Report Claims That 18 Nation's Elections Were Impacted By Social Engineering Last Year (bbc.com) 235
sqorbit writes: Independent watchdog group Freedom House released a report that claims that 18 nation's elections were "hacked." Of the 65 countries that Freedom House monitors, 30 appear to be using social media in order to affect elections by attempting to control online discussions. The report covers fake news posts, paid online opinion writers and trolling tactics. Other items in the report speak to online censorship and VPN blocking that blocks information within countries to interfere with elections. The report says net freedom could be aided by: large-scale programs that showed people how to spot fake news; putting tight controls on political adverts; and making social media giants do more to remove bots and tune algorithms to be more objective.
OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:5, Funny)
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UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.
Re:OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:5, Informative)
Newsflash: social engineering has been used to influence elections ever since before the first election was held.
Nature of the beast, people will buy, beg, lie, cheat, and do any other thing that they can get away with to win a contest - if it's a popularity contest, that's going to mean lots of social engineering. Now we communicate via internet, so you can't just buy ads on television and radio anymore.
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Well I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you.
So now they call it "social engineering" to make it sound more scary. The original word is "propaganda", and whether it's delivered via radio broadcast, dropped leaflets, or the interwebs doesn't really matter. It's still propaganda and the idea has been around for millennia.
Re: OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesnâ(TM)t matter. We arenâ(TM)t allowed to question why someone votes a particular way, and free speech allows everyone to say whatever they want. It sucks that some use this to subvert some people's vote, but thats the price we pay for both free speech and open and free elections.
Re: OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:4, Insightful)
"We arent allowed to question why someone votes a particular way" - Yes, we are. That doesn't touch the question of allowing known-and-provably-fraudulent news stories from propaganda sources.
"It sucks that some use this to subvert some people's vote" = You are now apologizing for that directly. I reject that we have to allow fraudulent activity because "My interpretation of freedum sez"
Re: OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:3)
Iâ(TM)d rather have a bunch of false information than the government controlling it. You call for oversight, most intelligent people see that as a direct path to censorship.
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"We arent allowed to question why someone votes a particular way" - Yes, we are. That doesn't touch the question of allowing known-and-provably-fraudulent news stories from propaganda sources.
That works both ways, mind you. If the problem is "fraudolent stories", then none is safe and you could bet that the "fraudolent stories" and "propaganda" from non-Russian sources literally obliterated that from Russia. If the problem, instead, is "fraudolent stories allegedly from Russia", be assured, that was not a serious problem: our social/mainstream media overlords already took care of that, preemptively censoring all that bad bad stuff to great extent and then some.
"It sucks that some use this to subvert some people's vote" = You are now apologizing for that directly. I reject that we have to allow fraudulent activity because "My interpretation of freedum sez"
Don't be too intransigent, it usual
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Seriously, this is the very first time I have heard of this. I have been questioning why other people voted like they did, and they question why I voted like I did, for decades. If there's some rule that you're not supposed to talk about this, I think about 95% of the people I've met have never heard about your new rule.
I think you made it up.
Don't expect your idea to catch on. I don't even wanna say "nice try," because it's so sill
Re: What free speech? What free and fair election? (Score:4, Insightful)
"USA does NOT have free and fair elections, the people voted against Trump by millions and millions of votes and he got the Whitehouse anyway."
Stopped reading comment here. Learn how our election works or STFU about it.
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They honestly don't care how our system works. Unless of course if Hillary had won more electoral votes and Trump had won the popular vote, the Democrats would be cheering our system for keeping "that horrid person" out of office.
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Yes, the election system is not fair to the voters because not everyone's vote is counted equally and that's the point he was making.
That said, everyone knows how the system works, and the system is fair to the candidates. They played the game within the established rules and trump won.
Re: What free speech? What free and fair election (Score:2, Troll)
The system in the US is set up around communities of people. The vast majority of communities (typically farming and blue collar communities) in the US votes republican.
If it were a popular vote, we would only have protections for apple, orange and avocado farmers because those are what comprises California and New York.
The system in the US works around equal protection from mob rule. It also protects against anyone stealing the vote in any particular region or certain regions being locally corrupted, if ce
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Yet, New Mexican voters have about twice the influence on the electoral college that North Carolinian voters do.
