If Russia caused Trump to win and Clinton to lose does that mean Americans are easily led?
How is it that Russia somehow controlled the result of the recent Presidential election, through hacking or lies or something equally bad.
How were Americans fooled by that...are they just not able to distinguish truth from fiction?
The Americans I know are independent thinkers , smart, and not easily duped, so I find it hard to understand how Russia was supposed to have some strange control over the country.
It's these kind of questions that make it repeatedly necessary to question your sincerity (and other Trump supporters) in asking it.
When you speak of people being easily led, one technique of the people that seek to do the leading of the gullible is to replace nuanced, complex answers with easy, pithy comments, just like you have done here. Another way is to misrepresent your opponent's criticism in order to nullify it, again as you have done here.
How is it that Russia somehow controlled the result of the recent Presidential election, through hacking or lies or something equally bad.
Your attempt at misrepresentation both here and in other threads has been explained to you multiple times, yet you continue to ask this question. Why are you continuously asking the same question and expecting a different result?
We all now live within a pretty new world with regards to social media and it's ramifications aren't as of yet fully understood. Think about social media for a minute. A world wide telecommunications web where the main source of revenue is advertisement. We now live in a world of apps and devices purposely and skillfully designed to hold onto your attention as long as possible in order to sell you more stuff. Whereas before one could advertise to a mass audience, now one can specifically target the type of person most vulnerable to manipulation, and selectively target their fears and desires, without offending others that would find such topics objectionable - thus shutting down public discussion. We now have companies with powerful analysis and expert systems that can from our internet history, posting on social media, and other factors glean quite a lot of information about you, your likely views, opinions, politics, even your mental state. Today's expert systems can even tell when someone that's depressed or bipolar, etc. is entering a manic state. Think about what that means for a moment. These algorithms are quite accurate about us. Think about what one could do with such information on a massive scale. Now obviously it isn't only the Russians working on this type of stuff, in fact it's American companies that are pioneers of this type of technology. I mention this because, put simply, we are all being manipulated more strongly and more surgically, than ever before - and it's being done out in the open and we all
consent to it with every EULA where we click "agree". This is now the world where we live, and we know that the Trump campaign spent a historic amount of their campaign dollars on Facebook ads, targeting specific people. Only the Trump campaign and Facebook knows what those were, if they were factually accurate and so on, but this is where we are today.
Now, you may continue to remain skeptical of American intelligence services, but they have all come to the conclusion, along with the various other intelligence services of other nations, that Russian linked hackers broke into DNC computers and revealed many, many gigabytes of information from only ONE side of a two sided campaign. Remember, these are the same Americans you call
independent thinkers , smart, and not easily duped
In fact, they're specifically trained to be so. We also know that when you release gigs and gigs of internal emails from ANY source, one will easily be able to find and mine negative looking material from it. Much like Climate gate, etc. We also know that Russian hackers in large numbers, sowed dissent, and created an illusion of numbers, and fostered false information through the use of bots, troll armies, and ironically, actual fake news and conspiracy stories. One source on that
here among many. I personally witnessed this happen in real time on Twitter and Reddit. It is often mentioned by Trump supporters that the media was favorable to Clinton. They descended on the wiki-leaks with ferocity and ratings driven profit motive, with hardly a thought to dropping all these details from only one side of a two sided campaign, and what that would mean for people's points of view. Also, Russia has a history of interfering in the elections of other countries in order to give themselves a more favorable position on the world's political stage. (Before you run off half cocked, allow me to mention that YES the US has also tried to influence elections of foreign countries for it's own purposes as well. As my mama used to say. "Two wrongs don't make a right.")
Finally, we also know that Trump won the electoral vote by a thin margin of what amounts to the population of a moderate sized city.
How were Americans fooled by that...are they just not able to distinguish truth from fiction?
Are you
seriously asking this on a skeptic's board? Really? Do you think this is some sort of "gotcha"? Do you think that our blind patriotism to our country will catch us in a "does not compute" Will Robinson type moment? How incredibly stupid is this argument? I'll spell it out for you here, in all caps so you understand. OF FUCKING COURSE AMERICANS OVERALL ARE EASILY LED! SO ARE HUMANS EVERYWHERE!
<---- Here is a "roll eyes" emoji, further signifying my contempt at such a lame brained question.
What's your next move? To tell us once again that we made this whole thing up to cover our embarrassment at losing an election we should have won? Let me save you the trouble. Clinton was 1) A horrible choice for a candidate. 2) Awful at running campaigns. 3) The democrats are a disorganized mess that have lost touch with the poor and working class and are to in bed with wall street - and people are sick of it.
There are many reasons why the election turned out as it did. We are now investigating the matter of the Trump campaign colluding with the attempt made by the Russians to influence this campaign. This is an important question, and put simply, while you may deny it, things aren't looking too good in Trumptopia. Many, many of the mainstream press bombshells revealed in the last several months are bearing fruit. Personally, I don't know if there was active collusion by the Trump campaign. Although Trump certainly benefited from it, the Russians certainly didn't need Trump's help to pull off what they did. If Trump's administration didn't actively participate, fine. There are plenty, plenty PLENTY of other reasons to want to remove this orange asshat from office, and to look for illegal behavior.
