Popular-vote-loser Donald Trump got his official briefing on Russia’s hacking of the election. In what we can only assume was an attempt to counteract Trump’s brilliant plan to flat-out lie about what was in this briefing, the US intelligence agencies released the declassified version of the report yesterday as well.
You should download it (direct link) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and read it, if for no other reason than to see how blatantly Trump has already lied about its contents. (If you’d like to avoid going to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence site you can download the PDF from The Minneapolis Star-Tribune here.)
The report is actually quite short; especially if you ignore the appendix about Russia’s propaganda outlet RT, which is definitely worth reading on its own though not quite as essential.
If you don’t feel like dealing with a PDF at the moment, the Washington Post has a handy guide to the important bits in the report.
Tomorrow we start in on Trump’s cabinet nominees and their ethical failings, in preparation for a week of CALLING SENATORS.
If you’d like to get started early, take a look at this CNN/Money article: “Trump national security pick Monica Crowley plagiarized multiple sources in 2012 book.” The title is fairly self-explanatory. She plagiarized A LOT.
See more Resist Trump Today posts here.
Hi @proudfootz! I guess it’s my turn. I apologize in advance. I don’t do sarcasm – that’s a real apology. I want to be fair, but I’m gonna punch some holes in your position here.
http://i.imgur.com/aVrvGWl.gif
:crack knuckles:
Awright, let’s get it over with. Your argument against the information source provided by David above is “the source is unreliable.” This started with the Washington Post, to which you said:
This was retracted, removing the value of your critique. This leaves you with only your critique of the original source, the intelligence agencies of the USA. I don’t love them, certainly, but you still need to provide support for your position that we should disregard their statements.
These are just assertions. You need to show us something untrustworthy that’s in the document in question. That’s how to be skeptical, and the CIA, FBI etc require skepticism.
Skepticism is not “assume everything they say is a dirty lie.” Doing that shuts the door on potential truth, and the ability to change your mind on the topic. Both of these things should be anathema to a skeptic.
Your more worrisome point is here:
Since when is the suggestion that a hostile foreign nation might meddle in the elections of a rival power in order to install a friendly leader a bizarre conspiracy theory? It’s basically exactly what the US has been doing in all sorts of places for decades, and what Russia has done, etc, etc. This is the expected outcome.
( <3 to Odessa and to Russian readers; I'm talking about governments and not people! )
I agree that the Democrats need to step up their game in opposing corporatism, as in, they need to actually start doing that. But the evidence of foreign interference in the election is vast and from several vectors, including the brags of the Russian government itself. The weight of evidence is in support of this outcome.
So, that was fun. Let's deal with some entertaining little tidbits at the end, too.
PoM was saying that you’re mansplainin’ to us here, I’m pretty sure. We’ve been paying attention too. You’re no more an authority than anyone else here, so you need to provide more of an argument than “because I say so.”
Your last line there prompted OoglyBoggles to say “Not voting is a stupid way to stick it to the system,” to which you said:
– though OoglyBoggles wasn’t saying anything about you, instead was talking about the “people choosing not to vote.” You assumed it was a personal attack.
Then there’s the more recent:
Your remark wasn’t mild, you asserted that it was one of many “increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories” promulgated to deflect attention from the failure of the DNC to get Hillary elected. It also directly challenged the understanding of pretty much everyone here. Could we have had a discussion about it? Sure, if you hadn’t come in and immediately declared it a conspiracy theory – by association calling us all conspiracy theorists.
Further, this “Gosh, you guys are sure over-reacting!” reaction is nothing more than an informationless attempt to discredit what we’ve said. Amusingly, that’s sort of a derail.
You need to watch your words, sir! They are important. More important is the ability to defuse and accept criticism without getting angry or hostile.
