You seem to be lying here too.
As I said above, I don’t think it was the ads, I think the biggest move of several was employing thousands of internet trolls.
Maybe you misunderstood me, but then why not just ask?
Or if you are lying, why not just be honest?
Anyway, yes, Hillary was a bad candidate against an even worse opponent, which resulted in a 1% margin victory, which is typical of US elections. The small margin is exactly what makes us vulnerable.
I agree this is a good conversation.
Qanon was invented by someone using the same premise. Look how influential that has been. To laugh off social media manipulation is unwise.
I don’t know much about Qanon, as it sounds ridiculous and not something I really care to waste my time with, but… is it really THAT influential? I’d guess the small group of people that it caters to already have their minds made up about most things. 40% of this country would vote for a Republican no matter what, 40% would vote for a Democrat no matter what.
Besides the cultists, Q has started a number of rumors that are believed by a large % of the population. Couldn’t really tell you how that affects the vote.
Regarding your 40%/40% thing, I agree that in a highly partisan world, there’s really no changing peoples minds. A better tactic is to “get out the vote”. An even better tactic than that is to erode your opponent’s vote.
A good example of internet trolling happened during the Roy Moore campaign. (You might remember Roy Moore was the Republican who lost Alabama, after awkwardly admitting that he had dated teenagers and stealing from a charity.)
Anyway, at one point, a Democrat strategist created a lot of social media accounts/groups/ads, supporting Roy Moore’s initiative to bring back Prohibition. The goal was to erode voter turnout by creating a fake wedge-issue that a lot of folks in Alabama were strongly divided over. In other words it was a false flag, netting more votes for the democrats.
There’s again really no way to know if it worked at all. But the strategy was cribbed from 2016 attack by Russia, which did something similar but on a larger scale.
Again we’re way off topic but… how large?
Here’s a survey from aei (conservative thinktank) can find similar stuff from yougov and npr/ispos. Of course who knows wtf people are thinking when they respond to a survey, but in any case, the “deep-state sex-ring” is a good bit more popular than other conspiracies (like vaccines cause autism, or 911 was an inside job, or whatever).
It’s hard to say when talking about other people. Obviously a lot of Q people showed up at the capitol riot. Also IIRC some GoActuary members have friends that are reposting Q stuff on facebook.
The QAnon conspiracy theory includes a constellation of connected claims, but one core element is that Trump has been fighting a global ring of child traffickers with links to the political left.[5] The public widely rejects this belief. Only 15 percent of Americans believe that “Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” However, only 42 percent of Americans reject this conspiracy as being inaccurate, while 41 percent report being uncertain about it.
There are considerable partisan differences in beliefs about the accuracy of this claim. Nearly three in 10 Republicans say the claim that Trump was fighting a global child sex trafficking ring is mostly (17 percent) or completely (12 percent) accurate. Roughly as many Republicans (30 percent) reject this claim as inaccurate, while 43 percent report being uncertain about it. Very few Democrats (7 percent) and independents (12 percent) believe this claim is accurate.
It’s not about them voting Republican it’s about them not trusting the way America is set up to work. It’s about destroying faith in our institutions. It’s about making Americans hate each other over their political beliefs. It’s basically about tearing about our identity so the country will become so weak it’s dysfunctional. That’s the idea. I believe the architect is Vladimir Putin. He is evil with a capital E. He is like a high school bullie who instead of making his country great would rather make America burn itself down from the inside. Yes Qanon is serious and it’s not just about voting Republican. Qanon is about destroying America.
Looks like I’m not the only one who thought “That didn’t take long”.
There is no sane reason for Biden doing what he did. We may not even have to like them much, but saber-rattling to the point where they pull their ambassador is simply not a good idea.
I think you raise a good question, so started a general thread on the matter.
No, but perhaps it means you should consider not bombing other countries.
Blasphemer!
Here’s a general counter view. Kasparov has spent the last decade or so fighting for democracy in Russia and against Putin. And he’s been critical of every POTUS since Reagan for trying to fruitlessly engage in diplomacy with Putin, since it doesn’t work at all and at the same time gives dictators a pass to continue committing crimes.
Instead the West needs to kick Putin out of international organizations, impose targeted sanctions against the regime, implement better laundering laws, and go public with whatever data we have against Putin.
Anyway, that’s tldr. I recommend reading Kasparov’s (frequent) interviews since he’s pretty insightful.
It’s also just interesting, since the notion that america should fight for democracy is sooooooooooo blasé.
I’m sure other countries don’t have information they’re also holding back on with respect to the US.
If they do, they should go public with it. Keep as much in the open as possible.
That is not how diplomacy works, nor is it how the intelligence community views it, with good reason. We are not a country of angels.
Not sure what that sentence means. Do you mean: If we went public with data against dictatorships they would go public with data against us? Yes, that seems likely.
It’s not just dictatorships. Countries keep intelligence on other countries that they don’t just throw out in the open for a multitude of reasons. Why do you think we have security clearances or an intelligence community at all?
Some people seem in this thread seem to think other countries don’t play the intelligence game.
Who?
Your “Keep as much in the open as possible” was a pretty big offender of that. That is not how countries play diplomacy with each other.