@
JaggedLittlePill You just saying "it derived from the Russian disinformation campaign" and then doing the in-text equivalent of throwing up your hands and sighing at my alleged hopelessness is not an actual argument. You need to provide some basis for why it might be reasonable to believe that (which, in fairness, you can't do, because it isn't).
Two of those links you provided do not appear to be possible to view without having login data for Southern New Hampshire University. The original
Washington Post article popped up readily in a search, but I am not finding that exact
New York Times article (I assume from its date of publication that it deals with the Senate Intelligence Committee reports from December?). But that's fine, we can start with the
Washington Post one.
First, what is up with this headline?
The U.S. has just accused Russia of hacking America’s elections. That’s a very big deal.
This is a blatant lie right out of the door, and given how many people these days just catch a glimpse of an article's headline while foregoing the article itself: "That's a very big deal." If you read its contents, nothing like that accusation has actually been put forward. Misleading headlines of this sort have led some people into sincerely believing that our intelligence agencies have accused the Russian government of directly hacking into our voting machines and changing the outcome of the election. This is similar to how a great many Americans ended up coming to believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 back in 2002 and 2003, despite no one
technically saying so if you paid enough attention.
Next, two questions for you: do you know the meaning of the word "evidence", and did you actually read this article? Because all it is doing is reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies said the Russian government "interfer[ed] with the U.S. presidential election" by hacking into some email accounts. The article openly admits that no evidence has been provided for these claims, and even concedes that governments often have good reason to lie about this sort of thing and should not necessarily be taken at their word.
In fact, it seems this usually turns out to be what people come up with when asked for evidence of the "Russian bots" conspiracy theory: not evidence as such, but
appeal to authority — merely reminding us that our intelligence agencies claim certain things have taken place. Well, yes, everyone knows that already, this is how the narrative got put forth in the first place. But it is no reason to suppose it's true. To quote a previous post I made on this site:
Frankly, I'm not even sure what the hell is going on with this idol-worship of the "intelligence people" by allegedly-liberal dissenters nowadays. These are the same motherfuckers who lied us into the Iraq War. The same motherfuckers who've backed coups in countless other countries. The same motherfuckers who blatantly perjured themselves by denying mass surveillance of American citizens just months before the Snowden leaks. The same motherfuckers who tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the civil rights movement. The same motherfuckers who used to perform human experiments on Canadian psychiatric patients in hopes of finding a mind-control drug. It is almost incomprehensible how lackwitted and selectively inattentive to reality a person would need to be to actually believe that our "intelligence people" are good, credible people who do not habitually operate with insidious ulterior motives.
On the other hand, Assange himself has said that his sources for the DNC and Podesta leaks were not linked to any sovereign state. Assange has run an organization dedicated to transparency which has never to this day run a false story, to his own great personal imperilment. On the question of who to take at their word, Assange or our venerable intelligence agencies, it hardly needs to be said who is more trustworthy.
But the problem is actually worse than this. Take a look at what this accusation of interference in our election really is. The accusation being made is certainly
not that anyone "hacked our election", but that they
truthfully notified the American public of corrupt behavior on the part of a leading U.S. presidential candidate. It is not at all obvious that the American public was done any disservice here regardless of who is responsible, and it is kind of shocking how successful our intelligence agencies have been in painting this in any kind of negative light to begin with.