Re: What free speech? What free and fair election? (Score:4, Insightful)
That bias may be based in the history of the country being composed of separate states that had to compromise with each other in order to agree to come together, but it still isn't fair to the voters in my state.
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Re: OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus fucking Christ. This is all suddenly new? No, it's fucking not. Trump didn't get elected because Russia "hacked" an election you fucking idiot.
And it wasn't 18 nations. It's every nation, all of them, every time, ever since the first nation was invented.
You know how to stop it? You don't. It will never stop. The only way to counter it is a well educated, independently and critically thinking population.
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I think you mis-parsed that sentence. The word "nation's" is singular possessive, so clearly, this is about a series of elections held by "18 Nation", which, judging by its name, I can only assume is either a magazine for teenagers or a porn site. Either way, its elections were influenced by social engineering, and I couldn't care less. :-)
Re: OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:4, Insightful)
You know how to stop it? You don't. It will never stop. The only way to counter it is a well educated, independently and critically thinking population.
Well said and very true, however we'll never reach this state because an easily manipulated population is exactly what those in power want, they just want the exclusive ability to manipulate.
Those in power (Score:2)
Well said and very true, however we'll never reach this state because an easily manipulated population is exactly what those in power want, they just want the exclusive ability to manipulate.
Except for situations where "those in power" happen to *actually be* the population.
There's this term "direct democracy". You should research it.
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There's this term "direct democracy". You should research it.
I keep getting redirected to mob rule, group think, and mass hysteria.
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You are missing the point.
It's true, other nations have always sought to influence our democracies ever since we created them. And we have always resisted, because we don't want to be act in their best interests instead of our own.
Social media and fake news on the internet is a new avenue for nations to influence us. They present a different challenge. Social media allows their messages to spread quickly and rapidly gain an air of respectability as people repost them as their own. Fake news sites on the int
Re: OH MY GOSH BEAUHD! (Score:2)
Actually research shows the opposite is true. People now have more access to information than ever and can think more critical about it.
Think back to the 80s/90s if you are old enough, how many newspapers did your house hold have? 1? 2 if your parents were in some sort of well paid business job. How many TV stations did you watch for the news? Again, 1 or 2.
People relied more on word of mouth which is much more powerful than even Facebook is. If your grandparents voted republican, everyone including your pa
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People distrust the media, that's why they turn to social media for news and why posts on social media from "real people" carry more weight for them.
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Off course people distrust the media, CNN and Fox News is just a blog for left-wingers with some stuff from Reuters and AP thrown in there once in a while. Original reporting is hard to find and often you will find true investigations only on private blogs.
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Fox News is just a blog for "left-wingers"?
Your calibration is fucked dude. Fox News is pretty far right. If you got a little further right than Fox News, you meet literal Nazis.
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Jesus fucking Christ.
That must require a really impressive degree of gymnastic talent.
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An act of war, gosh that's lovely. Hillary really got to you people, didn't she? She was all ready for a big shooting war with Russia until she neglected to get votes in critical states. Oops, turns out you have to actually win the election first. So instead we got widespread hysteria and Red Scare Part II and everyone is looking under their beds for TEH ROOSHINS.
So all it took was 3,000 Facebook ads to swing the elections, who would have thought the Russians was this great at propaganda. $100,000 to
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We know Russia was attempting to tamper with the US political process. That's settled. Blaming things on the Russians is more or less reasonable.
The Democratic primaries (plural) were not rigged. Democrats genuinely wanted Clinton more than Sanders. In the states where caucuses started the process to select delegates, which you'd think would be easier to rig, Sanders did better. Clinton got more votes. Clinton got more regular delegates. Eliminate the superdelegates and Clinton still wins.
Nor is
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You really think it's wise to so blatantly tell approximately half of your users that you think they are fucking idiots, and racists as well?
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Wow, I have to admit that I got trolled. I thought this was the 'real' msmash account, and the "Top Editor" part was displayed to help us identify the site moderator.
Boy, do I have egg on my face.
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If either of the two candidates were a Russian crony, it was Ms. Hillary Clinton — her and her husband's history of taking bribes from Putin is well documented [townhall.com]. That of her opponent is not. As in zero... You can't even put together a coherent accusation, much less support it with any evidence. "Collusion" my tail — there is no such crime.
