> the outrage needs to be kept down
No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
This line of questioning comes up a lot as the ultimate gotcha, but the people upset about Russian meddling today are also the ones most likely to be upset about American meddling in the past.
So what would a world in which countries don't influence each other look like? When people have common interests, it's natural for them to try to push each other one way or the other. So there would have to be strict trade restrictions between countries to isolate their interests. We would probably have to get rid of the UN or any other global entity like the World Bank. We would have to severely restrict immigration so people didn't come to a country and try to influence its politics from the outside. Also we would probably have to end the whole idea of a multinational corporation and ensure that every business inside a country was local. Basically reverse the entire process of globalization that has led to this point.
But most of the people upset about Russian influence are also pro-globalization, so I don't quite get it. They're not complaining about the lack of disclosure but rather the whole idea of foreign influence on politics. How can you move forward with globalization and also stop every country from influencing another's politics?
If, say, RT runs propaganda pieces in favor of candidate X, and against candidate Y, that's fine, because everybody knows that it is Russian propaganda. They can factor that knowledge into their decision making accordingly (and it doesn't need to be negative - e.g. someone who is interested in warmer relations with Russia, for whatever reasons, might actually support the candidates they endorse).
Coincidentally, this is also the kind of involvement that US and other Western countries normally practice overseas. E.g. looking back at the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, it was very obvious and transparent which side was backed by the US government.
In contrast, what we've seen in this past election is covert foreign propaganda, that tries to actively conceal and misrepresent its identity (many of those fake FB accounts and groups pretended to be American). Not only there are obvious ethical issues aside, but - in US, at least - it also runs afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a law that has been around for almost 80 years now. So you can hardly say that it's some new thing.
Then there's also the orthogonal aspect where a lot of that propaganda is blatantly false to an unusual degree. We're not talking about spin here, but actually manufacturing entire news stories around events that never happened, and facts that were never true.
Of course, from a political standpoint Russia's government needs to be penalized by the US's government. And of course, if there's any evidence of collusion between US politicians and the Russian government, that needs to be investigated.
But why should Russia's government be viewed as particularly monstrous for doing what the US and probably dozens of other nations do?
The actual monstrous stuff is the allegations of Putin murdering journalists and oppressing political enemies, though of course there's no smoking gun for many of those allegations (or at least the murder ones).
Example: Country A caught doing something bad. "...but what about Country B?"
Whataboutism is quite popular in discussions WRT Russia.
Sometimes, the outrage is legitimate. It isn't isolated to one side of the political spectrum. The right was outraged by everything Obama did. The left will be outraged by anything Trump does. Some people are outraged at the idea of transfolk being in their bathroom, some folks are outraged that people are outraged about it. Some people are outraged about speech, some are outraged that they are held accountable for speech.
The media cycles on it, the people thrive on it, and it escalates with each showing more umbrage than the last.
My conclusion is that if you seek umbrage, you will find it.
Bush and Obama both had bogus crisis whipped up in an attempt to delegitimize their elections. This is an incredibly dangerous pattern in a democracy and one that I'm not really excited to see repeated again.
Hacking attempts, yes, are a big problem. Facebook ads - not a problem at all.
All of this Russia talk is a farce. If Russia actually interfered with US elections, the US response would be awe inspiring.
That's... impressively circular.
There are times when the US has meddled in other countries' affairs that I don't agree with, but there are others, like covertly slowing nuclear proliferation, that I do agree with.