So, there's this insultingly stupid meme going around that Russia's Vladimir Putin stole the 2016 US presidential election for Trump. He didn't. Trump is not Putin's puppet. Trump is a con-artist and he has a lot of financiers in Russia. Because there are a lot of uber-crooked oligarchs in Russia with lots of liquid assets they need to launder. This access to dirty money endears Russia to Trump and he sees them in a sympathetic light. It is this sympathy that allowed Trump to shake-off the propaganda system's spin on Russia in Syria to be able to ask: "If ISIS is such a deadly threat, then why are we angry at Russia for helping Syria's Assad to fight them?"
This is heresy apparently. The USA's foreign policy elite want to humiliate and weaken Russia. They want to shoot down Russian planes over Syria and let Jihaadist nut-bars tear it apart as they did in Libya. They want to continue to surround Russia with hostile states and nuclear missiles and they want to do the same with China. Not because the USA is the hope of the world. But because the US political system is about promoting the right of US banks to rob people worldwide. To obtain raw materials at cheap prices through compliant puppet regimes. It is the servant of every exploitative, gouging, grasping, corrupt, self-centred, psychopathic capitalist you can imagine. Because the USA is a capitalist country and both of the allowed political parties self-identify as "capitalist."
But, anyway, one of the props of the bullshit story that Russia stole the election for Trump is the "fake news" that the dastardly Russians circulated on social media. Ordinarily, you'd expect progressives to be intelligent enough to laugh off the purported election-swinging social media memes that "Putin's Troll Army" supposedly utilized. Sadly however, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is a real thing and many progressives are not at their best these days.
I'm not even going to go into the real details or provide links to any of this nonsense. Roughly speaking, we're talking about less than $200,000 spent on FaceBook ads (in an election where spending was in the BILLIONS). A large proportion of the ads in question were purchased and displayed AFTER the 2016 election. They were "seen" by as many as 125 million people!!! (In the same way you probably see AND IGNORE those sidebar advertisements for Viagra, criminal pardons, useless FaceBook groups to join, and ads for how to be rich and successful on FaceBook or YouTube.) These were pictures of Hillary Clinton arm-wrestling the devil. Some of the ads were in support of Black Lives Matter. (Which, obviously, is far removed from the concept of getting someone to support Trump. The BLM ads were, supposedly, posted to attempt to "sow divisions" in US-American society ... where none existed before [!!!] ... and create "chaos" throughout society.) There was a pro-Bernie Sanders colouring book too.
In short: Ludicrous nonsense.
The laughs continued after I started writing this post. FBI Director Robert Mueller has announced the indictment of 13 Russian nationals for trying to influence the election. The Russians involved are no longer in the USA. It's highly unlikely that Putin will agree to extradite them to the USA to face the music for their "crimes." (Especially since these are still just allegations.) And since they will probably never be tested in a USA court of law, we'll never know if the low-budget actions (wheeling a cart around somewhere in Florida with a cage containing someone playing Hillary Clinton in a striped prisoner's uniform for instance) were actually the work of ex-KGB officer Vladimer Putin, or just some pranks by the booze and coke-addled son of a Russian mafiosa who stayed in Florida too long after Spring Break.
But to hear too many liberals and progressives go on about it: These were "ACTS OF WAR!!!"
Let me explain something to you liberals and progressives about what it means to call something an "act of war." And this is serious, so please pay attention:
If somebody insulted me or somebody close to me and I shouted back without a trace of humour in my voice: "DEM'S FIGHTIN' WOIDS!!!" .... That would mean that unless I received an apology for the insult, a fight would ensue between myself and my antagonist. There's no other way to understand it. When Homer Simpson was glove-slapping everyone in town and that Southern gentleman (who was visiting Springfield for his own reasons) accepted his challenge, Homer had either to meet him for a pistol-duel at dawn or flee to the countryside.
If you're going to accuse Russia of an "ACT OF WAR" against the United States, you are saying that the two countries are now on a war-footing and that unless the Russian government provides restitution for its acts of aggression, the war will continue.
First of all; if Russia's social media activities (or, more accurately, the social media activities of Russians) are "ACTS OF WAR" then it follows that Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Iran, and quite a few others, can also say that the USA has committed "acts of war" against THEM and go to the United Nations and get sanctions imposed.
Secondly, you goddamned stupid idiots, ... Russia is a nuclear power with enough weapons to destroy human civilization. Spouting out hypocritical drivel about being in a state of war with them over such trifles is out-and-out INSANE.
So ends Part One.