Yeah, keep pushing. Then tie her down to it until the train arrives...
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Yes, that's exactly what Julius Caesar wrote in his memoir after retiring.
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Come on, it is obvious he meant to write "conditioning the populus" which is a clear and concise statement.
Only 18? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only 18? I thought that ALL elections were subject to "Social Engineering".
That's part of the point.
Elections aren't about being fair. They're about preventing civil war.
They do this by predicting how a civil war to reverse their decision would come out - believably enough to convince the losers of the election that they'd also lose the war to reverse their results.
Propaganda and other "fake news", to recruit and radicalize cannon-fodder for the civil ware are integral to the process. The election process SHOULD include them - or it becomes less believable and thus less stabilizing.
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Yeah, I am amazed when these articles pop up sounding surprised that propaganda using current generation media avenues was used. Everyone treats new stuff like it's different than old stuff. 40 years ago they made pamphlets and distributed them. Good ol technology has made it easier to talk to everyone around the world in teal time, so now they use that - I'm aghast!
Maybe if we still taught critical thinking to our kids then they could decide what they want to think about things. But a spoonfed public i
Re:Only 18? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because they did it 40 years ago doesn't mean it's OK to do it now.
Four million years ago we ran around clubbing each other over the head, didn't farm and ate raw meat. Four hundred years ago an unmarried women with a cat could be justifiably burnt to death for being witch. Forty years ago it wasn't unheard of for people to be lynched because of the colour of their skin.
Do you see now just how stupid your argument is? Just because they did it in the past doesn't make it OK for them to do it now, only on a much bigger scale.
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It isn't being done on a bigger scale. 40 years ago people weren't surprised by a lynching. They shouldn't be surprised now because propaganda has always been going on. It's called politics and has basically existed since people first grouped together. If you're surprised about that then you need to pop the bubble you're living in. WWII propaganda was in the education system, entertainment, news, advertising, products, and peer groups. Today propaganda is in the education system, entertainment, news,
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Additionally, social media is an unprecedented tool for propaganda and interference. Never before in human history has it been so cheap and easy to reach so many people with these messages. The risk is also historically low, as there is no need to actually enter the target country and hand out physical media or talk to people IRL. Those people working out of that St. Petersburg office are beyond our reach and when their fake identities are discovered they can just make new ones. No deportation, no arrest, s
Re: Only 18? (Score:2)
This works on both sides though. Information is easier to disseminate whether it is true or false. The problem is that in politics, itâ(TM)s probably all true, from Benghazi to Pizzagate and from bankruptcies to pissing on some prostitutes; Iâ(TM)m willing to go out on a limb and say: thereâ(TM)s probably an air of truth in all of it and to deny that Clinton and her band is thoroughly corrupt or that Trump is a thoroughly perverted tax-evading capitalist is also true; statistically speaking t
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False information is easier to disseminate. The truth is often complex and not what people want to hear. The lies are simple and benefit from confirmation bias.
Re:Only 18? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a depressing take on it all.
This is the kind of thinking somehow distorts, fraud, dishonesty, immorality and turns it into virtues defined by a single word "winner".
It honestly turns my stomach.
We've got about 50-100 years to come up with something better than law of the jungle, if we can't evolve socially we're just going to wipe ourselves out along with most of the other species on this planet.
So no I disagree, this sort of perversion, fraud, corruption, immorality, dishonesty shouldn't be a part of the election process and when it is, it should be called out and the candidate thrown out on his/her ass or better still put in jail.
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I'm going to have to agree with Gary Johnson on this... While foreign governments involvement in the social engineering of elections is interesting, I am far more concerned with the government's abuse of 4th amendment rights. Illegal snooping on citizens is far more dangerous than some agency posting stories that feed people false information trying to keep them in their little bubbles.
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Whataboutism. Just because your own government is abusive doesn't mean you should be any less concerned about external influence.
Re: Only 18? (Score:2)
I think the point is to be concerned about the issues at hand that each candidate is trying to solve. Youâ(TM)re always going to have propaganda and nobody is truly qualified to lead a nation, they all promise lower taxes and more jobs, when you accept those things then all you can end up doing is look at what are they going to do, what can you hold them to.
