Baba Yaga is a mythical sorceress in Russian folklore much like our Wicked Witch of the West. Today’s phantasm of effective and coercive Russian influence on our election processes is of the same ilk. Totally imaginary and meant to frighten.
Robert Mueller testified to Congress last week in a last futile attempt by the House Judiciary Committee to wrest any information from him that was not contained in his lengthy written report on Russian collusion. As expected, no new details were forthcoming. In the wake of his testimony, a revived emphasis is again being placed on the notion of Russian “influence” (rather than collusion with the Trump campaign) as having affected the outcome of the 2016 election. Dire warnings that the same “meddling” will occur in the 2020 election are now being trumpeted. We fully expect this blaring refrain to continue throughout the 2020 campaign season. Why? The Russian “boogieman” has been (and will be) the most effective opponent to President Trump, clearly superior to the yapping of the current Democrat contenders for the nomination.
In this case, the boogieman is not a “cloud” of collusion or obstruction of justice that continues to hang over the President. Nor is it the group of 13 Russians indicted by Robert Mueller for hacking into DNC computers. And no, it’s not Vladimir Putin. This boogieman is Russian, but she is intangible, devious, and embedded so deeply into our news and social media systems that you have no clue she’s there. Worst of all, she can make you vote for whoever she wants and there is not a thing you can do about it. Conveniently, no one has proved the boogieman exists, and even more conveniently, there’s no way to prove she doesn’t exist. And in case you missed it, that last phrase has recently become a new legal standard of proof in our country. According to the Democrats and the media, if you can’t prove something didn’t happen (e.g. the President obstructing justice, Russians changing the outcome of the election, etc.), it therefore must have happened.
There is no Russian boogieman. Sure, the Russians spy on us and attempt to meddle in our affairs. They’ve been doing that for a long time. So have a lot of other countries. We do the same to them. But there is a huge chasm between attempting to meddle and infiltrating the heads of just the right number of people in just the right local districts to change how they vote. It’s almost as if a Jedi Master slowly waves a hand in front of your face as you walk into the voting booth and says, “this is not the candidate you are voting for”.
There are a lot of things laughable about this, but one of them is the fact that when Democrats and the liberal media blame the Russians for having a dominating influence on our elections, they are admitting to an embarrassing/devastating defeat in the very same game they themselves are playing. It could not have been more obvious that most of the news media outlets did not want Donald Trump to win the 2016 election. Yet, he did, and by a wide electoral vote margin. The subsequent commitment of the media and the Dems to the notion that a mind-controlling foreign power (Russia) had instead determined the outcome conveniently serves to cover their own failure to have done the same thing. And how does the ascendant Fox News fit into this narrative? Fox, which could not be considered “anti-Trump”, has a much larger audience than the other left-leaning news media outlets. Was it the influence of Fox News and not the Russians that helped Trump win? Was Fox in league with the Russians? Was the Russian boogieman so far advanced in influential capability that she overwhelmed any effect Fox or the other news media outlets might have had on the outcome?
American news outlets such as CNN/MSNBC/FOX/NYT/WAPO can be (and are) upfront and obvious with their attempts to influence the American public. Their freedom to do so is secured in our Constitution (freedom of the press). The Russians, or any other illicit entity needing to be secretive and anonymous must be far more subtle and deceptive to remain undetectable. Are we to believe that the subtlety and deceptiveness of the boogieman is so all-powerful that it eclipses the 24-7, “in-your-face” American news stream that bombards us every day at airports, gyms, waiting rooms, etc.? Think about it – excepting your family members and closest friends, what other source could possibly influence your thinking so heavily, let alone force your vote, than the daily “carpet bombing” from the American media?
Think for a minute about all the things that lead to you vote the way you do. We all ingest some amount of politics from the news media. Also (for the most part) we all participate in at least one or more kinds of social media. According to the experts, these are the two pathways by which the boogieman masterfully and clandestinely carries out her voter influence campaign. But suppose you don’t watch or listen to much political news because you are too busy working or just not that interested? Suppose further you are the kind of person who solely interacts on social media with family members and your closest friends. Has the boogieman really found a way to get to you through those relationships? And lastly, in deciding who you will vote for, what if your main source of information is watching/listening to the candidate him or herself? If so, no influence campaign, no matter how brilliantly executed, could work on you. Yet, we are being told that it did work on so many of us that millions of Hillary supporters were hypnotized into voting for Trump.
If the Democrats and American news media are so certain they were outgunned by the Russians in the influence game, why no analysis and emulation of their tactics? After all, they apparently worked magnificently. You would think that the advertisers who pay so much money to the big news media companies would want those companies to learn and use the boogieman’s methods. Imagine if an advertisement for toothpaste could make you instantly switch from Crest (which you’ve used all your life) to Colgate without you having any idea why you changed your mind. Wouldn’t corporations want to embrace this magic?
