Undermining Democracy?
Let’s do a thought experiment.
Let’s pretend for a bit, whether we think this or not, that all the social media stuff that is attributed to the Russian agency was instead done by American citizens who sincerely believed what they posted and did so to exercise their freedom of speech to present their views to convince others to support their candidate or oppose the candidate they opposed. You know what I’m talking about, the meme where Hillary is boxing with Jesus (who looks like Jim Morrison) and she is in red with horns like she’s the devil. Let’s assume that a red blooded Fundamentalist and Conservative American posted that who really believed that Hillary was being used by Satan.
Now, let’s assume, again whether we believe it or not, that the stuff from the DNC was not hacked but leaked by a DNC insider who was disgusted by the fact the DNC was biased towards Hillary over Sanders. This same person also got into Podesta’s phone, knowing what his password (a really stupid one he wrote down to remember it) was.
We don’t have to pretend, because we know it is a fact, that the materials that Wikileaks published was all accurate and true.
Now in this thought experiment, we have a red blooded fundamentalist Christian American exercising their speech rights and a disgruntled DNC insider being a whistle blower. Did they INTERFERE in the election? Did they MEDDLE in it? Were their actions, sharing their views and whistle blowing the truth into the news, UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY?
Were we undermined because we were exposed to someone’s views and because we got the truth in the news about the DNC? Did that somehow make the election illegitimate?
I can’t see any reasonable person insisting that it did- that those meme makers should be arrested for distorting things on social media or that the whistle blower wasn’t a hero and that if that information kept anyone from voting for Hillary that it was a crime it was shared.
So why is it so if it was done by Russians? How does opinions on social media and truth in the news undermine democracy if the source of that was from a foreigner? How is an election meddled with if ideas about the meaning of the election are put out on twitter and accurate information about the nature of a candidate are revealed just because those ideas and that accurate information were helped along the way by a foreigner? If I read an article by an Australian blogger (which I did) before I participated in the election, did that somehow make the election less legit than if the blogger was actually in Pasadena?
Why can’t foreigners participate in expressing views and sharing truth, (not fiddling with voting results,) as much as Americans? It’s not like what the American government does only affects Americans? It affects Russians and Palestinians and Yemenis and Polynesian islanders and aboriginal people in the Outback as much, maybe more. I mean Americans aren’t worried that the wrong person in the White House means bombs dropping on them or the ocean drowning their village or NeoNazis being armed to shoot them down or Israeli snipers getting the okay to shoot their children because they engage in non-violent protest.
We’re talking about opinions about the election shared on social media and the truth given to the press. How is that meddling? How is that undermining democracy?
It isn’t.
I don’t think Russia did any of that. I think the social media stuff was from a click bait farm not connected to the Kremlin. I think the Wikileaks material was leaked by an insider, copied on a thumb drive, and really was whistle blowing. But if Russians did it, well, God bless them. Truth is truth and a full range of opinions expressed in social media is not a bad thing. If that actually affected how someone voted or even to not vote, well that’s how democracy works. It actually didn’t undermine democracy but supported it.
But what amazes me is that anyone thinks a meme of Hillary in devil horns or the truth about the DNC being reported actually did affect anyone’s vote. Those of us who were most upset about the truth about Hillary Clinton and the DNC as revealed by Wikileaks didn’t have an aha moment from it. We already knew she was a liar, a shill of Wall Street, and a war monger. Those who hated her because she was a woman or because she was a Democrat or because of any other right wing nonsense, already hated her and Wikileaks didn’t change their views one bit. Those who were gung ho about her and excited about the first female president weren’t affected by the truth revealed by Wikileaks anymore than they were by seeing a silly meme where she had devil horns. It is absurd to assert that any of that did change anyone.
But what’s worse is that the RussiaGaters think it would be meddling if voters were affected by the truth getting told in the press and their being exposed to a wide range of opinions. What that really means is that they mean by ‘Democracy’ a system where they control the narrative unchallenged, where they keep the truth hidden, and where they can use psy-ops to manipulate the voters. What they mean by ‘undermining Democracy’ is when their control is taken away and the voters make decisions based on truth getting out and being exposed to divergent opinions that that is undermining them.
This would all be just some kind of sick joke that we’ve been through the last three years if we weren’t talking about an increase of tension, hatred, fear, and antagonism by the world’s biggest nuclear super power against the world’s second biggest one. But that’s what is happening. We are closer to the two major nuclear super powers going to war than every before. We’ve got troops doing war games on Russia’s borders. We’ve got US and Russian troops staring down their gun barrels at each other in Syria across the Eurphrates. We’ve got NeoNazis killing ethnic Russians in the Ukraine with American arms and we’ve got Russia troops as a trip wire in Venezuela to keep America from invading.
We’re still mired in this insanity and its not only crazy, it’s extremely dangerous.