P.S. the reason why looking at your history as a 9/11 truther is so interesting is because of a concept called crank magnetism. It’s a real phenomenon, and tied very closely to the way you correlate skepticism with automatically disregarding information from what you consider “unreliable” sources, instead of examining the information itself. It’s a mechanism that protects the opinion of the individual and allows numerous wrong, but right-feeling belief systems to co-exist in the same person. Interesting phenomenon.
Welcome to WHTM!
I am stoked that “wokefootz” sort of caught on with at least 2 other people. :p
Bravo, Scildfreja!
Спасибо за любовь, Scildfreja.:)))) Awesome takedown as always.
Aw, thank you. And you’re welcome!
I love that, in response to accidentally outing himself as a hilarious crackpot far more ripe for the mocking than Mr Al’s latest sock, he just squealed “NO U” and bolted like a scared rabbit. Not even going to try to deny it.
JET FUEL CAN’T MELT STEEL CIA AGENTS.
(And yeah, what Dlouwe said. Apologies, I would’ve clarified that sooner but my computer’s been on the blink this week.)
Hello Mammothteers — I have been away for a while attending to life and work, but see that the usual careful thinking among the regular commenters here is alive and well. I know discussion has moved on to other posts (life and work always seem to make me miss the good stuff here — David posts quickly and y’all comment quickly) but I did want to add a few things, if you will hear more, along the lines of what Valentine had said. I am not Russian, but am in a close long-term relationship with a woman born and raised in Russia, and who came to this country fifteen years ago (my beloved, whom I often reference, the brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous, brave Ms. Pavlov’s House, who does not read this blog but many times discusses with me the issues it raises.) And I have Russophilic feelings — that means I admire and enjoy many aspects of Russian culture, and am especially interested in Russian history. Although I publish scholarly works on military history and teach military history at a major institution (the occasional military-related subjects that come up on WHTM being what first brought me here), my specialty in military history is actually *not* Russian/Soviet military history, but I teach WWII enough to know the main English-language scholarly historiography of the Eastern Front (Glantz, Houseman, etc.) and have always loved learning about it. Heck, my sympathies and opinions regarding who were the heroes and who were the villains of *that* conflict ought to be obvious enough from the handle “Pavlov’s House” (!) (Been to Russia, but never to Volgagrad, hope to go). So I am not positioned to be hurt by any Russophobia if it is starting to emerge in contemporary America, but my partner is — and as for me, I admire many things about Russia. And I have learned so much from many long late-night discussions, at the end of the day as we unwind, with Ms. Pavlov’s House, hearing her personal perspectives on life in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. What all this adds up to is that while I want the words of Russian-American persons, rather than mine, to be the most salient ones we listen to on the subject of any potential growing Russophobia in the U.S., I do sometimes feel a little uneasy that it might be growing. Although I was a little disturbed by some of the Cold War imagery that was starting to come up, I was pretty sure that, around here at least, opposition to the current Putin regime and their actions was not meant to be actually anti-Russian. I think it is possible to oppose any attack on the American democratic process and still feel what I feel about Russia. And I do. As an American citizen and certainly as an U.S. soldier I cannot and will not tolerate any assault, cyber or otherwise, on the security of this republic. Yet of course I still love Russia, and just enjoyed with Ms. Pavlov’s House our own little Russian New Years, and last Friday, Christmas. And there are still many positive Russian-American connections out there. When I feel disappointed about the current state of Russian-American relations, I like to go back and look at videos of Alexy Leonov and Tom Stafford who, to this day, still make very clear that they feel like brothers and always will. Every April 25 I try to remind people of Elbe Day and what it should mean. AND…of just whom it was a victory over. Let’s really not forget that part. If you have read my words, thank you for doing so. Best wishes to all of you.
Bravo, Scildfreja. May your mane grow long and lustrous, and may your results always be independently reproduceable.
@Valentine:
“Acrimonious” means “angry, unfriendly, likely to take everything in the worst way possible.”
The reason I asked about your identification was partially because of the initial confusion, which I doubtless added to. My apologies for that.