Lastly, what amazes us most of all is that the simplest and most likely explanation for the outcome of the 2016 election, that voters willingly and thoughtfully chose Trump, remains dead last on the list of possibilities among Democrats and the media. In the altered reality of the Democrats and news media, it is simply not possible that the American people decided of their own volition to elect Donald Trump. As there is a growing sense Trump may now win a 2nd term, the boogieman must be kept alive and used again to delegitimize that outcome in 2020. And wondrously, should a Democrat win in 2020, the boogieman will instantly melt away, just like the Wicked Witch of the West.
4 Responses
Great blog.
Russia or other countries hacking to influence our elections? What an absurd concern priority.
This country was founded with freedom of speech and the freedom of the ‘press’ to allow citizens to hear all points of view. I don’t know what they would think today given the ubiquitous global influence of free speech on our citizens but it is what it is and I hope we can come up with something to hold news media more accountable for opinions they twist into false truths. The established media certainly abuses their once trusted place for reporting facts, with bias ideology twists, regardless of truths.
Influencing our elections is possible and it comes from people, systems and processes in critical districts that can affect a valid election. The boogieman can go away if we would turn the lights on, but many people love the drama. Hacking, domestic or international is always going to be spy vs spy, but that is the inverted Pareto principle related to security of systems and the data/information breaches within them. 90+% of breaches of information come from people with valid access to the information. I laugh when people say your information is secure – haha except from the people that have legitimate access and can quickly look up almost anything for anyone – front line folks all the way back to IT employees and consultants. Oh yah, they all sign non-disclosure agreements, so sleep well, your business and political data is safe on the home front. Everyone knows that people working for our government and political parties are trusted and ethical so let’s just focus on those Russian hackers – who probably paid $100 to the Employees of the DNC and Florida voting districts for the passwords. Darn, those guys broke their NDA Agreements.
Shame on us, as a country, for not implementing a national system of voting that could utilize the systems and validation that all financial systems use to validate who people are and ensure the vote they place is theirs. Continuing to place so much trust in ‘chad’ management is antiquated and ridiculous. This is not a quantum physics conundrum.
Totally agree Johnny. The last two major security breaches to government systems were insiders who had valid access – Manning and Snowden.
A national voting system (which I agree would be great) would by definition necessitate a strong authentication mechanism just as the banks require. This is where the hang up will occur for the Democrats, who will argue that their favorite special interest groups will be dis-enfranchised. What the Democrats will say – “Forcing a strong ID requirement will suppress the minority vote”. What they actually mean – “You are taking away our ability to cheat”.
I understand the rhetoric of the liberals, but we currently have a weak authentication system. Not sure who would be disenfranchised? What does that mean? Let’s think about that question and break it down a bit. Everyone that is currently employed or has been and/or now receiving social security, medicare, medicaid must provide positive identity documentation to receive a payments or it’s fraud. Those collecting any type of other entitlements from the government (welfare, food stamps, etc.,) must provide identity documentation to receive payment for those entitlements from the government – homeless or not, phone-less or not. The government doesn’t just hand out checks to anybody that walks in that says I’m Joey Jones, give me a check.
So who’s left? If these so-called disenfranchised are so bad off I guarantee (in this country) they are getting something from the government and identification is already validated (worthiness not withstanding). So those that have never had a job, or collected any entitlements from the government or paid any taxes for whatever money they use to exist are the disenfranchised? Just floating around since birth with no identification? Or are we really condoning and protecting fraud by dishonest criminals faking votes for all political parties or are the disenfranchised non-citizens?
Every single time the subject of strong voter ID laws comes up, the response from the Dems is always the same. It’s not necessarily that their potential voters can’t get the proper ID if they don’t have it, but that it would be too burdensome for them to do so. That burden is deemed to be just enough to dissuade them from voting, thus the claim of disenfranchisement. You are absolutely correct that when it comes to getting a government freebie, that ID burden seems to magically go away. A ridiculous double standard.
Unbelievably, there are 18 states in this country where no ID whatsoever is required for a person to cast a vote in a national election. I voted for my entire adult life in one of those states – Maryland. It never ceased to amaze me how easy it would be to cheat. All you had to do was tell the polling official the name and street address of your neighbor and you could then vote as your neighbor. No way for them to know you were lying. Any foreign agent or illegal alien could do the same. A strong bank-style authentication system would instantly eliminate this possibility.
The Dems will never go for it however. It would reveal an ugly truth for them – that they have far less actual support for their ideology than currently exists in popular culture. There is no other reasonable explanation. If they truly believed their strength is what they say it is, that strength would be exactly the same if every voter was properly validated. They know it won’t be, and that’s why they resist.