What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

We have to understand that the disinformation campaign against the US started many years ago and steadily ramped up due to the fact our global competitors can't defeat us directly - our alliances and military power, whether nuclear or non-nuclear is too overwhelming for them. Because of this fact they have to try co-opt willing allies from inside our system to change this from within.

These largely autocratic regimes (Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, etc.) want to expand their spheres of influence in the competition for scarce resources and allies to fight their proxy wars and can't because our system of alliances is there to deter them and fight them if necessary. With the direct route unavailable, the indirect route was the only one left to those who wanted to see the end of the US-led post-nuclear security framework established after WW2.

One only has to go back a few years - I remember an early peak of conspiracy theories around 9/11 concerning the actual events of the day. People became unmoored from reality due to the magnitude of disaster and change that was put in front of them in the form of a US security state and began to question everything and began to fall into a pattern of conspiracy theorizing. This would have dissipated over time before the rise of the internet, which instead magnified and spread this cancer and allowed this kind of thinking to metastasize as the strongest purveyors found fertile ground to plant the seeds of dissent. The Russians have always used propaganda against us after the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923, but they saw this tumor in the US body politic explode in growth and began to build actual infrastructure in their own intelligence apparatus to help it spread and grow.

They had already cultivated Donald Trump in the 1980s through kompromat - the coin of the realm in intelligence work being blackmail. Due to his own incompetence as a businessman. Trump became the Russian money launderer for the Soviets even before Putin consolidated it into a kleptocratic mafia state after the fall of the Soviet Union. Black Russian money moved through Trump - casinos for awhile, but always properties (thus Don Jr's. famous admission they didn't need western money as they had plenty of Russian money available to them) and into the western banking system. This was necessary because it is being stolen from the Russian people and state and it is safer and more profitable to move these ill-gotten gains offshore - Switzerland is another entity that provides these services to the Third World.

With Rudy Giuliani destroying La Cosa Nostra through RICO statues in the 70s and 80s, the Russia mafia was the primary benefactor - and some might say their presence in the US was purposely strengthened in these efforts, the Russians never being far from Trump or Giuliani.

Now we have the 2016 election, with Putin's hatred of Hillary Clinton, we start get actual collaboration when Trump made good on his years of speculative talk of running for President Although this started years earlier, it began to ramp up in earnest with Obama birtherism and was itself amplified by right wing drive time radio and media in the post 9/11 internet era. The Russians had been waiting on the American right's descent through their grooming operations into the chaos of the Tea Party, and finally their cooption by Trump himself, aided by extensive deployment of kompromat against dissenters within the party.

Now their big data operation via Cambridge Analytica targeting voters through social media came into play which was aided by the polling data from Manafort and was largely responsible for delivering Donald Trump to US Presidency.

Within a few months, the Russians themselves were able to take a victory lap in the Oval Office with Trump smiling at their side a day after James Comey was fired after arguably delivering the 2016 election to Trump. Charlottesville followed months later when Trump made it clear he would normalize those who espoused their worst thoughts. Wedges being driven into the soul of the US with the hammer Putin, the ex-KGB officer, provided Trump.

The sickle would follow in the disaster that occurred during COVID, leaving one in wonder about if it was really Trump bumbling his way through the deadliest pandemic in US history or working a coordinated plan to permanently weaken the US via his Russian handlers which ultimately resulted in a million dead in the US and an economy and country in tatters. He surely didn't shy from handing over vital resources our country required to save lives to help his handler in Moscow.

Putin had used "little green men" to take eastern Ukraine and Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 after the Ukrainian revolution of dignity against leaders installed by the Kremlin and more importantly for Russia's energy exports - large gas deposits were found in the Sea of Azov in Ukrainian territory and they saw the need to kneecap Ukraine and take the fields before they were developed by a country who might one day compete with Russian gas exports - its one trick pony economy. Now Putin saw his chance with the US in COVID chaos to take the rest of Ukraine once Trump left office.

Stacking the Supreme Court with Heritage Foundation poster children and destroying Roe vs. Wade to create another wedge to drive us apart with the help of US Christian nationalists, was in the long range plans of our own countrymen, who are fellow travelers with Putin's Russian insofar as they would also like a strongman willing to do their bidding.

Trump surely looked browbeaten at the 2018 Helsinki summit, like a toy poodle on a Russian leash. He soon showed his weakness in handling Afghanistan over to the Taliban, a country which had stabilized under a US security presence, but that defeated Russia in the 80s, leaving a disastrous "Putin-appropriate" deal in place as a poison pill for his successor to swallow when the time came. Turns out you "don't have wars" when a traitor is President because he can merely coordinate with our enemies and move US troops out of positions where they might be in the way.

We all know the rest, the loss of the 2020 election, another Russian wedge when he had a mob attack the Capitol to stop the certification process. Then the revelations of stealing our most sensitive secrets and grifting and/or giving them to our enemies after leaving office.

As far as this election, this is why Trump needs to be defeated, convicted, tried, found guilty, and sent to prison for the rest of his life. He is Benedict Arnold in the flesh, except Benedict Arnold was an actual war hero before his descent into the traitorous behavior he is known for. In other words, a tragedy, unlike Trump who is nothing more than a manufactured rich man, losing all of his family's money he stole, and then due to his nature, grasping for the rope Russia offered to him to betray his country.