It was also partially because I wanted to derail the discussion because I didn’t want you to get shouted at due to a misunderstanding. Fortunately (or not) that derail happened, but differently.
Lastly, it was partially also the desire to get to know more about you, and about your environment. I’m told that Ukraine has a sizeable number of Russians living inside it, and I wanted to ensure that I didn’t inadvertently give offence by mis-ethnonym-ing you.
I said Glantz and Houseman; I meant David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, e.g. When Titans Clashed, etc. Sorry, should have been more assiduous…not being a good scholar today…must improve!
@EJ, thank you! Your wishes are lovely, but I’d take my results being “paid for” over “independently reproduceable” at the moment! Both are nice, though!
<3 Ukraine. Odessa is one of the places on my "Want to go visit for a few weeks" list, it sounds like a wonderful place to visit. Hopefully it is also a wonderful place to live!
Gotta love team dumps lame excuses
1. They didn’t make a big deal about before .Accept when they did and have .
2. Russia has done this for years as if that somehow means this election wasn’t rigged
3.The U.S does this too .as if two wrongs make a right
4. The voting machines were not tampered with .We don’t know that
It’s hilarious
@EJ
Honesty i am usually confused. I don’t argue very well in any condition, which is positive i guess because i am open to suggestion but otherwise i just tend to cause more confusion and forget what my original thoughts even was.
Also i actually thought acrimonious was the opposite of what you said. And when i translated it it said саркастический which is more like sarcasm/sarcastic which is not correct i think.
For me i would always say Ukranian, though ask my oldes brother and depending on conditions he is one or the other. Now mainly the other. But before you could ask him and depending on how the story required he would switch. My family is russian but i was born here, so i am ukranian but ‘ethinic’ russian.
@Scildfreja
I very much suggest you go in Odesa, summer time is best. There is more to do. Also Kazantip festival has been moved from Krim to near Odesa if you like that kind of thing. Also I suggest renting an apartment rather than staying in a hotel. It is affordable if you are coming from the US or UK, many people rent them out to tourists and they are good quality, more than hotels generally.
Scildfreja Unnýðnes
A discussion is always welcome!
I disagree about the value of mentioning that the Washington Post is willing to go to press without checking their facts is lost because in one instance they later admitted the story was untrue.
The way I’m using the phrase ‘take them with a grain of salt’ is not the equivalent of ‘disregarding’ them.
Yes, these are assertions – just as claims about Russia, Putin, Wikileaks, the FBI etc are all assertions. One way to be skeptical of assertions is to regard them with caution – that is ‘take them with as grain of salt’.
The document in question doesn’t seem to have much by way of evidence. Indeed, the recent headlines seem to suggest the public won’t see any of the evidence on the grounds of National Security.
Indeed, I do not assume everything said by Putin, the CIA, Assange, the FBI, Trump, Clinton, etc to be ‘dirty lies’. Thanks for explaining that, but you needn’t go through the trouble – I already know it.
In fact, part of the post you quoted – the phrase immediately before where you snipped it – reads:
I am perfectly open to the possibility that Russia or Putin or whoever had a hand in the exposure of true information that might have had some small influence on the recent elections
That was there from the very beginning of this interlude, for everyone to read, which makes no claim to my knowing better than anyone else does.
It is true that the US meddles in other people’s governments, and it would be no surprise to discover other nations might do the same to the US. Indeed, if it is expected then the ‘outrage’ about it would seem rather unwarranted – it’s how the game is played and we really shouldn’t have one set of rules for the US and a different set of rules for everyone else. There’s no call for the US to be privileged above all among the community of nations.
As it stands the accusations are mere assertions (AFAICT the ‘evidence’ is still secret), and the principles who stand accused deny the accusation. Until some evidence turns up, and not merely the good word and reputation of the CIA et alia.
What’s been making the alleged conspiracy among Wikileaks and Russia/Putin seem increasingly bizarre is that in some quarters the FBI director has been included in the mix. From my point of view, it begins to look like the Democrats have found their own ‘Benghazi’.
