#i get it. i know some trumpers went in with an uneducated vote. i get it

[eidetic187]

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[litcityblues]

5 Things About This Cretinous Article

1. Gosh, doesn’t this website look positively legit. I’m sure Mr. Palmer and the Palmer Report are rigorous journalists of the highest order and have sources and fact-checking in places i can’t imagine. (S/O to Chelsea Handler, who, of late has been a source of reason and moderation on all things Trump for linking to this delightful piece of... something.)

2. Let’s consider the thesis of this article for a minute: “Russian trolls micro-targeted voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, feeding them fake political news in order to trick them into voting under false pretenses, thus rigging the outcome of the election in those two states.” I don’t even know where to begin with this fever dream assertion. It does underline a large problem I have with the Trump-Russia mess: absent a smoking gun proving the Russia was messing with votes, you’re heading down a road of saying the President of the United States was elected because people believed what they read on the internet.* In other words, a large portion of the electorate are dribbling uneducated morons, who don’t know ‘REAL NEWS’ when they see it. If you’re a Democrat/Never Trumper/Resister, do you really want to go down this road? Do you think the electorate is going to warm to the notion of you calling them backwards, uneducated hicks? I doubt it. 

3. I don’t think Trump is going to fire Mueller. I do, however, think he’ll give him a deadline on when things need to be wrapped up. At a certain point, this investigation is going to need to shit or get off the pot, otherwise it’ll move from an investigation to a fishing expedition. (It’s kind of a chicken or an egg thing, I think. If you’re going to do this, someone’s gonna get indicted or slapped with something.)

4. Underlying all of this are two very real issues that aren’t getting nearly enough play in this debate: election security and media consolidation. For the former it’s simple: PAPER BALLOTS ALL THE WAY DOWN. Yes, that’s not a perfect solution given the whole hanging chad mess in Florida in ‘00, but it’s a damn good start. Laws mandating that ballots be counted in public where everyone can see them would be another good start. Transparency and paper ballots will go a long way to making our elections safer. (You can throw Voter ID in here if you want, but until the requirement can be implemented universally at no cost to the citizenry, I’m not buying in. And don’t tell me it can’t be done either. If the Selective Service can find every male in America to get us to register for the draft, the government can mail every American a Voter ID card.) 

The latter problem is more complex, but just as important. The ‘people believe they read everything on the internet’ problem is driven by the nature of cable news and news in general. Ratings hungry, narrative driven news doesn’t inform anybody. People either swallow their preferred flavor of Kool-Aid or just assume it’s all crap and go to a variety of news sites of dubious pedigree to find their *truth*. A year of the media beclowning itself by reporting on every bowel movement of a Tweet the President sends as if it’s ‘BREAKING NEWS’ didn’t help their credibility any. I firmly believe that an informed citizenry- a truly informed citizenry is a necessary prerequisite for a strong democratic society. Unfortunately, the race is on to control information in this country and whether it’s Facebook, CNN, Breitbart, MSNBC or Fox News the purveyors of information aren’t interested in informing you- they’re more interested in selling on you their preferred narrative. (There are some exceptions to this: Shep Smith on Fox News is a straight shooter. Jake Tapper on CNN is pretty good as well. The Intercept I trust a bit more than the rest, because they’re willing to call out bullshit on both sides and seem genuinely interested in the truth of the matter and not just the narrative of the week- which is a good barometer on what makes a good news source to me. If they call out EVERYBODY’s bullshit, I dig it. If they’re selective with their bullshit calling, I’m more dubious.) 

How do we get back to news actually informing us instead of selling us on their narratives? I don’t know. But having a debate about the nature of news and media consolidation in this country is a good first step.

5. None of this means that there might not be some genuine shady shenanigans that went down with the #TrumpRussia thing. I don’t know. At this point, when Mueller has a verdict to hand down, let me know and I’ll tune in. Absent that, the microscopic analysis of every tea leaf about this thing is just exhausting. I can’t be in hysterics about this 24-7 because I honestly have better things to care about than this shit. Who cares? (And honestly, what’s a simpler explanation: that the Democrats ran a candidate with baggage (some of it genuinely unfair and very sexist, some of it not) who with an assist from the FBI Director, blew a winnable election or that Russia somehow tricked people into voting for Trump?) Articles like this, however, promoting ill conceived fever dreams of one flavor or another, don’t help anyone.

*For what it’s worth, we started the Spanish-American War over what we read in the newspaper. Electing a President based off what read on the internet would not be completely out of character for us a nation.