If Russia magically stopped existing before 2016, we’d still have Trump. He’s a homegrown phenomenon. There was and still is lot of resentment of establishment politics since the '08 collapse. Almost all the “recovery” from that was concentrated in the top 20% of income earners.
Trump is a crook helping himself and his rich friends, but he presents himself on television as anti-establishment. Gameshow Host President plus the American Public. You really need 80% foreign intervention to do the math on that one?
If Russia magically stopped existing before 2016, we’d still have Trump
That’s because the campaign to get him, or someone like him, electable started in the 80s.
That’s one of the things the West still can’t wrap its collective head around - russia doesn’t operate like western countries. Its long-term goals are not “how can we bring plumbing and indoor toilets to our citizens in the next 40 years”, but rather “how can we sow misinformation and discontent in the West to divide nations and cause them to tumble into chaos”.
It’s always funny how literally ALL ex-Soviet and USSR-satellite states are saying the exact same thing since the 90s, and the entire West goes “lol, don’t be dramatic”. And then russia does exactly what the West was warned about, and the West goes “huh, who could’ve seen that coming?”
So the plot to get Trump elected started in the 80’s, under the Soviet Union? Lmao. Yeah, I’m sure they maintained that plot consistently through the entire collapse, through the massive changes in leadership structure and everything.
At a certain point, this shit is just racist. I’m sorry, you can say, “I just hate the government, not the people,” but it you hate every government they’ve ever had, even when it’s gone through drastic, fundamental changes, then it’s not really about the government anymore, is it? It sounds like you’re trying to argue that the Russian people are inherently duplicitous and evil.
So the plot to get Trump elected started in the 80’s, under the Soviet Union?
Do you have a condition that prevents you from reading entire sentences? That’s not what I wrote.
Yeah, I’m sure they maintained that plot consistently through the entire collapse, through the massive changes in leadership structure and everything.
All those ops were done by the KGB. As far as they were concerned, the only changes the collapse brought were a rename to FSB, and one of their officers becoming the dictator. So, yes, the campaigns have continued without issues.
At a certain point, this shit is just racist
Can’t be racist towards a country.
I’m sorry, you can say, “I just hate the government, not the people,” but it you hate every government they’ve ever had
They had TWO governments in the last 40 years.
fundamental changes
LOL, that’s cute.
It sounds like you’re trying to argue that the Russian people are inherently duplicitous and evil.
I’m sure there are those that aren’t, but it’s a bit hard to find them these days. Just look at what’s happening in Ukraine. I’m also not seeing massive anti-Putin protests organised by those russians who fled to the west.
I mean they can both be true. The collapse of American education and media laid the groundwork for Trump. For him to even come anywhere close to power reveals a stark and horrifying collapse of everything that’s supposed to keep us understanding reality and keep the whole train on the rails. But, also, Russia’s formidable power at narrative-shaping in Western countries is a factor is the proximate cause of how bad it is. We haven’t even really got our heads around the nature of how bad it really is, having the whole top levels of government hollowed out and destroyed like they currently are being. We’ll find out the next time there is an actual crisis.
Do you really think Russia has done more to “shape the narrative” than Rupert Murdoch has? I’m sure they’ve got battalions of soldiers on Facebook or Tweeting tweets or whatever, but that’s got to amount to chump change when compared against 24 hour Fox News.
I do think Fox News has more power, but Russia’s goal is unapologetically simply to do as much damage as possible. Fox is trying to hand America over to their friends and destroy their opposition and if they do some damage, oh well, but they’re trying to still have a working country to hand over to the friends. Russia is simply trying to steer the bus off the cliff.
I completely disagree with that assessment. What the Republicans want is the complete domination of the American proletariat by the bourgeoisie (i.e, themselves). All the Russians want is to impede the government’s ability to project power halfway around the globe. Russia doesn’t care about American labor laws, unions, strikes, tax policy, etc, if anything, all things being equal, they’d probably prefer that the workers have more power, as that could be more disruptive to the state.
If you’re more preoccupied the with the geopolitical influence of the state than you are with the things I mentioned, then I think your priorities are very out of order. Those are bourgeois concerns, they want to play “The Great Game” because they’ll reap the spoils and take the resources of wherever they “bring democracy” to. If their interests are in jeopardy, let them go scramble to look after them, if anything, that’s good because they’ll be more focused on that than on fucking us over. We should be looking after the interests of our own class.
The American right is, by far, the greatest threat to the American people that exists in the world.
What the Republicans want is the complete domination of the American proletariat by the bourgeoisie (i.e, themselves).
Correct
All the Russians want is to impede the government’s ability to project power halfway around the globe.
I don’t know about “all,” but that’s part of what they want yes.