Compare what Trump and Hillary say (because all evidence points to the next election being just that again) and how they are going to do it or how
social engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the only reason Trump is president is because he was better at social engineering than Clinton. And I have to hand it to Obama, he pushed that "Hope and Change" meme better than anyone before him ever has. It's all been done before, though [youtube.com].
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So......there were only elections in 18 countries last year? Is that it?
Seriously, the only reason Trump is president is because he was better at social engineering than Clinton. And I have to hand it to Obama, he pushed that "Hope and Change" meme better than anyone before him ever has. It's all been done before, though [youtube.com].
Strange you should mention that.
There are essentially only two ways to lead, all other ways end up being boiled down into these two very broad categories, you can lead through hope or you can lead through fear.
Obama tried to give the US hope when it was in dire need of it, and he succeeded spectacularly.
Trump tried to give the US fear when it least needed it, he succeeded and now the US is paying for it.
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Obama tried to give the US hope when it was in dire need of it,
If you are dependent on your president to give you hope, then you are hopelessly pathetic.
Trump tried to give the US fear when it least needed it, he succeeded and now the US is paying for it.
Partisans are afraid of Trump.
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Trump isn't the tool of the 1%. He's one of the least scrupulous of the 1%, who are hard at work now trying to set up the country the way they want.
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The Clinton campaign was the one who spent more than $1 million PER MONTH on an army of internet trolls paid specifically to social engineer comments sections and social media. They openly bragged about it. David Brock is desperately trying to keep that operation going by accusing others of doing exactly the same thing.
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Trump would have still won even if there was social engineering.
No haha. He barely won even as it is. People see him for who he is: a cad. The social engineering wasn't just in the final election, his best work was done in the primaries.
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Clinton is going to run again in 2020. How do see that working out?
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How do see that working out?
Very very badly for her.
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Canada's Trudeau winning the election on a 10 billions deficit and featuring a 30 billions one in his first budget ? Or is it just "social engineering" when the "wrong side" wins ?
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Or is it just "social engineering" when the "wrong side" wins ?
Nonsense. Preposterous.
It's just that "social engineering" is bad when the wrong side wins.
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Or is it just "social engineering" when the "wrong side" wins ?
No it's nothing more than a few people suddenly realising that elections include advertising and false promises. Don't worry as a species we'll get over this once the popular media discovers water is wet and then proceeds to dedicate the following year reporting on that new revelation.
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Trump won because of bots? Again, the Clinton campaign openly bragged about the tens of millions they were paying David Brock to hire online trolls. Correct the Record? Media Matters?
This won't last long (Score:2)
Social media providers will be taking this very seriously as it undermines their systems credibility as genuine platforms for social interaction. If they don't take credible actions to reduce the flow of spam on their systems, people will eventually catch on that their whole system is a waste of time and move on.
I think it's very obvious players like Facebook etc can do a lot more than they currently are to prevent spam. I'd say it hasn't been a high priority for them and they have actually profited from p
fake news posts, paid online opinion writers (Score:2, Funny)
And that's just the Washington Post!
And worse! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nations', not nation's.
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It's quite easy, at least when there aren't any pronouns involved: the person who owns (or is associated with) the thing is immediately before the apostrophe. Note that this holds even for irregular plurals like the second example below.
Joe's garage = the garage belongs to Joe.
Men's hats = the hats belong to [some] men.
Nations' elections = the elections belong to the nations.
Slashot's editors' stupid fucking retarded brains = the stupid fucking retarded brains belong to the editors, who it turn belong to S
They're only calling it social engineering... (Score:5, Insightful)
...because the politicians aren't behind it. The rest of the time its just called a campaign.
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No it's not called campaigning, if it were Robert Mueller and his team wouldn't be investigating Trump for links to this activity.
Fraud, subversion and collusion with foreign governments may have been part of many elections in the past but not on this scale and in the past when candidates conducting these sorts of activities have been exposed it's meant the end of their campaign.
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No it's not called campaigning, if it were Robert Mueller and his team wouldn't be investigating Trump for links to this activity.
Yep. An investigation is a sure sign of guilt!
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They're not sure signs, as you can see from all the investigations conducted on Hillary Clinton. However, there are indictments coming out of it, so he's finding good (if not necessarily conclusive) evidence of guilt. The investigation isn't finished yet, and the cases are yet to be heard in court.
