{"id":678,"date":"2018-02-08T17:56:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T17:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=678"},"modified":"2018-02-08T17:56:12","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T17:56:12","slug":"we-are-at-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/02\/08\/we-are-at-war\/","title":{"rendered":"We are at War"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are at War<\/p>\n

President Trump has asked for a military parade to celebrate American might.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>The key to all of these:\u00a0 <\/span>victory in war.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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 \u201cpenetrated.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>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 \u2013 you really don\u2019t know what happened to the information.<\/p>\n

Mike Farb at unhackthevote.com<\/a> presents a volume of statistical evidence leading to the conclusion that the vote was in fact altered.\u00a0 <\/span>While I can\u2019t do the mathematics to determine his validity, it certainly raises serious questions about the election of 2016.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What we do know for sure is that the Russian State is working to persuade Americans through social media.\u00a0 <\/span>Facebook, Twitter, Google, and all the rest have been infiltrated with the goal of altering American opinions in a variety of directions.\u00a0 <\/span>They amplify extreme views, build false causes, and spread outrageous stories to inflame American consciousness. \u00a0<\/span>Their goal:\u00a0 <\/span>disruption of the American political process.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And 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.\u00a0 <\/span>If amplifying the left serves the purpose of disruption, they will move to that direction.\u00a0 <\/span>Their goal is disruption and portraying the American democracy as foolish and unworthy of emulation.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s about lifting Russia over the United States.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance, author of The Plot to Hack America <\/i>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 \u201cwave\u201d election some see coming.\u00a0 <\/span>Again, the Russian side is chaos and disorder, not Republican or Democrat.\u00a0 <\/span>They want to put Americans against each other, unwilling to accept the apparent electoral outcomes.\u00a0 <\/span>Has that already occurred?<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Tillerson acknowledged Russian actions towards our democracy this week.\u00a0 <\/span>The good news:\u00a0 <\/span>someone at the cabinet level recognizes we have a problem.\u00a0 <\/span>The bad news:\u00a0 <\/span>he sees little that can be done to stop it from continuing, stating that efforts would be useless against changing Russian tactics. \u00a0Other high ranking members of the government have quietly accepted the facts, but the Trump Administration has yet to make them a priority.\u00a0 <\/span>As with many issues dealing with Russian government, they remain strangely silent, even discounting their impact on the United States.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, three years ago, two years ago:\u00a0 <\/span>if it were known that a foreign government was attempting to interrupt or alter our elections, it would have been considered the ultimate attack.\u00a0 <\/span>Better than a bomb or a gun; this attack goes straight to the validity of American institutions.\u00a0 <\/span>A nation with its core functions under attack must consider itself at war, and must move to defend itself.\u00a0 <\/span>We have not.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not time for a parade.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s 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.\u00a0 <\/span>It will take an enormous amount of cooperation.\u00a0 <\/span>The private sector includes the social media giants who are working for a worldwide clientele.\u00a0 <\/span>While they are headquartered in the United States, they see themselves as world corporations, with limited loyalties.\u00a0 <\/span>The public sector includes fifty-one different electoral systems, each made up of even more electoral systems at the local level.\u00a0 <\/span>Each of those systems guards their prerogatives jealously; it would be difficult under the best situation for them to cooperate.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

This is not the best situation:\u00a0 <\/span>it\u2019s much closer to the worst.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s not a left or right, Democrat or Republican, Trump or anti-Trump thing.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s an American thing:\u00a0 <\/span>we are at war, and we need to act like it.<\/p>\n

\n

Note:\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s been a calendar year since I began blogging on Trump World.\u00a0 <\/span>This is the 140th installment.\u00a0 <\/span>And while there has been progression from the dismay of the election to the \u201chard work\u201d of living with this Presidency, I hope these essays have raised some concerns, or at least peaked interest.\u00a0 <\/span>Today\u2019s political world moves so fast:\u00a0 <\/span>it\u2019s Thursday, it\u2019s hard to remember the issue of Monday (oh yeah, the Dow dropped), much less February 10th<\/sup> 2017!!!<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are at War President Trump has asked for a military parade to celebrate American might.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The … Continue reading “We are at War”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWe are at War : Our America - 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