebook acquaintances lap up and eagerly promote every lie fed to them by Russian propagandists. They did that in good faith because they are still in the Cold War mode of “If evil conservatives say the USSR is bad, it must be good.”

From “Nazis in Ukraine” they seamlessly moved to “Hillary is boring, she is unexciting, it’s business as usual, eeencrementalism, I just can’t get excited about her.” As if they were asked to masturbate to her campaign photo instead of voting. Many of them are still repeating the same shit interspersed with the same old Nazis in Ukraine.

Assange on his own would have done nothing. There was an enormous number of sincere Liberals who helped out of intellectual inertia and lack of psychological agility.

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26 responses to “Russians Hacked Minds”

danmillerinpanama

January 7, 2017

Over the years, I’ve seen crowds of Liberal journalists, bloggers and Facebook acquaintances lap up and eagerly promote every lie fed to them by Russian propagandists.

The problem is that the current intelligence community report

states that the email material did not contain “any evident forgeries.” In other words, they were real emails not forged.

To what “lies” do you refer in the present context? And if the DNC and other e-mails were real, not forged, in what sense is their disclosure “propaganda?”

The linked article by Jonathan Turley observes,

The report also highlights the difficulty that many in Washington are facing in trying to rally the public against Russian hacking. Many citizens may not be as mortified that Russia revealed how their leaders were lying to them. The emails showed how the Washington establishment — including the press corp — misled the public and colluded behind the scenes. It is a hard sell to tell the public that they should be disgusted by Russia showing them how their leaders are dishonest, disloyal, and often despicable in their conduct.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 7, 2017
  
  That’s precisely why I’m saying that the email leaks were nothing and I don’t even want to waste my time on them. The leaks were powerful because they fell onto prepared soil. You probably don’t hang out with Liberals a lot, so you have no reason to know this but for years they have lapped up every lie offered by Putin. I spent years trying to get the truth out about Putin’s regime and the war in Ukraine. But it’s useless. They will believe whatever they want to believe.
  
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  1. valter07
    
    January 8, 2017
    
    Let’s do a very simple thought experiment: Let’s imagine that four years from now the Democrats offer the voters more of the same thing they offered them now, with the only difference being that they will denounce Putin in the harshest ways possible… Will it save the Democrats?
    Oh, wait, but these already were the Democrats who were denouncing Putin, while Trump was ridiculously friendly towards him…
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 8, 2017
      
      Their denouncements aren’t worth the water from boiled eggs. They need to resist propaganda, learn to think for themselves. When Russians inject lies into the media space, they need to not embrace them so eagerly. And to do that they will have to let go of the outdated mentality inherited from the Cold War.
      
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      1. valter07
        
        January 8, 2017
        
        I am not sure, but I suspect that those “USA-bad-has-to-repent-Putin-must-be-right” folks constitute a very small minority of Hillary’s supporters. Frankly, I do not know any personally, and I am in academia. You probably see and read more of them because there are more of them in the humanities.
        The mainstream media (that supported Hillary) was definitely anti-Putin. Eager to report all his real and sometimes imagined crimes, from Syria to Vermont.
        Thus, I do not think those folks you are talking about influenced anything one way or another. Let’s do an experiment. Get out in the street outside the university campus and ask 100 random people if they read the “Nation”. I am willing to bet 5:1 that majority have not even heard of it.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 8, 2017
        
        Exactly, they are not Hillary supporters. They didn’t come out to vote for her because she was boring, incrementalist and “just like Trump.” I’m sure many of them weren’t reading the Nation. But the number of Facebook, Twitter and blog posts about Hillary being “the same as Trump” was insane during the election.
        
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Vic Crain

January 7, 2017

I’m tired of the hoopla. Yes, the Russians hacked the election, and that needs a response. There is no “right” to mess in another country’s affairs. (I wish Bush Jr. had been cognizant of that before going into Iraq, although it is claimed that the CIA has a long legacy of doing the same thing in Latin America.)

I don’t think the Russians materially affected the election result. Hillary did that on her own. She failed to recognize how many people dislike her, or sense the mood of the country (the demand for change). Bernie modeled for her how to beat Trump and she refused to learn. With a candidate as bad as Trump, the election should never have been a close contest. She made it close enough to lose.

I know people on the Left who refused to vote for her. They felt that the party had deserted them when it nominated her and were unwilling to set aside that anger. That’s their right. And she did nothing to reach out to them.

Anyway, all this is water under the bridge. She’s alienated more people in this campaign. If she runs again, she’ll lose again. It’s time for her to retire and someone else to step up to lead the party.

As of this morning, Assange is going after Twitter users. I wonder what that’s about?