US elections 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Ensure that every state is included in visits by a charming politician who can give a long speech.
Find a candidate who can keep talking for a long time.
"Fake news" and "social media" cannot actually make a politician not show up in person all over the different parts of the USA and give a good speech.
People all over the USA remember who they went to see in person and their ability to give a great speech.
Dont lecture people in different states from the elite coast. All the other states can sway that US election so be more aware of local issues all around the USA.
Dont speak of people all over the USA in a negative way. You need their vote and voters do remember all the negative words used to describe their nice parts of the USA.
Try been positive about each part of the USA and just listen to their needs.
Dont stay on the elite east and west coast giving short lectures to the rest of the USA.
Talk about jobs, freedom and wealth. Real people want real ideas about good jobs, education, housing, not more negative lectures on elite issues.
A really great candidate can get out the vote all over the USA. Staying on elite coast talking points did not win an election.
Election observers from different political parties ensured no federal level "hacking" could happen.
Each city, state, town voted for a person they wanted elected.
The vote got counted and the results showed who the US states wanted elected.
Other nations did not bus out millions of their embassy staff to vote in person all over the USA. The FBI would have noticed a few extra million embassy staff in the USA at that time.
Other nations did not vote in the millions all over the USA. Other nations did not "hack" the computer vote as US elections do not get all counted digitally by one national computer.
The votes get counted and the count is observed locally all over the USA.
Real people all over different parts of the USA selected the person they wanted.
If a political party wants their vote, fly out to their state and talk to lots of people in person.
Uninformed (Score:2)
The issue is that people care more about what other folks post or who liked their posts on Facebook or what's on the next episode of Big Brother than who they're voting for.
AND THEN THEY ACTUALLY GO AHEAD AND VOTE ANYWAYS!!!!!!
Of course the trying-to-be-elected are going to abuse the shit out of that, who wouldn't?
I'm over-generalising, sure. But I'm not THAT far off.
I didn't vote in the last Canadian election because every choice sucked. The country's going to hell and all we care about is muslim women wea
fast-food media (Score:2)
Always Influenced (Score:5, Insightful)
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Lois Lerner did no such thing. The tea party groups formed without her permission. What happened is that a lot of political-appearing groups applied for tax-exempt status, and she looked at group names to see who to examine first. The Left thinks the US should be a country, and that there are deplorables in the US. Talking about lunatics, how about the President?
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See also Manufacturing Consent [wikipedia.org]
"Net Freedom" (Score:2)
putting tight controls on political adverts, in other words, disallowing political speech considered untrue by a central authority
making social media giants do more to remove bots and tune algorithms to be more objective, in other words, a central authority telling people how to run a website
Freedom is slavery.
Question what you read (Score:3)
The problem could be solved by educating people to question what they read and do their own research when a subject matters rather than blindly believing what someone else tells them...
But an educated populace is not what the incumbents want, they like the idea of a populace that believes whatever propaganda they read, what they don't like is for anyone else to have the ability to put propaganda infront of large numbers of people.
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An educated, financially independent population with their own ideas and plenty of time to free time to implement them is not what incumbents want, as such people are harder to control.
It's not just control. It's also a matter of selling that control to the highest bidder. Our election cycle is set up so that the big media outlets can extract significant amounts of cash from candidates in return for a reliable voting block. We still conduct major elections on a timetable designed in the days when candidates would have to ride on horseback or railroads to reach out to the populace. Why? Because time is money. And you can extract far more for continuous advertising sold over six months or
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The left have embraced Freedom House (Score:2)
I've always liked Freedom House and often linked to this map as evidence that the countries the US protected ended up more free than the ones the Commies managed to overrun.
https://freedomhouse.org/repor... [freedomhouse.org]
Of course when I did that the US left would say that Freedom House was 'a right wing site'.
Now it seems Freedom House - who are doggedly anti Russia/China and pro US - have released a report which fits the 'Russians influenced the election' narrative and it seems that Freedom House are suddenly a trusted
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I never liked Freedom House or National Endowment of Democracy.
https://consortiumnews.com/201... [consortiumnews.com]
The new bandwagon/scapegoat is Fake News = Social Media = Russia. It's all hype and deception.