Russia doesn’t care about American labor laws, unions, strikes, tax policy, etc,
Correct
if anything, all things being equal, they’d probably prefer that the workers have more power, as that could be more disruptive to the state.
This would be the most around-the-bend fashion of accomplishing the US’s destruction they could possibly seek to accomplish. It’s far easier and quicker to just put a malicious moron on the scale of Caligula in charge and let him do what he does.
And, also, the most powerful America has ever been geopolitically came after decades of labor agitation to strengthen the hand of workers at the table and give them a system they could depend on and believe in. I don’t think even if they could fix the imbalances of American power that they would want to, because the inequalities within our system are a big factor in what’s destroying us right now.
If you’re more preoccupied the with the geopolitical influence of the state than you are with the things I mentioned, then I think your priorities are very out of order.
The guy Russia picked is destroying workers’ rights, immigrants’ safety, and making the systems of justice in the United States massively worse than the already bad state that they were in. The things you mentioned are my priority, which is why I’m unhappy about Russia helping to fuck them up for reasons of geopolitical influence of the state.
The American right is, by far, the greatest threat to the American people that exists in the world.
Also the greatest threat to the rest of the world. Which is why it’s bad that Russia is friends with them and helping to get it done.
The guy Russia picked is destroying workers’ rights
Yeah, all I said was “all else being equal.” If one side is more disruptive or more friendly towards Russia, they’d prefer that side regardless of other domestic policies. They are not out friends.
However, the guy they picked is also the guy the right picked, and his most destructive and harmful policies are to appease the right and to advance his own interests and those of his class.
Bush, as far as I’m aware, had no ties to Russia. Acting on his own initiative, he gave tax cuts to the wealthy, he created an illegal system of mass surveillance, he started multiple wars of aggression to send ordinary people to kill and die, he abducted people to black sites to be tortured, he transformed the country and greatly reduced any sense of civil liberty or privacy that we used to have. Perhaps whoever the Republicans nominate after Trump will not have ties to Russia, but either way, they will continue this project of hollowing out our rights and advancing bourgeois interests.
Also the greatest threat to the rest of the world. Which is why it’s bad that Russia is friends with them and helping to get it done.
Intentions have little barring on the effects of actions. The Murdoch media empire may not intend to destabilize english speaking nations, but that’s very much what it’s doing.
"The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” ―Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. (This uses the same social media graph built before.) We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people (think nonsense reddit posts about conspiracies that sound like Markov chains of nonsense other people have said), or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).
The goal is to keep opinions we don’t want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can, at which points they’ve gotten a head start on going viral and tend to capture a larger-than-otherwise share of media attention.
(All of the stuff above is basically the “standard” for online PR (usually farmed out to an LLC with a generic name working for the marketing firm contracted by the big firm; deniability is a word frequently said), once you’re above a certain size.)
“The opposition party is the media,” Steve Bannon, who helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign, told PBS Frontline five years ago. “And the media can only — because they’re dumb and they’re lazy — they can only focus on one thing at a time.”
So the solution, per Bannon? Overwhelm them.
“All we have to do is flood the zone,” he said. “Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”
The best defense is to call them out on it and then walk away. They’ll downvote the shit out of you, but who tf cares about upvotes and downvotes. If someone is getting downvoted heavily, read what they said carefully before piling on.
They got trump elected, I give them 80% credit.
If Russia magically stopped existing before 2016, we’d still have Trump. He’s a homegrown phenomenon. There was and still is lot of resentment of establishment politics since the '08 collapse. Almost all the “recovery” from that was concentrated in the top 20% of income earners.
Trump is a crook helping himself and his rich friends, but he presents himself on television as anti-establishment. Gameshow Host President plus the American Public. You really need 80% foreign intervention to do the math on that one?
That’s because the campaign to get him, or someone like him, electable started in the 80s.
That’s one of the things the West still can’t wrap its collective head around - russia doesn’t operate like western countries. Its long-term goals are not “how can we bring plumbing and indoor toilets to our citizens in the next 40 years”, but rather “how can we sow misinformation and discontent in the West to divide nations and cause them to tumble into chaos”.
I’m sure the estate of Tom Clancy is still looking for new ghost writers.
It’s always funny how literally ALL ex-Soviet and USSR-satellite states are saying the exact same thing since the 90s, and the entire West goes “lol, don’t be dramatic”. And then russia does exactly what the West was warned about, and the West goes “huh, who could’ve seen that coming?”
It’s tiring.
So the plot to get Trump elected started in the 80’s, under the Soviet Union? Lmao. Yeah, I’m sure they maintained that plot consistently through the entire collapse, through the massive changes in leadership structure and everything.
