{"id":5733,"date":"2016-12-10T16:41:49","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T22:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=5733"},"modified":"2016-12-11T20:32:53","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T02:32:53","slug":"commies-commies-bed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/12\/commies-commies-bed.html","title":{"rendered":"Commies! Commies under the bed!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AKremlin_27.06.2008_01.jpg;<\/p>\n

The latest report, from all the usual news sources, is that the CIA believes that Russia intervened in the U.S. election, not just to be a troublemaker in general terms, but specifically in order to help Trump get elected. \u00a0See CNN<\/a>, for instance. \u00a0The reason for this? \u00a0Per a snipped from the New York Times as quoted by Ann Althouse<\/a>, because they have evidence that the Russians also hacked Republican systems, but did not release information from those systems.<\/p>\n

Now, this lends to all manner of speculation. \u00a0Given that Obama\u2019s Mideast policy has essentially given Russia a free hand to build up its power base there, as Russia\u2019s air force aids Assad in his reconquest of rebel-held territory, it\u2019s not been entirely clear to me what the Russians would have found so objectionable about a Clinton presidency. \u00a0Althouse also mentions the theory that they didn\u2019t expect Trump to win, even so, and therefore just wanted to weaken Clinton, in that she\u2019d be taking office with a deeply suspicious electorate that voted for her only reluctantly.<\/p>\n

And, if you think about it, given Trump\u2019s outsider status, I think there\u2019s a good chance that, had the Russians gotten a hold of a trove of e-mails of Republican insiders, it really wouldn\u2019t have caused any great scandal. \u00a0I imagine that there would have been discussions about how to beat back the Trump insurgency, in the same way as many DNC e-mails were about beating back Sanders\u2019 challenge \u2014 and to have released these e-mails would have only affirmed Trump supporters\u2019 belief that he was the outsider, fighting for them. \u00a0There wouldn\u2019t have been much of any value to that.<\/p>\n

But do the Wikileaks releases constitute \u201cintervening\u201d in the election, to use CNN\u2019s phrasing? \u00a0The over-the-top reactions that I\u2019m reading \u2014 not necessarily among pundits, but, for instance, on the Robert Reich facebook page<\/a>\u00a0(and I\u2019m not sure how to link to a specific post) \u2014 include claims that Trump treasonously colluded with Russians, and that the election was so compromised by these leaks that we need an immediate re-vote. \u00a0Reich himself calls on electors to \u201ctake note\u201d of this news in casting their vote.<\/p>\n

And yet at the same time, we in the United States \u201cinterfere\u201d in foreign elections all the time. \u00a0Most recently and notably, Obama himself told voters in the U.K. not to vote for Brexit. \u00a0Yes, of course, making a speech, and releasing hacked private e-mail correspondence are not the same thing, but it certainly suggests that there is no grand principle of \u201cthou shalt not interfere in other countries\u2019 elections.\u201d \u00a0I suppose, fundamentally, as entertaining as it was to see what the latest Podesta releases were, it seems unlikely to me that particularly many swing state voters were on the fence until they saw the e-mails.<\/p>\n

But, on the other hand, Trump\u2019s reply was foolish. \u00a0As CNN reports,<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,\u201d the transition said in a terse, unsigned statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It\u2019s now time to move on and \u2018Make America Great Again.'\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Was the Trump team simply unable to say, \u201cwe never wanted nor sought Russian help\u201d? \u00a0And do they really need to embarrass themselves by failing to recognize that their Electoral College victor was, in the grand scheme of things, relatively small?<\/p>\n

And have you seen the latest on the Trump Secretary of State pick? \u00a0Reportedly<\/a>, according to \u201csources,\u201d it\u2019ll be the CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson. \u00a0Not only is it bizarre to appoint an individual with no government or foreign policy experience whatsoever, Tillerson has such close Russia ties through his business interactions that he was awarded \u201cthe Russian Order of Friendship, one of the highest awards the country bestows upon foreign nationals.\u201d \u00a0And, at Exxon Mobil, he has been stymied by sanctions against Russia, prompting speculation that, as Secretary of State, Tillerson would lift sanctions so that American oil companies and others can resume business as usual with Russia.<\/p>\n

Now, I haven\u2019t been commenting much on Trump\u2019s cabinet picks (and blogging\u2019s been slow lately as I\u2019ve been busy with other work). \u00a0Some seem OK-ish, and some a bit concerning, but this one? \u00a0Well, I\u2019m really hoping that all those \u201csources\u201d turn out to be wrong!<\/p>\n

UPDATE: \u00a0A few more comments:<\/p>\n

What does it mean for Russia to have \u201cintervened\u201d in the election? \u00a0Reports that ballots were hacked appear, so far as anyone can tell, to be, well, delusional. \u00a0Instead, what we\u2019re talking about is the hacking of a gmail account<\/a>, through relatively unsophisticated techniques, in October, as well as the hacking of the DNC e-mails in July. \u00a0So far as I understand, the latter was seen as a more serious \u201ccyberattack\u201d since it was a hack of DNC servers directly. \u00a0Anyone who claims that this sequence of events constitutes Russian \u201cinterference\u201d and that this warrants a revote, should really think twice. \u00a0Foreign entities can do all manner of things that impact how we select our candidates. \u00a0What if Putin had created a disinformation-type campaign that said, \u201cHillary has promised a no-fly zone in Syria. \u00a0If she directs the U.S. military to shoot down a Russian plane, she will cause a war\u201d? \u00a0Or had simply used its resources to fund videos with rumors about who-knows-what that Hillary has supposedly done? \u00a0It\u2019s simply hard to fathom believing that the Podesta hack rises to the level of an \u201cinterference\u201d that warrants a re-vote, and yet that\u2019s what people \u2014 if nothing else, facebook and news article commenters \u2014 are claiming. \u00a0And, absent any evidence\u00a0that Trump asked for, or orchestrated, this leak, it\u2019s further difficult to believe anyone would change their minds.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0the Kremlin.\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AKremlin_27.06.2008_01.jpg; By NVO (Own work by the original uploader) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0) or GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest report, from all the usual news sources, is that the CIA believes that Russia intervened in the U.S. election, not just to be a troublemaker in general terms, but specifically in order to help Trump get elected. \u00a0See CNN, for instance. \u00a0The reason for this? \u00a0Per a snipped from the New York Times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":5734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[508,325],"class_list":["post-5733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-russia","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nCommies! 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