This isn't complicated folks. So many straw men coming out of the Trump supporters...
Let's recap how simple this particular situation is:
- There is overwhelming evidence that Russia tried to influence our election towards a particular result.
- Despite said evidence, Trump denies, denies, denies.***
- Foreign governments blatantly attempting to influence who is in power is bad for America, especially when done in this fashion. If I really need to explain why this is bad, I doubt you'll ever be convinced.
- Trump could easily denounce Russia's actions without delegitimizing himself. And clearly should, but refuses to do so.
- This inevitably suggests either collusion with Russia or yet another example of just how out of his depth he is as leader of the free world.
- Neither of those conclusions support an optimistic assessment of his incoming administration.
*2a. Trump and a significant portion of his incoming administration have extremely friendly and lucrative ties to Russia. Curious indeed, but also a rabbit hole we don't even need to go down for this particular exercise.
**2b. Even more concerning is the mounting evidence that Trump will fill the government with yes men, ignoring critical national security reports if they don't conform to his agenda. If I really need to explain why this is terrifying, I doubt you'll ever be convinced.
Edit to clean up a couple sentences for clarity.
To myself, this clearly looks like a point-of-view that is many ways contrary to reality, but is an honestly held belief. I also know that I'm biased in the other direction, and wonder if my own point-of-view is as distorted from reality.
I appreciate in discussion when people can admit, especially in the realm of politics, that their view probably contains at least some distortions. Even if they do pretty extensive research. There is no pure source of completely biased free information in the political realm.
I am biased towards believing the Obama administration over Trump, but Democrats have been heavily politicizing Russian influence in this cycle which makes it hard to take all of their statements at face value. I don't think ratcheting up fear of the Russians is good policy even if they are dealing with hacking and adversarial behavior by Putin.
Currently overplaying the influence of Russia in this election after the fact is destabilizing. If all they can prove is that Russia funded and encourage the propagation of fake news to influence voters I think they need to drop this shit now. We shouldn't fight propaganda with fear and undermine our own government leaders to do it. We all know Putin is a ruthless propaganda machine we don't have to go down the same road. Foreign governments trying to spread propaganda and misinformation is nothing new and we all do it. You fight that with better news coverage and winning the trust of your people through good policy, not fear mongering of foreign powers.
If they truly wanted to be effective in creating anti Russian sentiment, they need to be smarter about finding a way to get conservative news outlets and Trump on their side.
If they can prove that votes where straight out hacked then they need to get off their ass right now and do a full information dump to 3rd parties for review of the evidence. I suspect they can't, even though I would personally be happy to see Trump get tossed out on his ass.
Trump has many conflicts of interest, there is no doubt of that. But in fairness economically almost every leader and businessman has entanglements with super powers like Russia if they have any kind of significant wealth. The Clinton's and Bush's had plenty of dealings with people we'd rather they didn't. I don't think that's an excuse but it needs to be said to put fears in perspective.
I can't say if Obama had these kinds of fiscal entanglements but he definitely bought into the EU, Globalization western vision of the world that simply economically doesn't work out well for a large number of people. And clearly Russia is contrary to that vision because the death of NATO and fracture of the EU will open up new alliances and the possibility of expansion to acquire more land and resources.