This story is also linked to paranoia about ‘fake news’ (also recently trumpeted by the Washington Post citing the shadowy PropOrNot site) which makes all kinds of blanket assumptions about non-corporate media.
In the popular vote, Clinton won a majority anyway.
I’m glad we agree!
It might very well be true. But it could easily be that the emails did not come from a hack, but came from a whistleblower.
Since you seem to be privy to this ‘vast evidence’ which has not been released to the public, it does pique my curiosity how you came into possession of this secret information.
Yes, I also got the impression PoM was trying to accuse me of ‘mansplaining’, too.
Since I don’t believe I ever claimed to have any more authority than anyone else here (I’m sure you would have posted a quote of my making such a claim if it existed – and in my response I certainly don’t write anything that can be construed as making such a claim), I am at a loss as to where this accusation could be coming from. Perhaps I was being mistaken for a different member of this group?
I believe you’ll find, if you read the thread carefully, you may have missed gems like these directed by Ooglyboggles in replies to me:
how about you take a nice piping cup of “fuck you”
and
Fall into a lego pit, climb back up only to fall into a poison ivy compost.
and
So facilitating Trump’s victory by not voting counts as “progressive and going against the system ignore how by not voting you gave Trump more power thus furthering the system of elites oppressing the middle class and racists and zealots furthering their goals of constantly discriminating against minorities.” Right. I’m getting real sick of your brogressive bullshit.
If these were not meant to be personal attacks, my bad. But I think I parsed these subtle bon mots accurately. I think the addressing my by my ‘nym and peppering the post with the word ‘you’ gave me a bit of a clue.
I admire your willingness to give your friend the benefit of the doubt, but even reviewing the thread days later in a more dispassionate frame of mind does not reveal any evidence I was mistaken in my original assessment.
I’m afraid you are mistaken here, but I may have been less than crystal clear.
I’m not suggesting or ‘explaining’ that the conspiracy theory is “promulgated to deflect attention” from the DNC’s failure – I am suggesting that the DNC and those who have an interest in the Democratic Party *are* being distracted about this story to the detriment of finding ways to succeed in the future.
Outside of political groupies I don’t hear anyone talking about this alleged Putin/Assange conspiracy. They aren’t worried about Putin – they’re worried about their jobs, their healthcare, and other picayune matters. Of course, this is merely anecdotal. Maybe someone has some scientific polling that shows people will care about this in 2018.
If people have a theory about a conspiracy I’m not sure what legitimate gripe anyone should have about acknowledging it for what it is.
Given the amount of informationless posts addressed at me or about me, my reaction seems rather mild in comparison to several pages of people trying to bait me.
Again, kudos to you for trying to defend your friends.
I do admit I responded to hostility with hostility.
I should remember ‘love trumps hate’ and taken the high road.
Others might benefit from your words of wisdom as well.
I’ll take this under advisement, as the ‘you’ here may only be the generic ‘you’ and not meaning you are attributing any of this to me personally.
WRT the ‘fake news’ paranoia it seems a lot of people are going to be vulnerable to such ‘crank magnetism’ which will influence them to automatically disregard information coming from what they are told are ‘unreliable sources’.
Thank you!
@Valentine,
That sounds absolutely lovely. I tend to be very quiet, so I don’t really do the festival thing, but I’m sure I’d at least go look if it was happening. I sort of like little farmers’ markets and craft fairs, smaller festivals, that sort of thing. The tip on renting an apartment sounds very nice, too, though I admit I’d feel a little weird about staying in someone else’s home. I’ve stayed in hotels in India, I’m sure the hotels in Odesa are quite fine! What are the winters like there?
I begin where you began and ended, towards the middle.
I may leave some threads behind, this discussion is large enough.
If you want them picked up again, point them out and I will reply.
