There is still no clear proof that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 US elections in any meaningful way. Which is weird, because Russia and every other country on earth would be perfectly justified in doing so.
Like every single hotly publicized Russiagate “bombshell” that has broken since this nonsense began, Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian social media trolls was paraded around as proof of something hugely significant (an “act of war” in this case), but on closer examination turns out to be empty. The always excellent Moon of Alabama recently made a solid argument that has also been advanced by Russiagate skeptics like TYT’s Michael Tracey and Max Blumenthal of The Real News, pointing out that there is in fact no evidence that the troll farming operation was an attempt to manipulate the US election, nor indeed that it had any ties to the Russian government at all, nor indeed that it was anything other than a crafty Russian civilian’s money making scheme.
The notion that a few Russian trolls committed a “conspiracy to defraud the United States” by “sowing discord” with a bunch of wildly contradictory posts endorsing all different ideologies sounds completely ridiculous in a country whose mainstream media spends all its time actively creating political division anyway, but when you look at it as a civilian operation to attract social media followers to sock puppet accounts with the goal of selling promoted posts for profit, it makes perfect sense. James Corbett of The Corbett Report has a great video about how absolutely bizarre it is that public dialogue is ignoring the fact that these trolls overwhelmingly used mainstream media like the Washington Post in their shares instead of outlets like RT and Infowars. As a scheme to acquire followers, it makes perfect sense. As a scheme to subvert America, it’s nonsensical.
There is currently no evidence that the Russian government interfered in the US election. But it is worth pointing out that if they did they had every right to.
“Whataboutism” is the word of the day. At some point it was decreed by the internet forum gods that adding “-ism” to a description of something that someone is doing makes for a devastating argument in and of itself, and people have hastened to use this tactic as a bludgeon to silence anyone who points out the extremely obvious and significant fact that America interferes in elections more than any other government on earth.
“Okay, so America isn’t perfect and we’ve meddled a few times,” the argument goes. “So what? You’re saying just because we’ve done it that makes it okay for Russia to do it?”
Actually, yes. Of course it does. Clearly. That isn’t a “whataboutism”, it’s an observation that is completely devastating to the mainstream Russia narrative. If it’s okay for the CIA to continuously interfere in the elections of other countries up to and including modern times, it is okay for other countries to interfere in theirs. Only in the most warped American supremacist reality tunnel is that not abundantly obvious.
Every country on earth is absolutely entitled to interfere in America’s elections. America is responsible for the overwhelming majority of election interferences around the world in modern times, including an interference in Russia’s elections in the nineties that was so brazen they made a Hollywood movie about it, so clearly an environment has been created wherein the United States has declared that this is acceptable.
It amazes me that more people aren’t willing to call this like it is. No, it would not be wrong for Russia to interfere in America’s elections. Yes, what America did to Russia absolutely would make a proportionate retaliation okay. Of course it would.
Imagine this:
A guy in a cowboy hat runs into a bar and starts punching people. Most of them just rub their sore jaws and hunch over their drinks hoping to avoid any trouble, but one guy in a fur cap sets down his vodka and shoves the man in the cowboy hat.
The man in the cowboy hat begins shrieking like a little girl. All his friends rush to his side to comfort him and begin angrily shaking their fists at the man in the fur cap.
“Hey, he punched me!” says the man in the fur cap.
“That’s a whataboutism!” sobs the man in the cowboy hat.
Can you imagine anything more ridiculous?
Seriously, how do people think this is a thing? How does anyone think it’s legitimate to respond to my article about a former CIA Director openly admitting that the US still to this day interferes with elections around the world babbling about “whataboutisms”? What a doofy, indefensible monkey wrench to throw into the gears of political discourse.
Yes, obviously by asserting that it is acceptable for the CIA to meddle in other countries’ elections, the US has created an environment where that sort of thing is acceptable. If Americans just want to embrace their American supremacist bigotry and say “Yeah we can do that to you but you can’t do it to us cuz we have big guns and we said so,” that’s at least a logically consistent position. Crying like little bitches and behaving as though they’ve been victimized by some egregious immorality is not.
Channel 4 News reported on the research of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Don Levin back in November, writing the following:
Dov Levin, an academic from the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University, has calculated the vast scale of election interventions by both the US and Russia.
According to his research, there were 117 “partisan electoral interventions” between 1946 and 2000. That’s around one of every nine competitive elections held since Second World War.
The majority of these – almost 70 per cent – were cases of US interference.
And these are not all from the Cold War era; 21 such interventions took place between 1990 and 2000, of which 18 were by the US.
If Americans don’t like election meddling, they need to demand that their government stops doing it. As long as it remains the very worst offender in that department, the US is entitled to nothing other than the entire world meddling in its elections.
I shouldn’t even have to say this. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.
Duh.
