Hacker News Reader

Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

>"[...] Russian interference"

The amount of cognitive dissonance and double think one must embrace to read, not an op-ed, but news article in the NYT.(1)

I don't even support Trump; I oppose him, but I'm not willing to indulge in the groupthink here. Maybe there was interference, probably even, but how can we be sure when the stories we are being fed keep falling apart? Just another in a long string of "just trust us" claims from the Deep State?

1 - https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia...

View on HN

You don't support Trump, but you're willing to swallow the notion that the United States has a "deep state" unironically? Come on. Go find me the mukhabarat or other secret police in the USA.

"Deep State" is another name for bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a state within a state and its main purpose is to protect itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VveTsyjFlNA

Well, the existence of 'unelected powers which threaten to become more powerful than democratic leaders,' which aare tied to the military and intelligence arms of the US gov, has been "unironically" referenced to by Eisenhower, JFK, Sanders, Chomsky, Snowden and Greenwald, among others. Call it a Military Industrial Complex, Deep State, or just three letter agencies.

It sounds like you have a more inside look at things than these folks do, though?

The West's media cartels are its kingmakers.

"In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies; as of 2011, 90% was controlled by just 6 companies"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...

https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/exclusive-chicago-black-...

>you're willing to swallow the notion that the United States has a "deep state" unironically?

Eisenhower was clearly tripping balls when he warned about the disastrous rise of misplaced power of the military-industrial complex.

Something about repeating propaganda often enough and it becomes the truth. Sprinkling it often enough in different content and it becomes the narrative.

Yea, I mean we've just been through this with Iraq WMD lies. Now with NSA domestic surveillance. Also now with Syria: first they denied funding terrorists, then they called them moderate rebels, now the truth came out. I would be more trusting if these events didn't exist in the past.

It is concerning that skepticism doesn't even seem to be allowed when we have all of these past failings of honesty sitting at our feet.

Subtle but powerful Russian interference on social networks and media of Western countries is a thing whether we like it or not. I'm skeptical of how much that's true for the US, but in Europe it's ubiquitous and there's a lot of hard evidence for it – I'm talking governments setting up agencies to deal with it, not Alex Jones-style hysteria.

some examples of the backlash:

https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20496508/tasr-withdraws-from-cont...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/28/czech-republic...

>Subtle but powerful Russian interference on social networks and media of Western countries is a thing whether we like it or not.

So is US interference in Russian politics. Russian spying on the US is also, surprise, surprise, commonplace. US spying on Russia is also, surprise, surprise, commonplace.

The US even has an agency dedicated to interference in foreign politics (the National Endowment for Democracy).

None of this is new.

The fact that an unaccounted for Russian linked $80k budget on Facebook became America's top story has more to do with Democrats grasping at justifications for losing the election that don't involve them being fucking useless.

The really funny part is that that the US became so fat and inept that based on the current "brief" Russia was more successful than the United States in fixing elections. Not using tanks, or deep cover operatives but by using Facebook, Twitter and Google. Companies with a combined market capitalization of 1.3 trillion dollars!

Think about it. How bloody out to lunch we have to be to accept that Russia a country that we claim is ran by a dictator, the country with no technology, the country where people are barely surviving managed to fix the US presidential elections?! I guess it is possible if Google, Facebook and Twitter are ran by pimple-faced teenagers out of parents basement and they were playing against a nation state but come on.

It all only makes sense when remembering that these are the same people who somehow lost an election against Donald Trump.

Governments setting up agencies is not, per se, a good evidence of a problem. See: TSA.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com