I will try to be concise. (EDIT: I was not successful!)
http://pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw1890-CLOUDS.jpg
I’ll start with these.
Please, don’t thank me for being nice and civil. I don’t think you understand entirely where that comes from, or what I do by being considerate and civil to the more hostile people who cross this blog. By extending courtesy to you I am implying that the others here were wrong in being upset with you. I distance myself from them by doing this; I hurt the feelings of my friends and isolate myself from them. They don’t condemn me for it consciously, but it’s just how people work. We are emotionally sensitive to the signals of allegiance, and I violate those signals by talking civilly right now.
It’s part of my own weaknesses. I instinctively open myself to the abuse of others when “it’s for a good cause” – when there is a potential of mending a bridge. There’s no need to go into the details of why, but it’s a very strong instinct that’s hurt me a good number of times and will again in the future. Not only that, but I legitimize what you’re saying, legitimizing the hurt you’ve caused to others here.
So, please, don’t.
That is the border. Let’s go to the middle, shall we? The core misconception we are dealing with here is a common thing amongst – I’m going to call them my “ideological opponents”. I’m not saying you are my ideological opponent, just that this is a quirk common amongst those who are.
As it turns out, the use of a colloquialism is a strong indication of layered meaning. These phrases usually have an accepted meaning on the surface, and then a real intention buried beneath. Much like Daniel Dennett’s Motte and Bailey description of “faith”, in fact. The phrase is used in one way in an argument, but when pressed, the theist retreats into a second, softer description of the term. God’s not an omnipotent deity, God is just the “ground of all being.”
Take them with a grain of salt. Be critical, instead of simply accepting the piece of evidence. This is a strange statement to make – it encourages people to be skeptical, which is fine, but the strange part is that the speaker always actually means “Don’t believe it.” Evidence for this being that the speaker doesn’t believe it themselves, and will argue against supporting statements.
Take them with a grain of salt is pretty much always used as a statement of “this thing should not be believed.”
You telling us to “take them with a grain of salt” tells us that you don’t think we’re being properly critical. Allow me to clarify this for you. We have been critical of the statements connecting Wikileaks, Trump, and Russia. We have discussed these things ad nauseam on these pages. We have been swimming in a sea of reports from all manner of sources for over a year now.
Our current position is that the CIA report is an accurate, if likely somewhat biased, depiction of the truth. We will run with that until evidence shows otherwise, and are unmoved by suggestions that we haven’t been sufficiently critical. Do you have evidence against this position? It’s the only real part of the initial discussion, so the only part worth following up on regarding Trump and the CIA.
That’s the only actual point of importance in this whole conversation, so I’ll leave that there. There are two other things, though. Consider the following a dissection.
You misunderstood both myself and my friend OogyBoggles. Those were certainly insults to you. You fail to see where you earned them. It was here:
You later go on to say that you didn’t claim racism was not a factor in the election – on the same page in fact. Axe was clearly being reductive – he said so, right in the statement he made – and you use that hyperbole to discredit his entire statement by calling it “over the top”.
Axe was making a very good point – that it was race and not economic status which was the greatest predictor of Trump voters. Instead of asking whether that was true or where his sources were, you just discredit him by saying that he is over-reacting. Axe knows his shit, he’s one of the smartest and best-informed people we’ve got here, and you threw his opinion away. With it you disregarded that this may in fact be a racial issue. You did not act with consideration for those people Axe was speaking in defense of.
OogyBoggles had every right to get upset at you for that, and every right to insult you for that, because that was a shitty thing to do. I’ll assume I don’t need to go into why. Tell me if I do.
As for why I brought that exchange up, it was because you had entirely missed OogyBoggles point. She wasn’t implying that you didn’t vote, she was saying that it’s stupid to not vote, and in the case of Trump vs Clinton, not voting against Trump is implicit support of him. Whether you voted for him or not didn’t come up. You assumed that she was talking about you, specifically. You read a personal attack where there was none.
