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“In political terms, Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy.”
“That spectacle has obscured the magnitude of Moscow’s attempt to hijack a precious and now vulnerable-seeming American democratic process.”
“[Quoting former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul] Russia violated our sovereignty, meddling in one of our most sacred acts as a democracy — electing our president. The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack. ”
We need to rerun the tape. Ladies and gentlemen, we were attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and we were attacked on Nov. 8, 2016. That most recent attack didn’t involve a horrible loss of lives, but it was devastating in its own way. Our entire intelligence community concluded that Russia hacked our election by deliberately breaking into Democratic National Committee computers and then drip-by-drip funneling embarrassing emails through WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton’s campaign. And what have we done about it? Other than a wrist slap against Moscow, we’ve moved on.
That is not O.K.
“While all atrocity stories show a family resemblance, and the old stand-bys can be relied upon, no classification should be regarded by the practical propagandist as more than suggestive. A certain fringe of novelty is always permissible, because the conditions of warfare arc never precisely the same. Since the discovery of germs the enemy may be accused of infecting wells, cattle, and food, not to speak of wounds.”
The DNC is a private corporation, aka DNC Services Corp, and hence any and all hacks, leaks, or “attacks” are upon that particular corporation, and not on “America”, not on the “election”, not on “American democracy” as propagandists might have you believe. Lawyers for the DNC utilized this fact in their defense against the fraud charges brought against them by disgruntled donors, who felt burned by the DNCs own “meddling” in the elections.
originally posted by: ganjoa
I concur wholeheartedly.
Choice of words: fragrance, scent, odor, smell, stench - this is the simplest example I can think of to illustrate how word choices influence perceptions. While fragrance and scent may be seen as pleasant or positive, stench is definitely negative and unpleasant - odor and smell could be more neutral.
Spin and propaganda. The only way I can perceive that the Russians "influenced" the election MAY have been in social media posts. As far as I am aware, playing to the gullibility of an audience on social media isn't a crime.
ganjoa
In the age of cyber-warfare, there isn’t much in terms of atrocity occurring on the front lines, so it appears propagandists have had to invent a more subtle form of atrocity propaganda with which to muster support for their own attacks on American democracy. It appears to have worked.