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‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

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Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#121

Post by mattwad »

godelski wrote: post #77

> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…

It's the politicians that enable this behavior. How many Republican ads are of them shooting their political party's opponent?

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#122

Post by staticman2 »

godelski wrote: post #77

> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…

It doesn't matter whether the Russians want a specific election winnner because many Americans want a specific election winner and have found bad faith discussions, easy talking points and mic drops are an excellent way to achieve those results.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#123

Post by UncleOxidant »

bpodgursky wrote: post #82
UncleOxidant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any examples of this actually happening in the Soviet times until now? He's going to be worried about the groomed successor doing him in earlier than natural death. That paranoia is what keeps them from doing what you suggest.

Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and Khrushchev all died peacefully.

Yes, but did they groom a successor? Yeltsin did (Putin). Krushchev - not sure, I think there was a bit of a tussle. Gorbachev was probably too young to be thinking about a successsor - and he was essentially shutting down the Soviet Union.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#124

Post by BitwiseFool »

mattwad wrote: post #121
godelski wrote: post #77

> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…

It's the politicians that enable this behavior. How many Republican ads are of them shooting their political party's opponent?

>"How many Republican ads are of them shooting their political party's opponent?"

Zero?

Edit: So I did some further digging and I assume the GP is talking about something like this: https://twitter.com/jim_lamon/status/1491836062934704141

It's a superbowl ad with a wild west showdown theme. Actors portraying Joe Biden, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Speaker Pelosi are having a high-noon style duel with the Republican candidate. The Republican manages to shoot the guns out of their hands and they flee defeated.

I think this is tacky more than anything else. I do not think there is some sinister subliminal message at play here. Nor do I consider this "shooting their political party's opponent", because those words conjure an image of an actual assassination and this looks like something fanciful.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#125

Post by canjobear »

godelski wrote: post #77

> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…

There's no evidence that their interventions have been effective.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#126

Post by parineum »

mywittyname wrote: post #67
xienze wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a lot of denial about this interference happening out there I would argue there’s a lot of creative interpretation of how much “interference” actually happens. Democrats are pretty much starting from the position that, due to demographics, the only way Republicans can gain the upper hand in national elections (or particular state/local elections) is through trickery and the assistance of foreign government…

> Democrats are pretty much starting from the position that, due to demographics, the only way Republicans can gain the upper hand in national elections (or particular state/local elections) is through trickery and the assistance of foreign government meddling. WTF. Our voting system is so fundamentally broken and all any party needs to do to get a government majority without a popular majority is to push on the crac…

> For the presidential election, the electoral college makes it possible for a candidate to win the presidency with a mere 23% of the popular vote.

_Possible_ does a lot of work for you here. You have to assume all the losing states vote at 0% toward the winning party and all winning states vote at 50%+1 for that to happen. Something that is absurdly unrealistic given that California only voted 65% Biden and 35% Trump in the last election.

The EC doesn't favor one party over the other except for the fact that Democrats refuse to move their national politics to the center to win the EC and use words like "populist" to describe the candidates that do.

Realistically, the popular vote "problem" you bring up isn't the issue with the EC. The issue is that it allows candidates to ignore the vast majority of the country, causing all candidates to cater to the same minority of the population. There's nothing wrong with the EC except that the states are mostly "winner-take-all", essentially gerrymandering the presidential elections.

There are a lot of things I'd like to see done to increase the veracity of our elections (ranked choice voting, open primaries, etc.) but, I think, if we could solve or make progress in the reduction of gerrymandering it would make a sizeable difference in the quality of politics in the country. And, notably, gerrymandering is very much a "both sides" issue, ask Californian politicians if they would favor splitting California EC votes proportionally by vote. That would make California more represented in Presidential elections and would also force candidates to try and win votes in California, moderating national politics. The only downside would be to the Democratic party itself.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#127

Post by sixQuarks »

627467 wrote: post #95

The news is that a country tried to influence the affairs of another country? Or is it because it is Russia or because it is a chef? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_interventi...

It’s basically the US clutching its pearls, because of course we never meddle in other countries elections, or overthrow their governments and install dictators, or start a war on false premises.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#128

Post by matheusmoreira »

DFHippie wrote: post #87
matheusmoreira wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazilian here. The Biden administration and the CIA openly pressured our president to accept the election results before they happened. I gotta at least wonder if they knew he was going to lose. Now there's nation-wide protests, calls for military intervention, election denialism with some rather convincing evidence, blatant censorship of anyone who's so much as asking if this is going to be investigated.

Biden, and presumably every other governmental official in every nation who truly believes in democracy, wasn't saying that Bolsonaro should step down regardless of whether he lost. They were saying he should step down if he lost. Basically, don't retain power by civil war. If the election you won legitimized your government, the election you lost legitimizes Lula's government.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/05/cia-director-b...

CIA person "urging" a president of a soverign country to stop doubting voting machines? Calling his doubts "baseless"? I mean, the USA has paper ballots to this day because of the exact same "baseless" doubts. It's essentially world wide consensus that voting machines are a bad idea, some countries straight up declared them unconstitutional. But these USA officials pressured our president not to question the system of his own country. A CIA guy at that, from a country known for compromising the world's security and spying on everyone.

I'm sorry but there's so much wrong with that it's not even funny. If that's not interference I don't know what is. The more I research these elections the uglier it gets.

> If the election you won legitimized your government, the election you lost legitimizes Lula's government.

Right now it doesn't seem like this election legitimitized either government. The unprecedented censorship is not inspiring confidence. I wonder what will happen now...

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#129

Post by pessimizer »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #103
godelski wrote: post #77

> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…

"Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation" - what is the point? our media is so much better at it.

The goal is to poison the well. If you convince people that Russia has no specific goal except spreading evil and discord, you can 1) ascribe any act to Russia without having to come up with any reason why they would do it, and 2) not-so-subtly turn him to Satan in the Protestant mind, the only being whose only object is chaos.

Putin does the same thing in Russia (as US intelligence agencies do in the US.) With one of his major power centers being the Russian Orthodox Church, he can frame every external attack as an attack on religion, and a sign of the end-times - one of the reasons for the extremely homophobic policy and culture he's helped grow. The West is trying to turn us gay to destroy our religion.

Re: ‘Putin’s chef’ admits to interfering in U.S. elections

#130

Post by Loughla »

LatteLazy wrote: post #104
godelski wrote: post #77

> Russian companies were charged in the U.S. with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord and dividing American public opinion This is key here and I think we should all take note because I see comments here that feed into their tactics. Their goal isn't to have a specific election winner, but to divide us as a nation (not just US but all Westerners and even countries like Japan) and creat…

The problem is that smart people, paying attention and putting national interest will now compromise, and people not in that category will just continue to refuse. So the "centre" will move closer to whatever that latter group believes. And will keep doing so until then former group stops compromising. So this, like so so many issues, cannot be solves by appeals to individuals to change their own position. It REQUIRE…

>It REQUIRES a national level fix.

Honestly, genuinely, what the hell would that even look like? I legitimately cannot picture a solution here.

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