I post on this question often... so will paste a bit of what I believe here. Forgive the length please:
The “list” released in Washington today highlights Russian operatives who have been at work in their meddling since 2014, before Trump announced his candidacy. Their goal was not to get a certain person elected, but to capitalize on vulnerabilities within our society and electoral process to stir what little chaos they can. Even our arguments between each other on this board are reflective of their goals...
If you choose to spend a meaningful amount of time in Russia, you will witness the circus-like nature of their “elections”, the rampant fraud, ballot stuffing, and rigging — just, the overall dysfunctional nature of their attempts at “democracy” in general. Under Putin especially, the country has failed to forge meaningful democratic and free economic institutions in the wake of the collapse of the USSR. It is instead a kleptocratic, oligarchy power-vertical.
Think Blue State/Red State divide is bad? Modern Russia has outright Islamic republic outposts like Chechnya within their own territory that they have to keep happy and stable lest there be civil war...again. and again.
The Kremlin-owned media distracts the Russian public from their own grievances with news of instability “elsewhere,” which is why examples like “Occupy Wall Street” and “Black Lives Matter” and the refugee crisis in Europe gets ten times the amount of coverage on their news networks than their *own* very real social problems, their *own* insecurity over Muslims in their own land... (Ethnic Russia is in the midst of severe demographic crisis.)
Lest the Russian people protest and demand more from their leaders...
In 2014, we were vulnerable as a nation under Obama. And Putin, fresh off a hotly contested return to power: oversaw the nation as they aggressively doped their way through the Sochi Olympics, annexed Crimea and invaded East Ukraine and made preparations for Syria.
Yet even all those actions can’t hide nor make up for their lingering insecurities...so this is their outlet: sabotage stronger countries they envy and resent however they can. Because let’s face it: a confident nation would be *friendly* to America. They’d be busy overseeing a booming economy, their own compelling nail biter free elections, hosting public debates about their Soviet legacy without censoring films about Stalin or sending Gulag archivists to the mental asylum...
They’d be building untouchable alliances with other successful (not rogue) countries etc...
But as the Trump’s “MAGA” election attests to, our electoral system is alive and well. Outside the beltway candidates CAN win, miracles CAN happen, and “forgotten people” in states as remote as Iowa and West Virginia do get a say.
And this is bad for leaders like Putin, because it emboldens people in countries like his to pursue the same freedoms and demand the same realities of their own governments.
~ GS_R
Thanks for your post.
Please...
These guys had some computers and a few thousand dollars.
If that’s all it takes to “sow dissent” in the US, then this party is over and the last person out needs to turn off the lights.
Come on...even at our dumbest we are smarter than to fall for this.