I mean, you should be able to answer those questions, otherwise you've put yourself into a tautilogical little bubble ("There is nothing new/just fearmongering, so I don't need to pay attention to it. I didn't pay attention to it, so I didn't hear anything new". Return to step 1)
"The Russia stuff has always seemed like fear mongering to me. It’s a big scary enemy messing with our political system."
Are you saying that countries don't really mess with other countries political systems? Because they do it all the time (including and maybe especially the US).
This basically reads like you saying that "bad/scary news isn't real, because I've decided that bad/scary news sounds like 'fear mongering' and couldn't possibly affect me". I mean, war is a thing. People and countries do hostile things to each all the time, often disastrously. Reporting on this isn't fear mongering.
The interference that Russia has done is unprecedented in the modern era. There are dozens of election every year. Please provide some evidence of that extent of interfence happening "all the time".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Interference that Russia has done with its internet trolls is nothing compared to bombings and assassinations that US has been doing. If you look at South America you'd have to apply blacklist filter to see which countries US didn't mess with.
metawhataboutism: when hypocrisy is pointed out scream "whataboutism". It sounds like a fancy term and shuts down the other side pretty well.
It started when I noticed that the news barely covered the US bombings of hospitals and funerals overseas. There was very little coverage of the US supported war in Yemen where thousands of innocent civilians were being killed.
At some point CNN went crazy over MH370 and gave an uneventful search for the plane wall to wall coverage while US weapons killed people overseas.
I had to go to The Intercept to learn about drone killings in any real detail.
And then I remember in particular when Bernie Sanders had just had his largest rally yet, the PBS newshour failed to mention it while devoting 8 minutes to Donald Trumps twitter comments.
So when the media that hated Trump (a position I am not criticizing) started talking about allegations of Russian interference with the elections, I waited for the evidence. But after a couple of months of anonymous officials making this claim and that claim but no hard evidence in the matter, I tuned it out.
I’ve since stopped following mainstream news, so if they’ve come up with genuine evidence by now then I’m just out of the loop. It’s fair to say I’m uninformed here but I do recall that for some time at the beginning, no evidence was presented.
Lately I use my time to educate myself in other ways. I’m 10 hours in to PBS’s 18 hour documentary on the Vietnam war. I’ve never learned so much about that conflict. I’ve been watching some John Pilger documentaries on YouTube, and trying to understand why people all over the world still live in destitute poverty even in the outskirts of wealthy cities. I’m trying to understand my libertarian friends who say that broad social programs are unfair, while I see images of people with nothing dying from poisoned water or preventable disease. But I’m also trying to understand why socialism was unfair (John Pilgers documentary about Japan was enlightening there). I’m trying to find a way to care for the poor and give them more power without giving power to despotic governments that will siphon aid money into their personal accounts (as in the IMF funded nuclear power plant in the Philippines that was never finished, but poor local tax payers are still paying off). I’m also working on a week long robotics course to teach to some university students in Africa, and the associated robot I built as a teaching aid. I leave in less than a month and it’s been a busy time.
So when I see news that sounds like baseless claims about “The Russians” on channels that don’t cover the murder of children but do feast on images of a bare ocean where a missing airliner hasn’t been found, I just tune it out.
My life has improved since I stopped using Facebook and removed the normal political feeds from my reddit. I’ve been political my whole life and to this day I focus heavily on politics, but the information I want is scarcely carried on those normal news feeds.
Mueller laid out very specific evidence in publicly available indictments. It’s published on government website, you can read the whole thing for yourself.
Another indictment filed today:
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000161-bf68-da6b-ade9-fffc2...
The tone of your statement suggests you don't have any way to know the facts of the Russia investigation, or what to believe.
That's bullshit. Mueller is gathering the facts and hard evidence in a very methodical, professional manner, and laying them out in criminal indictments, citing the relevant facts and evidence. You don't need the "mainstream media" to be informed on this subject. There are now direct sources you can go to.
Obviously, not everything is out yet, there is more to come. But what Mueller has already produced is very enlightening.
And your "couple of months" quip rubbed me the wrong way, too. How long did you expect an investigation of this scope to take? Did you expect Mueller to publish every single fact and testimony as he received it? Questioning the people involved, without necessarily letting them know what you already know, is a good way to quickly find out who is being honest with you.
There’s lots happening in the world. The mainstream news media wants to focus on a few pet issues and I just don’t feel well informed when I listen to repeated hand wringing about the same subject. Today I’ve been spending most of my work day listening to the political debates in South Africa after their state of the union. It’s a fascinating subject and one that I feel comfortable assuming is not well covered by US news outlets.
You obviously care about the Russia investigation. Great! But you accuse me of being generally uninformed just because I don’t follow this issue. Please. I don’t care about every twist and turn of this investigation. If they can convict somebody great, but I don’t see the value in following all this when so much else is going on in the world.
I understand a certain degree of skepticism around the conclusions of national intelligence services, especially on topics directly related to government, but the fact that such services do not immediately release the information underlying their conclusions is not unusual even in cases that have the strongest support; about the only time they’ll publicly release detailed evidence is if action is being sought by some body like the UNSC, or to the extent necessary after the matter moves from intelligence to law enforcement to the courts.
> I’ve since stopped following mainstream news, so if they’ve come up with genuine evidence by now then I’m just out of the loop. It’s fair to say I’m uninformed here but I do recall that for some time at the beginning, no evidence was presented.
National security officials don't generally present the support behind their conclusions to the public, and even when it became a law enforcement case, the evidence is only sparingly provided before a trial. There are pretty good reasons news media does report on announced intelligence and law enforcement positions before those agencies provide detailed support; blaming the media for the underlying evidence not being immediately presented is, well, somewhat naive.
OTOH, since then, while still little evidence has been directly provided to the public (because criminal investigations are ongoing and investigators are reluctant to tip their hand), we do actually have both the confession of an attempted colluder and a pile of indictments (which are grand jury findings of evidence providing probable cause to believe particular persons committed particular crimes.)
There is the real possibility that if Russia didn't interfere in the Brexit referendum and the US election that alternative outcomes could've happened. Both decisions were down to single percentage points.
If Trump isn't elected then you have the possiblity of the US joining the TPP, taking a leadership role with the Paris climate change accord, no massively expensive tax cuts etc. Those are fundamental decisions that effect every single American.
Globalization has already done quite enough hollowing out and selling out our blue collar workers. We don't need the same with more vigor.
US placed sanctions on wealthy Russians through Magnitsky act, which they didn’t like, so Putin ran an intelligence operation to get someone elected more likely to overturn it. This is still about putting the interests of the wealthy first. They see each other as peers and allies regardless of nationality.
2007 LA Times: "Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown."
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-donors19oct19-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_fi...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/chinese-illegally-don...