If The Russians Engineered a Trump Victory

[David Horn]

(03-03-2017, 10:37 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The Russians interfered in our election, and did so with some degree of success.

By leaking Podesta's emails, or the DNC's?  This is a casus belli now?  I love how the approved phrasing continually implies that the Russians actually changed vote totals or something, rather than simply releasing embarrassing information (at least hypothetically).  Weren't the Russians accused of this BEFORE the election?  Were the voters somehow unaware of this?

They didn't have to change anything other than a few minds.  The easiest change: get marginal voters disgusted so they stay home.  I think that was their target, but they actually got more bang than they expected.

This is just modern PSYOPS.  Why be surprised?

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:What's the right answer if not to raise an alarm. In normal times, subtlety might work just fine, but these are far from normal times. I don't see the Russians pushing this to the point of open war with NATO, because they are already weak economically and don't need the massive drain a large war would entail.

That segments of our society are coming unglued has deeper roots than this. With a uniquely loose cannon at the top and the dispersed rumor mongering (see above), we're at risk. Is this worse than the Red Scare period of the 1950s? Arguable. We were war weary then and are again, but this time, we lack a huge base of veterans with direct experience of war. So yes, it's scary. 

Still, are the PTB ready to start the draft, because that's going to be part of any large war. I don't see the Millennials going quietly to their doom, nor do I see parents investing their sons and daughters in a war, unless Russia invades an ally ... at a minimum. Putin sees a losing effort there, so we may be better off than we think.

One, this sort of thing has deeper roots than just the election.  Two, your notion of how wars get started and escalated doesn't really hold water with me.  I don't think most people in the government have a conscious plan for mobilizing a draft and invading Russia, or vice versa. I am more concerned with brinksmanship intended primarily for domestic consumption getting out of hand, of each side's fundamental misunderstanding of what the other side's red lines actually are.  Once the ball gets rolling, these things can have a logic all of their own.

FDR wanted the US in WW-II, but it took a direct attack at Pearl Harbor to actually turn the public in favor of war.  War with Russia is at least as serious as that, considering the nuclear status of both countries.  More to the point, the Russians are not about to throw enough weight around in the West that the Chinese start seeing the East as ripe fruit for the picking.  

So to your point that rabblerousing radicals in the US can actually overcome natural resistance and stoke the fires of war: I don't see it.  Picking a fight with a weak opponent just to beat our national chest is about as far as we are likely to go.  After Iraq and Afghanistan, even that seems a remote possibility, John McCain to the contrary.