When you view Trump's attacks on our alliances like NATO and upending our diplomatic efforts, it makes perfect sense to view the world through this lens.

So unless we start living in THIS reality, now, and vote accordingly in a few weeks we will have a MUCH darker reality ahead of us.

 

She just underestimated how many were deplorable... more and more seems like close to 100% of his supporters.

 

Love it. I do appreciate your honesty and use of “generally” though!

Vote on one day. Polls open 24 hours. Absentee ballots/Mail in only for those who cannot be at their precinct for a legitimate reason. Make it a national holiday.

 

Of course. I anticipate every national election in the history of our country had some individuals cheating or errors. We saw that with multiple maga in the villages getting arrested (and no telling how many more in the villages cheated). And recounts do usually change the final tally slightly. But in audits, recounts, investigations, court cases there just isn’t evidence of massive voter fraud especially that would indicate Trump beat Biden. Although you have a point maga officials tried to cheat, along with Trump himself.

And I would be all for national guidelines - tbd on what they should be. And btw, even with that, with 150m voting there still would be voting errors and disenfranchised voters. but it would make a more effective system, generally.

 

Much easier to control with one day of voting. Hence we should do that. Way too easy to manipulate mail in for not reason. Way too easy!

 

Way easier to manipulate only putting one voting machine in urban areas serving hundreds of thousands of people and dozens of machines in suburbs serving 10,000 people.

No MAGAt ever said boo about vote-by-mail until Dems started using it to help get around their suppression games. Now all of a sudden it's suspect.

 

If there was a legitimate evidence that we need to restrict voting, then yes. But there isn't. Just one party upset because it lost.
So why not make it easy for Americans to vote? Isn't that what we want, as many voting as possible?

 

It's not about election security. It's about making it harder for certain people to vote. Actual better election security would only help Democrats. Dems aren't the ones trying to steal elections. That would be the Republicans.

 

In big turnout national elections, the GOP almost always loses. They do NOT want everyone to vote.

 

Regarding the topic of misinformation, I found this conversation between Yuval Noah Harari and Sam Harris interesting.

Harari has a new book out, Nexus, where one question posed is "If humans are so wise, why are we so stupid?". While I disagree with some of his points, like that human nature isn't a primary cause of our problems and his general atheist views, they are both thinkers that I respect.

Some points brought up:

• If you have complete distrust in institutions (which are not perfect) you're paving the way for dictatorship.
• He sees Marxism and Populism as two sides to the same "burn it all down" coin. That the extremes of both the right and left will tell you that every thing is just a power struggle and if you believe that then all trust collapses and the only solution is a dictator.
• The truth is costly and complicated and fiction is cheap.
• Giving power to someone who you suspect will not give it back is very dangerous.

 

I know I musta gone to a polling station once or twice in my life, but it's gotta be over 30 years. I vote more since I moved to Colo b/c they have always had vote by mail. My ballot is on the kitchen table. A vote has next to no value, so if you want people to do it, make it EASY. I would never wait in line to vote.

We sure as shit shouldn't muck stuff up over a Trumper Tantrum.

 

Any rational mind understand the ability to cheat with mail in for no reason. I appreciated the honest “generally” from pit.

One day. 24 hours. If you can’t be there go through the hoops to absentee. But you and others don’t want that for a reason!

 

It's quite hard to make a rational arg for voting at all.

Prob not as hard as making an arg as to why one would cheat for no reason. "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"?????

 

He called u out for posting like that on the football board. You asked for any evidence of such posts on that board. It wasn’t hard to keep up with. He just ran away from his accusation and didn’t want to admit as much.

 

I'll bite, why don't I want that to happen? I mean, besides the fact that I'm not rational, of course.

 

To me, there is no doubt that individuals on both sides engage in fake news stories. The difference is that democrat candidates (and news professionals), for the most part, do NOT spread the lies. Republican candidates, and especially Trump and Vance, do nothing but spread those lies. Probably 70-80% of their speeches consist of these falsehoods. And their news commentators are right there with them. Whatever they can do to stir the pot. Republicans were not always such prolific liars. But because they've realized that many republicans are easily manipulated (and Trump has been a leader with this tactic), they continue to tell these lies.

 

You probably believe the lies that were told daily about Covid and Jan 6 to this day. And are still peddled to this day. By the dems and msm.

 

We don't need to change safe and fair voting systems currently in place because 6 republicans in each state figure out a way to vote for Trump twice and get caught.

Scream and cry all you want but that is what all the voter fraud ever found turns out to be every time.

 

I remember seeing my favorite

Good thing you added that last line about "by the Dems and MSM."

Because almost everyone reading your post was thinking, at that point, "How the hell can this guy think that anyone believes the lies he told, and continues to tell, about covid? "

 

Which lies are those?

1. That the disease was obviously airborne and masking was an effective way of reducing the amount of virus one was exposed to?
2. That vaccination was an effective way of building herd immunity, but misinformation about the vaccines ended up killing more MAGA than non-MAGA folks?
3. That it killed a million Americans in the end because of the effective leadership of Donald Trump who knows more about anything than anyone else alive?
4. That Donald Trump sent our testing equipment and functioning ventilators to Putin in return for non-functional Russia ventilators when our people needed them?

Spare me your "COVID lies" - I knew personally 4 people who died in the pandemic - 3 who were close co-workers and all who supported MAGA before they died.