Misuse and misunderstanding of language. It’s a very common thing – everyone does it, especially on the internet. Words are hard. The following really sort of ties the whole problem together for me:
Calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” does more than just say that they have a theory about a conspiracy. It also calls into question their legitimacy, the validity of what they say, and their general ability to be reasonable. It’s used specifically to de-legitimize someones’ position. It’s a statement of ridicule, well-used to discredit someone by associating them with ridiculous positions. If you’d like, I could possibly get you a semantic map of the term. I’d have to check my database.
Words are not atomic things with one mechanical meaning. They have a deep and involved context which evokes emotion, aggression, social status, and concepts beyond the dictionary definition. This is the Connectionist theory of knowledge. It’s something everyone knows, really, but a certain subset of people rail against it. It’s usually an unconscious protest, but it’s a cause of a lot of confusion, hostility, and argument. It’s also a favourite tool of trolls – use terms with explicit meanings that are benign, but send emotional cues which are anything but.
(And yes, I chose the term “dictionary definition” there intentionally.)
My troll-radar is poor, but I’m pretty good at detecting people who are rational. This helps me figure out when to pay attention and when to feel safe in ignoring an argument. Rational people are generally open to communication, and enjoy learning new things. They enjoy being proven wrong, and when someone tells them they’re wrong, they listen – they assume that they’re wrong for a little while, adsorb the new information, and then come to a conclusion later. They ask questions when they’re confronted with new things. They doubt themselves and are cheerful in changing their minds about something.
At the moment I’m afraid I don’t see these things in the conversation you had above. I have seen these traits in a number of the people you’ve confronted and argued with, though.
If you’d like to continue the conversation, I suggest you look back at Axe’s statement about the racial nature of Trump’s election. Start asking questions if you’d like. Challenge the position if you must, but do so respectful of the fact that there are millions of Americans who disagree, and have a lifetime of personal experience with which to supply them evidence.
@Scildfreja
1)Thank you. Both for the flattery and for everything else 🙂
2)Oogly went by ‘he’ last I checked(?)
1) And thank you, Axe! You’re a thunderbolt.
2) Eep! I’m sorry!
By helping to get Trump elected, Putin’s people are going to end up hurting a lot of vulnerable people. I think we’re allowed to be displeased about that.
Really, this was point of no return for me. It’s just so incredibly condescending and ‘splainy.
Plus, it’s bad enough that the rest of the world will always bend over backwards to seek alternate explanations other than bigotry when bigotry is clearly the cause of a particular thing. We really don’t need to see it from people who ostensibly pro social justice. Personally, I’m not going spend 4 years patiently explaining to brogressives that the evidence tells us that racism was one of the biggest if not the biggest factor in Trump’s win.
@WWTH, I thought the exact same thing when I read that comment. Point of no return.
@Scild
It’s no skin off my back. 🙂
Woohoo, I’m so glad to hear that. Really you’ve made my day.
As a side note, Oogly, I don’t think I ever apologised for fighting with you back during the primaries. So, yeah, sorry for that. ^^;
@SFHC
It’s alright. I wasn’t exactly being on my best behavior with my first posts. I am sorry for that. I was wayyy too hostile all things considered, and when I didn’t go back replying after a few posts it didn’t exactly prove that I wasn’t some on&off brogressive troll.
@Ooglyboggles
I think you’re a perfect example of someone who started off on the wrong foot here, but redeemed yourself and turned out to be an overall awesome person. You really set a good example for new commenters who find themselves in a hole early on.
@Scildfreja
Well Odesa has the most famous market, Pryvoz. This is the best place though they have changed it a bit to make it more nicer for tourists. But there are plenty of markets in odesa if you like that. My friend rents an apartment he doesn’t live in it, only for renting. It is very nice. So yiu don’t have to share with a person. I hate winter. Odesa is also a summer city so can be quite boring in the winter. In my opinion. Unless you have friends and family. If you like diskoteka then it is good all year round however. :))))