We are at War
President Trump has asked for a military parade to celebrate American might. It is usual for Americans to celebrate great victories with parades, including the famous Grand Army of the Republic march after the Civil War, and the famous tickertape parades as veterans returned from World Wars One and Two. The key to all of these: victory in war.
The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged this week that at least twenty-one state Board of Elections were targeted by Russian government hackers, and that some of those were “penetrated.” While no one is stating that they had any impact of voting or vote counting, it does feel like all those credit cards that get hacked – you really don’t know what happened to the information.
Mike Farb at unhackthevote.com presents a volume of statistical evidence leading to the conclusion that the vote was in fact altered. While I can’t do the mathematics to determine his validity, it certainly raises serious questions about the election of 2016.
What we do know for sure is that the Russian State is working to persuade Americans through social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and all the rest have been infiltrated with the goal of altering American opinions in a variety of directions. They amplify extreme views, build false causes, and spread outrageous stories to inflame American consciousness. Their goal: disruption of the American political process.
And while in the past couple of years they have tended to support the extreme political right, there is no reason to believe they will stay there. If amplifying the left serves the purpose of disruption, they will move to that direction. Their goal is disruption and portraying the American democracy as foolish and unworthy of emulation. It’s about lifting Russia over the United States.
Intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance, author of The Plot to Hack America suggested that a Russian attack on American voting in 2018 might side with the Democrats, in order to raise questions about the legitimacy of a “wave” election some see coming. Again, the Russian side is chaos and disorder, not Republican or Democrat. They want to put Americans against each other, unwilling to accept the apparent electoral outcomes. Has that already occurred?
Secretary of State Tillerson acknowledged Russian actions towards our democracy this week. The good news: someone at the cabinet level recognizes we have a problem. The bad news: he sees little that can be done to stop it from continuing, stating that efforts would be useless against changing Russian tactics. Other high ranking members of the government have quietly accepted the facts, but the Trump Administration has yet to make them a priority. As with many issues dealing with Russian government, they remain strangely silent, even discounting their impact on the United States.
Four years ago, three years ago, two years ago: if it were known that a foreign government was attempting to interrupt or alter our elections, it would have been considered the ultimate attack. Better than a bomb or a gun; this attack goes straight to the validity of American institutions. A nation with its core functions under attack must consider itself at war, and must move to defend itself. We have not.
It’s not time for a parade. It’s time to muster a defense, to prepare for the upcoming elections by working to guarantee the validity of the vote, and to make the American political discourse free from foreign interference. It will take an enormous amount of cooperation. The private sector includes the social media giants who are working for a worldwide clientele. While they are headquartered in the United States, they see themselves as world corporations, with limited loyalties. The public sector includes fifty-one different electoral systems, each made up of even more electoral systems at the local level. Each of those systems guards their prerogatives jealously; it would be difficult under the best situation for them to cooperate.
This is not the best situation: it’s much closer to the worst. It’s not a left or right, Democrat or Republican, Trump or anti-Trump thing. It’s an American thing: we are at war, and we need to act like it.
Note: It’s been a calendar year since I began blogging on Trump World. This is the 140th installment. And while there has been progression from the dismay of the election to the “hard work” of living with this Presidency, I hope these essays have raised some concerns, or at least peaked interest. Today’s political world moves so fast: it’s Thursday, it’s hard to remember the issue of Monday (oh yeah, the Dow dropped), much less February 10th 2017!!!
I ended up on a right-wing site the other day (article on Rachel Brand) and had such a hard time with the comments: drain the swamp! FBI all Obama supporters! Get rid of Sessions! Sessions is waiting to drop the hammer! Trey Gowdy is traitor! Trey Gowdy is playing a chess game!
Only thing they agreed on was Horowitz be Da MAN!
And I made the mistake of posting a comment about ‘hello, people! Russia INTERFERED w/ our election! It needs to be investigated!!
O.m.g.! What proof did I have? How exactly did they interfere, libtard? They interfered *for* HILLARY because she paid them … it went on and on. Every post had a different take, variations on a theme maybe, but all vomited theories that the Deep State was out to get Our Great President. Answers that I could provide – Facebook ads, twitter-bot farms, accessing election data – (now, this is priceless!) got removed as *spam*.
Someday they’ll figure it out. Until then, it’s a Master Jack world. We just need to try and survive until they figure it out for themselves. God help us all.