SilverWook said:
Jetrell Fo said:
SilverWook said:
generalfrevious said:
I’m sick of the Russian hacking conspiracy. Let’s instead focus on the real problems, like the GOP taking away people’s healthcare, or gutting environmental policy, or the executive branch trying to destroy free speech.
All equally valid concerns, but if you think they aren’t trying to pull this crap in other countries’ elections, and won’t try messing with ours again in 2020, I have some lovely Florida swampland you might be interested in.
Let’s not forget that our own Government has done the same thing to other countries trying to promote Democracy.
We’ve hacked other nation’s elections and secretly recorded blackmail videos of candidates? 😉
These things have a long shelf life. What we did to Iran in the 50’s still shapes our relationship not only with Iran, but the whole Middle East. And what we did wasn’t really that much less sophisticated than propaganda and pee tapes, although it clearly wasn’t identical. Same thing for any of the countries where we’ve done something similar. The fact that we can be on good behavior for a few years really doesn’t change that. They don’t see it as something Eisenhower did to them and he’s long gone–they see it as something the US did to them, and the US is still very much around to blame for the fallout. And yes, there is quite a lot of fallout still around today from a 60-year-old coup.
I imagine the relationship between NATO countries and Russia is now changed in a similar fashion. We’ll be dealing with Trump fallout long after Putin’s dead and buried.
EDIT: I guess I should clarify that it’s not like NATO and Russia got along great before. However, now within the domestic politics of NATO countries, people can now blame domestic issues on Russia with some credibility. That’s basically how Cuba worked for decades–Stuff is bad? Blame the US embargo. Which wasn’t a complete and nuanced answer, but it was true enough to work. Now NATO countries will likely do this with Russia. No health care? Blame Russia (not me, the poor hoodwinked Senator who voted for it, blame Russia!). The fact that there’s truth behind it doesn’t mean it’s a good development.