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13 responses to “America’s Election Meddling Would Indeed Justify Other Countries Retaliating In Kind”
You have said several times that the power elite are turning the American people against Russia because they great China. It would seem like a better strategy would be to make friends with Russia, to gradually turn it into our ally against China. The more we apply sanctions against Russia, the more it will tend to ally with China. Am I missing something?
Drat. That was supposed to say: because they fear China. Curse you, autocorrect!
“Whataboutism” is a favored propaganda phrase that American progressives, Democratic Party shills, and the left wing of American Empire love to spout whenever the moral contradictions in their allegations are called out.
And that comment from John Sipher about America being the world’s greatest supporter of democracy is a shining example of the messianic delusions that define the American national character.
Too bad his assertion is contradicted by America’s support of *pro-American* dictatorships during the Cold War to this very day (from Uganda to Saudi Arabia)–not to mention America’s regime change of democratically elected governments (like Iran, Chile, Congo, Brazil, Haiti, etc).
These aren’t American “mistakes.”
Those are American crimes, committed with malice aforethought and rationalized by propaganda about “defending democracy.”
This fundamentalist belief in American Exceptionalism is a clear and present threat on a planetary level.
And if you want to see Orwellian logic in action, look at America and its hypocritical, two-faced “democracy.”
That is the great irony: America ain’t a democracy.
America is a corporate plutocracy in democratic drag.
You haven’t been paying attention… Even Al Jezeera understands that American Progressives and the Left actually agree with You… Or maybe one day you will realize that the Democratic Party are Centrist NeoLiberals more in line with Republicans than true Progressives or left-leaning Liberals… Time to wake up… and stop blame your Friends for the Crimes of your Enemies!!
The major illegal aggression action being done by the USA are from USAID, NED, IRI, NDI, and other fake democracy promotion orgs. If you do not know these orgs, you should.
The US has meddled in elections (Iran, Chile, etc), which is totally wrong, unacceptable, and must stop. But that does not excuse what the Russians did, and keep in mind we still have a long way to go before this is concluded, so making grandiose statements at this point is useless.
What did the Russians do? The Russian government, or the hot dog salesman? There are, after all, many Russians–Rachel Madow for one.
“What a doofy, indefensible monkey wrench to throw into the gears of political discourse.” Damn, I love the way you write. Please keep doing what you’re doing; we need you.
Of course, one irony about all of this is the fact that we would not be hearing about or discussing any of this if Hillary had won. Only after she lost did her folks latch onto Russia as the reason Mr. Trump won; they had to do that for their own sanity. They couldn’t imagine for an instant that she lost because she was a deeply flawed candidate who ran a mediocre campaign.
That the U.S., and the Deep State specifically, believes firmly that it has the unabashed right to rule the world is the most disturbing outcome of the end of the Cold War. That so few people recognize that, and understand all its implications, is a greater tragedy.
I speculate, but with reason and some information, not evidence. If Hillary had won (neglecting the probability we would be in a post-WWW III world and we would all be crispy critters), there would have been no pink pussy hats. MeToo would be relegated to the backwaters of a few working class Black women who as everyone knows don’t matter to the US ruling class and don’t provide much entertainment to what used to be the Middle Class (now lumpen bourgeoisie). An aside: imagine Hillary after November 2016 saying to Bill in hopes of rekindling her vicious ambitions, “Remember how they used Monica Lewinsky against you? Of course I don’t care who you fuck as long as it’s not me you’re fucking over. But we can use the same thing against the Democrats who don’t fall in line and maybe a few Republicans as well. So, let’s go to our favorite super-professional public relations firms and use sex against our enemies.” And then there’s Russia. Again Hillary: “We can kill two birds: blame Putin for everything and anything, and we can finally beat those Russkies like we should have done in 1945.”
Other countries should meddle in US elections, not just in retaliation, but because US policies affect every other country. I remember someone suggesting that the world should be able to vote in US elections, which if practical would doubtless be a vast improvement.
Caity, two things. First, in case you haven’t yet seen it, or even if you did, you must love Lee Camp’s web exclusive video about the 13 that were uselessly indicted. It’s here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ccn2oE3v4&mc_cid=ab2036ac60&mc_eid=1fc8bb2bec
Second, I am in so much agreement on the hypocrisy in that action. It has been proven that the U.S. has meddled in the election of 81 other countries, yet we have the audacity to cry over it happening here (which did not actually happen). Seems to me that representatives of our government may now call themselves mainstream media journalists. The fiction spread is thicker than anything the WaPo has done.
You have to see Jill Stein’s on air takedown;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmsXymdjjNg
And this, though I do not know if the report is accurate yet;
https://shareblueastroturf.netlify.com/
And don’t you find it strange that we don’t hear a peep out of Russia for decades, and then all of a sudden, right about the time the DNC need a scapegoat for getting caught rigging the Primary and then losing the election, it’s nothing but “Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia”. Almost as if the two are connected or something.