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Thread: Hillary and the Russian Assets

  1. #21
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by frugal-one View Post
    trump is the one destabilizing us. Just look at his pullout recently and who ran "to the rescue".
    No, Trump is just a Useful Idiot. The people manipulating him are the ones responsible.

  2. #22
    Senior Member CathyA's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff View Post
    Title sounds like a band name.

  3. #23
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
    It has always been the case that disinformation was used to shape public opinion.

    However, over the past decades, it has become possible to generate, target, and distribute disinformation at a rate and with an effectiveness unprecedented in human history. Some folks have recognized this, and are getting quite good at manipulating the voting public and our elected representatives.

    If you've seen what is possible now to do with fake audio/video, and looked at the graphs of how interconnected people are, and how fast information spreads through networks of connections, well....

    Critical thinking - it's the only thing that can save us :-) Alas, it's not something we are evolved to do well.
    The Twitterization of the culture. How to influence people in 140 characters or less. How use inaccurate and misspelled memes to cement confirmation bias.

    The people, literate and illiterate, used to vote based on what they heard at long stump speeches in the town. Maybe they spent little time analyzing it, but at least they had the benefit of the stories. We make decisions on the headlines. I can't tell you how many memes I reply to with a link to Snopes or some other fact-check site. It's putting a pinky finger in the dike, but it is truly scary how much social media contributes to perception and misperception.

    And the really scary thing is today's mass media is no better.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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  4. #24
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    I think you may be giving our forebears too much credit. They operated just as much on gossip, manufactured outrage and misinformation as we do today, often throwing their votes to whoever provided the most booze. Blaming social media for the nonsense that often gets passed around is a bit like blaming the pimp for fornication. Although I will concede it’s a little easier now for the people who run the platforms to steer you toward their preferred nonsense.

  5. #25
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LDAHL View Post
    Although I will concede it’s a little easier now for the people who run the platforms to steer you toward their preferred nonsense.
    That's the point.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
    That's the point.
    But it’s not enough of a point to shift any responsibility from the electorate to the dark sinister forces du jour. i agree with Bae that it’s our collective laziness and gullibility that’s the real culprit here. And always has been. There was never a golden age when the mass of sturdy yeomen listened to things like the Lincoln Douglas debates and made sober, well-informed decisions.

    I find it a bit chilling when politicians and pundits push to remove bias and misinformation through regulation of social media. I don’t see enough justification for a Ministry of Truth.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
    No, Trump is just a Useful Idiot. The people manipulating him are the ones responsible.
    That probably is a more apt description.... he is a puppet.

  8. #28
    Senior Member JaneV2.0's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
    No, Trump is just a Useful Idiot. The people manipulating him are the ones responsible.
    IMO, Trump is well past the useful idiot stage and deep into being a Russian asset, working hard on Putin's behalf--eliminating sanctions from the Magnitsky act, having covert meetings with the Russian leader, lobbying Europe to reinstate Russia to the G&, pulling out of Syria...Russia may have kompromat on Trump, but I think it's more likely a deal based on finances.

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