Did we manage to eliminate their influence on this election, thus reversing what seemed to be their pervasive influence on the 2016 election? Or did they try again and fail?
Or did they try again and succeed as far as they could, which wasn't very far? Or was their influence in 2016 conflated because we learned about it and it became public?
And what exactly was their influence? Did they actually change votes? Or did they simply become an annoyance within the noise that constituted the propaganda that both political parties put out there?
Do not cringe in horror. The U.S. has been a culprit at changing governments, and sometimes paid a very big price. Try Iran, for instance, where we (CIA) were complicit in throwing out Mohammad Mossadeq in favor of returning the Shah and his monarchy dictatorship (the devil we knew) to the throne in 1953. 25 years later, we had 52 hostages taken and it led to the rise of Ronald Reagan, who ruined America.
Forty years after that, we now have an Iran eager to make nuclear weapons and our stupid president who wants to start a war with them--and very nearly, within the last few days, did exactly that to saddle his successor with an impossible task in the Middle East. He was dissuaded by advisors at the last minute. By cancelling the deal Barack Obama had already made with Iran, he has done enough damage.
Try Chile, where Salvador Allende, a moderate, was overthrown in 1973 and assassinated by forces behind Augosto Pinochet, who established an autocracy that only now is being successfully addressed by the electorate.
And if you'd like to get closer to home, try Hawaii, where profits from pineapples harvested by the Dole Company (whose name I will never look at the same way) led to the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, the installment of Marines, and the establishment of "gunboat diplomacy" to gain access to Pearl Harbor in the 1890s. That, of course, led to the annexation of the Islands and the attack on Pearl by the Japanese, who saw plenty of battleships parked there one Sunday in December, 1941.
There is still a movement in Hawaii trying to reclaim independence from the U.S. I do not begrudge them that.
If misinformation bothers you, consider how we got involved in the Spanish-American War. The blowing up of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898, supposedly by the Spanish who resented our presence there (they certainly did, since we tried to gain access to a harbor there earlier in the decade but were turned back; at that point, our excuse was to tacitly support, with our presence, native Cubans who were being made into political prisoners), caused an overwhelming outcry.
An investigation found that the explosion went outward, not inward, pretty much ruling out sabotage. But that was way, way later. The major U.S. newspapers of the day, cavorting in yellow journalism (a phrase not discussed today but certainly just as evident as gnats in summertime; if Sean Hannity doesn't practice it, I'm not sure who does), took advantage of the more immediate shock factor and used innuendo to imply that the Spanish must have done it. So off to war we went.
That allowed us to invade the Philippines, also owned by the Spanish. After winning what Teddy Roosevelt called a "splendid little war," it left us with 'freedom fighters' who thought they were going to have their own government.
Uh-uh. The U.S. took control over their "little brown brothers" as President McKinley called them (in a casual expression of racism that raised few eyebrows because just two years earlier, the Supreme Court said, in Plessy v. Ferguson, that races could be separated in public transportation). They resisted, fought a jungle-type guerrilla war in forecast of what we went through in Vietnam 65 years later, and created so much of a problem that there were Senate hearings on it (also forecasting) in which we learned that we practiced (whoops!) waterboarding on native insurgents.
This, as we now know, was also re-created in Iraq in another war we had no right to fight a century later. It was also supported partly by cooperation from a willing and cowed media (in a reaction from 9-11 which proved that Osama bin Laden won) that didn't challenge the fundamental premise nearly enough.
In other words: Same old, same old. So you can see why Vladimir Putin never twitched about doing a little insurgency himself. We've practiced it for decades (of course, so have the Russians). Remember: We're supposed to be the exception to what other countries practice, not how much they practice it. He thought he'd give us some of our own medicine. Because every time you practice power, regardless of high-minded intent, you make enemies.
And what do you know? It worked. 45 has screwed up relationships and political discourse, perhaps forever, or maybe accelerated what was already there. And it really didn't take much, did it?
Being from Wisconsin, I watched quite a bit of the nasty, twisted, manipulated half-truths and worse which made up 45's campaign ads again and again. There was a huge difference between 2016 and 2020. 2020 was much, much worse. It felt like someone was trying to drag me into a ditch.
These more recent ads were too clever by half. They jumped to conclusions. They put out film of Biden saying things completely out of context, so long ago that he had dark hair. And they simply lied, such as saying he supported defunding the police. No, he never said that. That was absurd. It was a reaction from George Floyd's death that 45's people tried to attach to him. It didn't completely work, but it might have worked well enough to avoid giving Biden a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.
Because we saw the Russians coming this time, because 13 of them were indicted by Mueller and helpers, did enough of us simply dismiss the biggest baloney as coming from them and therefore lacked credibility? And did we see Rudy Giuliani behind the worst of the propaganda, whether he was there or not?
If so, well, we could easily say that 45's lies and innuendoes--more than 22,000 by Election Day--paved the way for the complete lack of believability. It made several things go away or become diminished, not the least of which was Hunter Biden's connection with Burisma, which the Republicans tried to mitigate 45's impeachment accusations and which were old and tired by the time the campaign came on because nothing supportable could be added to it.
Nobody can say that we had a national effort to discredit the Russians, though. The effects of media exposure might have done its job. But the Republicans downplayed the threat.
Maybe they were right. Influence isn't proof of sabotage. Nobody can prove, and nobody has come forward with an accusation, at least to this point, that the Russians got inside the voting machines and changed the numbers.
That would be too easy. That would prove that 45 really had very little support, or at least not nearly as much where he needed to have it. This past election, his second time through, has proven the opposite, but not by nearly enough.
There is a cadre out there that's pretty strong for 45, whether we like it or not. The nation really is that much divided. People do go along with both political parties, regardless of what or who they stand for at any one moment, much because they don't have much alternative. There are lots and lots of people out there who are extremely gullible. Was that all it was the first time? Is that all it is now?
So are we going to have another report on how the Russians tried to interfere in 2020? Or are we going to blow it off if the answer is: Who knows? Who cares, now that a decent person's been elected?
That would be a mistake. I, for one, would like to see a follow-up. I would like to see specific actions we did take and what kind of difference they made. And, if gaps still exist, what we're about to do next time around.
The Department of Homeland Security has just said that this has been the most secure election in our history. This is the one that's still working for the 45 administration. He hasn't railed at it in disgust--yet. But if they say it, in obvious defiance of the trouble 45's making everyone go to, it must have some significant credibility attached.
Still, way too many are still out there demonstrating that the election's being stolen. We have the burden of dragging them back from that conclusion. But remember: a Gallup poll taken a few months ago indicated that 38% of the adult population still thinks that the earth is 10,000 years old or less. If people are still too small, too narrow to come to grips with that falsehood and denial of science, they'll get led by the nose to just about anywhere else.
That's a problem for education. And I don't just mean the educational system. But that's for later. Meanwhile, I want to know where the Russians went. And where they now are.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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