At a certain point, this shit is just racist. I’m sorry, you can say, “I just hate the government, not the people,” but it you hate every government they’ve ever had, even when it’s gone through drastic, fundamental changes, then it’s not really about the government anymore, is it? It sounds like you’re trying to argue that the Russian people are inherently duplicitous and evil.
Do you have a condition that prevents you from reading entire sentences? That’s not what I wrote.
All those ops were done by the KGB. As far as they were concerned, the only changes the collapse brought were a rename to FSB, and one of their officers becoming the dictator. So, yes, the campaigns have continued without issues.
Can’t be racist towards a country.
They had TWO governments in the last 40 years.
LOL, that’s cute.
I’m sure there are those that aren’t, but it’s a bit hard to find them these days. Just look at what’s happening in Ukraine. I’m also not seeing massive anti-Putin protests organised by those russians who fled to the west.
I mean they can both be true. The collapse of American education and media laid the groundwork for Trump. For him to even come anywhere close to power reveals a stark and horrifying collapse of everything that’s supposed to keep us understanding reality and keep the whole train on the rails. But, also, Russia’s formidable power at narrative-shaping in Western countries is a factor is the proximate cause of how bad it is. We haven’t even really got our heads around the nature of how bad it really is, having the whole top levels of government hollowed out and destroyed like they currently are being. We’ll find out the next time there is an actual crisis.
Do you really think Russia has done more to “shape the narrative” than Rupert Murdoch has? I’m sure they’ve got battalions of soldiers on Facebook or Tweeting tweets or whatever, but that’s got to amount to chump change when compared against 24 hour Fox News.
I do think Fox News has more power, but Russia’s goal is unapologetically simply to do as much damage as possible. Fox is trying to hand America over to their friends and destroy their opposition and if they do some damage, oh well, but they’re trying to still have a working country to hand over to the friends. Russia is simply trying to steer the bus off the cliff.
I completely disagree with that assessment. What the Republicans want is the complete domination of the American proletariat by the bourgeoisie (i.e, themselves). All the Russians want is to impede the government’s ability to project power halfway around the globe. Russia doesn’t care about American labor laws, unions, strikes, tax policy, etc, if anything, all things being equal, they’d probably prefer that the workers have more power, as that could be more disruptive to the state.
If you’re more preoccupied the with the geopolitical influence of the state than you are with the things I mentioned, then I think your priorities are very out of order. Those are bourgeois concerns, they want to play “The Great Game” because they’ll reap the spoils and take the resources of wherever they “bring democracy” to. If their interests are in jeopardy, let them go scramble to look after them, if anything, that’s good because they’ll be more focused on that than on fucking us over. We should be looking after the interests of our own class.
The American right is, by far, the greatest threat to the American people that exists in the world.
Correct
I don’t know about “all,” but that’s part of what they want yes.
Correct
The guy Russia picked is destroying workers’ rights, immigrants’ safety, and making the systems of justice in the United States massively worse than the already bad state that they were in. The things you mentioned are my priority, which is why I’m unhappy about Russia helping to fuck them up for reasons of geopolitical influence of the state.
Also the greatest threat to the rest of the world. Which is why it’s bad that Russia is friends with them and helping to get it done.
Yeah, all I said was “all else being equal.” If one side is more disruptive or more friendly towards Russia, they’d prefer that side regardless of other domestic policies. They are not out friends.
However, the guy they picked is also the guy the right picked, and his most destructive and harmful policies are to appease the right and to advance his own interests and those of his class.
Bush, as far as I’m aware, had no ties to Russia. Acting on his own initiative, he gave tax cuts to the wealthy, he created an illegal system of mass surveillance, he started multiple wars of aggression to send ordinary people to kill and die, he abducted people to black sites to be tortured, he transformed the country and greatly reduced any sense of civil liberty or privacy that we used to have. Perhaps whoever the Republicans nominate after Trump will not have ties to Russia, but either way, they will continue this project of hollowing out our rights and advancing bourgeois interests.
Agreed.
Intentions have little barring on the effects of actions. The Murdoch media empire may not intend to destabilize english speaking nations, but that’s very much what it’s doing.
Yeah, pretty much.
"The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” ―Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
I blame the Democrats for that.
They were so stupid, the last several cycles, I can’t blame anyone else.
Of course you do.
https://archive.is/PoUMo
from Bannon:
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5289315/trump-week-in-review
The best defense is to call them out on it and then walk away. They’ll downvote the shit out of you, but who tf cares about upvotes and downvotes. If someone is getting downvoted heavily, read what they said carefully before piling on.
I don’t know what you’re trying to say with those quotes.
There’s a few turbo libs who refuse to accept Dem accountability and think everyone saying anything negative about them is a Russian/Chinese troll.
Now I get it… I think.
But yah. I’ve gotten a lot of shit from my own team, since they railroaded Sanders in 2015.