Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, truth was that which comported with the facts, manipulation required distorting the truth, and disinformation required lying. That time is not now and that place is not here. The New York Times reports on a conspiracy theory that may have a basis in fact:
An unusual question is capturing the attention of cyberspecialists, Russia experts and Democratic Party leaders in Philadelphia: Is Vladimir V. Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election?
Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J. Trump, has been only whispered.
But the release on Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has intensified discussion of the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign.
The emails, released first by a supposed hacker and later by WikiLeaks, exposed the degree to which the Democratic apparatus favored Hillary Clinton over her primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and triggered the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party chairwoman, on the eve of the convention’s first day.
Some are calling these leaked emails disinformation, which suggests that “disinformation” has become an auto-antonym.
It used to be the case that telling the truth was considered a public service while concealing it was manipulative. Those were simpler times. I would have thought that the villains of this story were Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Silly me! The villains are Republicans, Bernie Sanders, WikiLeaks, and, assuming the conspiracy theory is true, Vladimir Putin.
My recommendations are:
- Don’t commit anything to email that you wouldn’t want posted in the town square.
- If you want to be thought of as having principles, act as though you have them.
No wonder this epoch is being called the “post-truth period”. When every cellphone is a camera and every email is likely to be posted in the town square, the only way to escape the truth is denial. As in Chico’s immortal line from Duck Soup, who ya gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?
That poor woman. Yet another vast conspiracy, this one courtesy of Boris Badinov and Natasha Fatale.
Seems to me the elephant in the room isn’t Debbie Schultz being given the bums rush, or the distasteful dissing of Bernie Sanders’ religious beliefs, but the fact that if Russia can hack th DNC, they sure as hell have hacked Hillary’s email. And call me crazy, I don’t think the ones we haven’t seen all deal with yoga poses and cookie recipes.
A case of being so desperate to control the message of the day that they hang themselves on the bigger picture?
I think the bigger worry are the stories floating around that Trump has borrowed money into the hundreds of millions from foreign banks. The WSJ reported about the German banks earlier this year. Now the ones about Russian money are coming out. Don’t know if they are true, and Trump isn’t opening up the books to let us see. Along with those are claims that American banks don’t want to loan to him because of his history of going bankrupt. Not to worry. Financial whizzes like Drew will tell us we should always take a rich guy at his word when it comes to money. Besides, how could a few hundred million dollars possibly affect his decision making? Granted, a couple o million was supposed to influence Hillary, but she is just a girl.
Steve
Clinton compared Putin to Hitler and Trump wants to deal with fairly, perhaps even get NATO off Russia’s back.
As Pat Buchanan said, NATO should have been disbanded when the USSR fell.
Buchanan the America Firster, Clinton the Goldwater Girl.
Russia would be negligent if it didn’t want Trump to win and the corrupt Libya-destroyer and would-be Syria-destroyer kept as far away from the White House as possible.
Steve,
Trumps shenanigans do concern me, but I’m not voting for him either way. Still, if he wants to be President, he needs to be a lot more transparent about his finances.
As for Clinton, it wasn’t just a couple of million. Donations to the Clinton Foundation related to arms sales alone were somewhere between 54 and 141 million (the foundation has some transparency issues as well) and the Clintons personally received “hundreds of thousands” personally while she was Secretary of State.
http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
As Jill Stein put it, “We see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing.”