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 7, 2017
  
  People disliked Hillary for a reason. And the reason is that they were fed these lies for years. And with all respect for Bernie, he didn’t even manage to win the primary. The idea that he’d somehow win the general election when he couldn’t even carry his own party is bizarre.
  
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  1. el
    
    January 7, 2017
    
    \ People disliked Hillary for a reason. And the reason is that they were fed these lies for years.
    
    Which lies?
    
    I thought about trickle down economics and bringing factory jobs to America again, but wasn’t Trump the one who won with the use of those ideas?
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 7, 2017
      
      That she is corrupt, establishmentarian, “just like” a Republican, boring, won’t bring any change. Putin has been at war with Hillary personally since 2011 because he believes she organized the protests against him back then.
      
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Hattie

January 7, 2017

Your over the top language irritates me, but basically you are correct.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 7, 2017
  
  I’m just angry because we shouldn’t have lost this darn election.
  
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  1. Stringer Bell
    
    January 7, 2017
    
    I’m angry too. But my anger is directed at her and her incompetent team.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 7, 2017
      
      I believe this is a fatal mistake. The next election will be lost, too, if this becomes the accepted narrative. And it’s patently untrue that it’s all the fault of Hillary and her team. Why did the Democrats lose the Congress and the Senate? Why are the governorships turning red? Is that all Hillary?
      
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      1. Stringer Bell
        
        January 7, 2017
        
        It’s her fault and her team’s fault for losing the presidential election. No more, no less. I believe that’s what we were talking about. Why would any thinking person lay the blame on her for all the other elections democrats lost? That’s absurd.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 7, 2017
        
        If Democrats keep losing ground – and they do – there has to be a reason for that. It’s easy to fixate on this election and it’s convenient scapegoat and pretend that this loss isn’t part of a larger pattern. But there is no good to be derived from this pretense other than the illusory comfort of thinking that once Hillary goes away everything will be great.
        
        But it won’t be great. Things have been going from bad to worse for Democrat for years before she ran.
        
        There is a larger problem here and it won’t be solved until it’s at least acknowledge.
        
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        danmillerinpanama
        
        January 7, 2017
        
        In an earlier thread, I linked this article and this as suggesting that the DNC is badly out of touch and has been for quite a few years.
        
        The DNC has met its own worst enemy and, to paraphrase Pogo, it is itself. They apparently don’t realize it yet and may never. But if they don’t care then neither do I, beyond favoring a viable two party system. Perhaps a new party will be born and displace them.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        January 7, 2017
        
        It’s not just the DNC. Many of the rank and file have gone too nuts for the majority of Americans to swallow. See my last post. The moment you say that life in Zambia is better than in the US, you lose people’s interest. The crazy has got to stop.
        
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Stringer Bell

January 7, 2017

“And with all respect for Bernie, he didn’t even manage to win the primary.”

Apples and Oranges. Yeah, all the victories that hillary scored over bernie in the southern states really mattered. Those southern states really came through for her in the general. Bigly!

I can’t think of one state hillary won in the general that Bernie also wouldn’t have won. And I can think of at least a couple of states that she lost that he would’ve won.

To lose to fucking Donald Trump is a sign of criminal incompetency. ‘Gets things done’ my fucking ass.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 7, 2017
  
  He still lost the primary. That’s a fact of objective reality that we can’t deny.
  
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  1. Stringer Bell
    
    January 7, 2017
    
    I didn’t deny it. I was pointing out the flaw in your argument that if he couldn’t even win the primary, how could he win the general.
    
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2. paranoid
  
  January 7, 2017
  
  “I can’t think of one state hillary won in the general that Bernie also wouldn’t have won.”
  Virginia
  
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Omega Man

January 7, 2017

Hilary lost because she abandoned the working class, preferring instead to immerse herself in identity politics. She ignored her husbands advice to address working class concerns and as a result lost the election when those same working class Democrats decided to sit out this election.

Trump for all his faults kept his ear close to the ground and listened to the people. He understood what was ailing America and while he was a bit vague, he offered a way forward. Something that Hilary did not.

To put it bluntly, the Democrats are blithering idiots, and as a result they are losing everywhere.

If the Democrats ever want to regain power, then need to ditch the political correctness and get out amongst the people so that they can feel their pain and understand for once what the concerns of the ordinary people are.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 7, 2017
  
  A way forward is a wall, right? 😃
  
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  1. el
    
    January 7, 2017
    
    \ A way forward is a wall, right?
    
    Had a mental image of banging one’s head against a brick wall, and only much later remembered the wall Trump promises to build.
    
    🙂
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 7, 2017
      
      It now turns out that the wall will be built with US taxpayers’ money. Campaign promises have turned to dust already. I find it hilarious.
      
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