I read this phrase recently—probably for the thousandth time—but
the sheer idiocy of it finally struck home. The phrase is this: “Russian attempts to hack our democracy.”
It has been bothering me
for a while now, but sometimes it takes a while for inanity to cross the
Rubicon. Roll it upon your tongue for a moment: “Russia attempts to hack our
democracy”. Taste it if you can, see if you can find any depth or substance in
this cotton candy assertion. To anyone with a sophisticated palate, the unusual
pairings are rather jarring.
Let’s break it
down, if we are capable of such an effort. Like a McDonald’s cheeseburger, it can
appear quite acceptable to one who doesn’t much think about what one is
consuming. But let us be connoisseurs of message for a moment, let us think about
what it is we are digesting. Let us study the relatively simple phrase in its
component parts, explore what the symbols mean to us.
Russian. The
word is replete with associations. It has always been synonymous with the
Soviet Union in the minds of anyone older than thirty and younger than a
hundred and ten. The U.S. had always been the home team and the U.S.S.R. was
(for anyone outside New York) the Yankees. They were the Ivan Drago to our
beloved Rocky. They are the destroyers of freedom. They are, pure and simple,
THE ENEMY! They are and always will be Mordor, the evil empire, the land to the
east that is by its very existence a threat to all free peoples. One wonders
why God or Tolkien saw fit to create such an abomination. We would all be
better off if cartographers simply omitted it from any future maps.
Russian hack.
What does this mean? Is hack the right word? Did Russia use sophisticated
computer technology to change voting? Was it more damaging than the purging of
blacks from voting by voter ID laws or sup-par equipment and limited access in
lower-class neighborhoods? If it was not, why is the media ignoring such issues
in favor of Russian hacking? Don’t they want what’s best for us?
Is it more
relevant to our lives as Americans than the billions of dollars poured into our
elections from special interest groups that determine the policies that their
bought candidates do not write but rather copy into law? Is it more relevant to
our elections than the fact that every single major political aspirant must
genuflect before AIPAC, Israel’s lobbying group?
What do they mean by hacking? What does the word “hack”
mean? What exactly does Russia stand accused of? For God’s sake, how can we
prevent it from happening again if we don’t know what “it” is? I guess the
lesson is that our secret intelligence agencies will take care of it and that we
only need trust them. But it makes me wonder: how can we trust them to take
care of the problem when they weren’t able to prevent it in the first place?
And it makes me wonder why they even bothered to bring it up at all if they are
giving us no actionable information. “The Russians hacked our election. We want
you to know that, want you to know we are on it, and that what is most
important is that you trust us unaccountable agents of security agencies.”
Doesn’t spy stuff go on all the time without the need to reveal such
shenanigans to the public? Why then did they feel the need to share this one?
It’s frustrating to place all the responsibility in the
hands of the intelligence agencies. I as a United States citizen want to do
something to help secure our democracy, something more than wearing a pussy hat
and Russia-bating (sic) in groups that appear larger on CNN than they do in
person. I feel like someone trying to fight terrorism with plastic sheeting and
duct tape. It doesn’t make sense to me.
If we have a problem with our elections being hackable,
shouldn’t we be taking concrete actions to ensure that it is more difficult for
it to happen next election? Why in God’s name aren’t our elected officials
scrambling to pass laws that require paper ballots that are hand-counted rather
than using hackable computers? Questioning Trump’s involvement can wait until
we’ve taken control of our systems back from the Russians. Why are we doing
nothing, don’t we care?
If our elections are hackable, shouldn’t we have been
concerned about this before now? If Russia was able to hack our elections,
might not other powerful agents do the same? Perhaps even one or two of our
intelligence agencies might think it a good idea to do such a thing. If they
did, who would alert the media to the hacking? If, say, the CIA decided to hack
our elections, would anybody know? If right now the media is doing no actual
journalism on the validity of Russian hacking claims other than passing along
information from intelligence agencies, how could we ever expect our media to ferret
out the information if such an action took place? If our elections were to be
hacked by intelligence agencies or other nefarious domestic groups, wouldn’t we
want Russia to release the facts to us?
Which once again makes me return to asking what is meant by
hacking. Does it mean releasing accurate and truthful information gathered through
unsecured e-mail servers? Does it mean revealing inconvenient truths about what
is really going on in our country, the way Radio Free Europe once provided a
counter narrative to the citizens of the Soviet Bloc?
I worry about the very vagueness of the expression “Russian
Attempts To Hack Our Democracy”. It is a statement written with an unsharpened
pencil and it is hard to read. And vagary is the tool used by those who would like
to get you to believe in something without explicitly saying anything. It is
the way Iago talked to Othello about Desdemona, feigning concern for a friend
while sowing unfounded suspicions designed to destroy him.
But perhaps it is the use of the word “democracy” that
confounds most of all. The word just seems to have an air of purity to it,
doesn’t it? Democracy is one of those core values, a sacrosanct institution
whose virtue needs protecting from debauched men looking to stain its
innocence. Accusing someone of hacking democracy contains within it associations
of raping a virgin: our minds rebel at the very thought of it, our reason goes
out the window and we become brutes willing to do anything to protect our women
folk. Democracy is an archetypal principle at once vague and yet
all-encompassing. It embodies all that is good, and it is enshrined within our
most holy of temples: to imagine a foreign power penetrating so deeply into our
holiest of holies demands that we defend it at all costs or lose our very
identity as a people.
Would that we had such an institution. Democracy—at least
that which we now call democracy—is not a vestal virgin but a seasoned
prostitute. Russia has no need to hack, spy, or subvert. The U.S. government is
quite simply up for sale to the highest bidder, and she has no biases whether
she sleeps with a local or a foreigner. It is all about the money.
And as far as hookers go, the U.S. government is not
especially high priced. Russia has enough money to buy a few well-positioned
congresspersons should it so desire. Granted Saudi Arabia is a wealthy John,
but it has the U.S. doing things that would make most harlots blush. After all,
a prostitute only sells what is hers to give, while a politician makes his
money giving away that which does not belong to him. Even children are not safe
from such business deals.
Israel too has been frequenting the Capital Hill whorehouse
for decades, tossing bills on the pillow for the permission to have its way
with Palestinians of all ages. United Arab Emirates plopped down $14.2 million
in 2013 and apparently liked the treatment it received, namely a $2 billion
weapons sale. And for a mere $2.5 mil they got former Attorney General John
Ashcroft to work for them, though whether he will be required to wear high
heels and garter is not mentioned in this article: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/qatar-hires-former-u-s-attorney-general-john-ashcroft/
Foreign countries are making serious investments to shape
U.S. opinions all the time. Here is a list of contributions to think tanks the
New York Times compiled: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-government-contributions-to-nine-think-tanks.html
Why then would Russia risk war with the most powerful
military in the world when it could simply buy what they wanted like everyone
else? Why get the John after you to break your legs when for a modest fee you
could have your kinkiest fantasies satisfied? Why “hack” when one could “contribute”?
Doesn’t that sound so much better?
This was my quick dissection of the message. Notice that I
make no mention of the messengers. That is a subject I’ve mentioned in other
posts, notably here: http://jamesrozoffsolutionist.blogspot.com/2017/04/syria-russia-and-what-i-can-say-with_25.html
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