Finland's presidential elections coming soon (Score:2)
As a tech community, I believe we should ensure victory for one of these less popular candidates:
(a) Nils Torvalds, Linus's father
(b) Petrus Pennanen, the Pirate Party candidate
It's a tough choice between the two, but I think we'll be happy either way, so let's start the social media engineering right away. Alas, we still use paper ballots, so no machines to hack there.
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You're unimaginatively thinking within the box.
So, it's a paper ballot. So, people make marks on a pre-printed form, which are then scanned by human eyeballs running the version-0 analogue eyeball to collate a vote count by moving the pieces of paper into piles, which are then counted by other wetware. Attack surfaces ... the wetware are attackable, and always have been. Unfortunately, people have been installing checks and balances into the c
Just what do you think is going on? (Score:2)
Correction: All nations' elections have been impacted by social engineering all years through history.
Covert? MMmm hmmmmm.
Fake News (Score:2)
I don't think this has to do with social media influencing elections insomuch as it might be used nefariously using "Fake News" to unduly impact outcomes.
Now in politics, generally speaking in the best of times, one party's "facts" are another's "lies". However there is a bit of a seperation between what might be a difference of opinion based on ideology VS something that is essentially totally made up. This line is sometimes blurred by those politicians that might shall we say bend the truth a bit more tha
"Impacted"? (Score:2)
Whatever happened to "affected"?
Does everything have to be compared to a meteor strike?
Or is it possible there was no true "impact", in which case the OP was trolling for clicks?
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He so crazy! Luckily here in America we keep him honest with our totally impartial and honest Free Press, who, despite 95% of them donating to the Democrat Party, are totally objective and unbiased.
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Journalists are heavily leftists. Media owners are heavily rightists. You pulled that donation statistic out of your ass.
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So why are incumbent Republicans losing elections now to trans women and lesbians?
Here's a free clue: People are sick of politics as usual and have been for a long time, and so are willing to vote for anything that looks like an outsider who looks like they might have a chance. Which side of politics they come from is irrelevant. That's why they voted for Obama over Hillary, that's why they would have voted for Sanders if he'd been up against an establishment Republican, and that's why they voted for Trump
Re:Grow up, liberals (Score:4, Insightful)
You're a perfect example of a conservative: Primitive. Tribal. Individualistic.
You want liberals to grow up ? Who acted like fucking 15 year-olds during the last election ? Electing a clown as their fucking president, endangering your country, the whole world, the future of your children and grandchildren, all that just to piss off liberals, like fucking teenagers committing armed robery just to piss off their parents. You're the ones who need to grow the fuck up.
Or rather, you need to EVOLVE. The rest of the civilized world is trying to evolve beyond simple animalistic darwinism, while you conservatives cling desperately to your old individualistic, primitive, savage ways. Life on earth has evolved beyond single-celled to multicellular organisms. Now humanity is also evolving from individualistic to communal society. And there's nothing you can do about. The dinosaurs' time is over. YOUR time is over.
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Look, I am not discussing the politics here but cannot resist to point out few things.
Tribal is good. Tribes did not allow "redundant people" to exist, it would be stupid for a small group. Tribes were way more egalitarian than anything civilization has produced. So why the negative undertones? What does individualism has to do with tribalism?!? Those are diametrically opposite, yet you bundle them together into your "negative" package?
What is "animal Darwinism"?!? All mammals are cooperative; it is one of
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Why does everything turn on the "basket of deplorables"? Trump threw out insults like they were candy wrappers, but Clinton wasn't allowed a single insult? There's more to this than the Republicans want to talk about.
Also, Russia bought ads. Russia tried to influence the campaign. Assuming Russians aren't stupid, this suggests that they had some influence. The extraordinary claim would be that Russian efforts were entirely ineffectual.
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I think what the Russians did was simply to stir up shit in the hopes that something would gain traction. Then they could throw their weight behind it. There isn't much to indicate that they scored a "hit" to focus on, but that doesn't mean they didn't try.
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Or we could simply cut the military to a reasonable size and tax upper income earners at rates in line with what the rest of the world do. Then we'd be asking how we are going to spend oir massive surplus.
No. We would be asking what the hell to do with all of these unemployed former military service people.
It is not a pretty picture.
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