Between the two recent Rec list diaries —The American Experiment is over/not over— there is a truth that points to something larger that we are witnessing. Something more than just a US Election.
Recently I came across two pieces of non-mainstream media which together may be a big part of the puzzle to help explain what we are seeing right now.
- Why were the polls so wrong?
- Why have so many Americans on the Right gleefully discarded American norms and values?
- Why are they fine with railing against science and fact in the midst of the worst healthcare disaster this country has experienced in a century?
- Why is Trump's brand so resilient when any of the many scandals that have been uncovered would have sunk other Presidents?
- Why can Trump get away belittling US Intelligence while praising Putin?
- Why has America gone crazy?
Whirlwind
https://lnns.co/tc-YlR_mHD3
Recently I found Whirlwind, a ten part Podcast written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author Tim Weiner. In this series Tim interviews some of the leading experts on spy craft — CIA chiefs, spies, defense secretaries, former presidents, scholars, and journalists who cover these issues—to trace the roots of political warfare between America and Russia. A war that has been going on behind the scenes for 60 years. The episode I just finished (#8) has a great interview with Peter Strzok and gave a condensed version of operation Crossfire-Hurricane, the investigation of Donald Trump and the Russians.
You know how some podcasts ramble on just to fill time? That is not the case here. Whirlwind doesn't waste words as Tim Weiner lays out the facts, building on past political events leading to where we find ourselves today. The guests are all heavy hitters with impressive credentials. And they don't waste time either.
For 60+ years the Russians have been losing to America. They lost the Cold War. On top of that, they lost their union — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. NATO, who Russian leaders see as an arm of America, has been encroaching on their lost lands and Russia perceives NATO as a huge threat.
So how could Russia fight back? A hot war can't be won. Any open confrontation with America will be a loss for them. The Cold War was lost along with rendering obsolete most of the weapons developed to create a credible threat.
The only place left for Russia to wage war on America is by attacking American Democracy itself. And those attacks are both direct, like hacking into Democratic officials computers to steal e-mails, and indirect, like getting American's to distrust the voting process and doubt the results of an election.
It also occurred to Russians tasked with this project that pitting Americans against each other would produce beneficial results for Russia by weakening America. So they set about to pit Republicans against Democrats, Conservatives against Liberals, North against South, Rural against Costal Elites, Whites against every other skin color. Those rivalries were already there and were plain to see, but prior to Trump, most Presidents endeavored to lead "above" that stage. Russia set about exploiting that weakness in the easiest and cheapest way it could.
Russia has been launching conspiracy theories into the American dialogue for many decades. One example is the rumor that AIDS was created in an American Military lab and launched against undesirables in America by its own government. The grassy knoll or second shooter is another. Likely you have heard many bits and pieces of Russian disinformation during your life. But recently, Russia found willing partners inside of America to spread that disinformation at an alarming rate, all for profit. Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies were easily weaponized by the Russians, and because controversy gave those companies more clicks/eyeballs it gave them more advertising dollars. 43% of Americans get their news from Facebook. That's a huge market. Some studies show that percentage even higher.
But what Facebook is pushing is not really news. News, real news, is often boring and requires a certain amount of attention span. Jon Oliver has built his brand on explaining news. Rather than News, Facebook creates a feedback loop of anger — because anger, creates clicks. Sure you get to see puppies and find out about friends from high school. But that is mixed with customized "News" that is designed to engage you and reinforce your worst feelings about others. On the left, those links look like "Trump says he won't abide by election results" or stories of Trump's latest outrage du jour. On the Right, those links look like "Hunter Biden's Laptop" and how Antifa has taken over the entire Democratic party. Some may be true. Some are not. Facebook isn’t looking for truth, it’s looking for clicks. Truth doesn't weigh heavily, if at all.
Communist (and now Oligarchic) Russia found an easy way to turn the Capitalist machinery of America against itself. And at a much more cost effective way than the cold war, with clear results and easy targets.
One of the chilling moments in Whirlwind is when the author recounts how US Intelligence found a message on Russian intelligence servers. A "Note in a bottle" of sorts. It talks about Russian agents watching US election results from 2016, and when they realized that they had won, that Trump had won, they opened a bottle of champagne, they each took a sip, and they looked at each other and said "We made America Great!"
Whirlwind is filled with these moments. Inside stories of what is transpiring in front of us. And social media is the battleground.
“American democracy is on the line,” said Tim Weiner. “Russian political warfare has brought us to the brink. We won the battle in the 20th century – and that brought down the Soviet Union. But Russia’s winning today. Their intelligence services helped elect President Trump. They’re working to re-elect him today. And that will be a crucial test for the American people. We need to know how political warfare works if we’re going to make it through the days to come, and I’m proud to be working with partners like Cadence13, Prologue Projects and Jigsaw Productions."
podnews.net/...
The Social Dilemma
This brings me to the second piece of Information I watched: Netflix's The Social Dilemma by award-winning filmmakers Jeff Orlowski (Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral) and Larissa Rhodes (Chasing Coral).
I was not initially excited about The Social Dilemma, but my partner wanted to watch it. Early on, the documentary is interrupted by short vignettes which dramatize how the issues being talked about in the documentary impact people lives and mental health. I found the vignettes well done, but jarring. As The Social Dilemma went on, I realized how informative these vignettes were. They breathe life into the concepts being talked about and create a human understanding of the real-world impact of these technical issues. It is compelling. I kept getting having little insights into how easily people are manipulated by these big powerful companies who's intent is not to help, but to extract profit by selling eyeballs and actions.
One of the people being interviewed (like the guy who invented the "like button" on facebook, but now regrets it) says something like "Imagine that every time a person went to Wikipedia, instead of a page curated to be factual, the page was instead customized for them, to show them "information" about the subject that they would agree with. How different would our experiences be?
How different would we think? How can we manage our democracy if there is not a shared reality — like, oh... say... there's a pandemic sweeping the country and the world and wearing masks is the most sensible way to approach things at the moment. OR the fact that currently the average rate of infection in America is one person every second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Every second! That is astonishing. More astonishing is how many Republicans "feel" that these numbers are a hoax.
Another thing I learned watching The Social Dilemma is how the rate of teenage suicides amongst girls 10 to 13 has skyrocketed since the introduction of social media. The chart they show is scary. Yet there doesn't seem to be anyone doing anything about it.
Billion Dollar Internet Giants are constantly researching and refining algorithms to trigger addictive behavior in users to keep them coming back and clicking.
There is no research by these companies on how to create a better, more fair or just Democracy for those users.
Here is the trailer for the Social Dilemma. But I urge you to watch the entire show on Netflix through to the end — even if you feel you know all these things already. The way the experts lay things out in this documentary will give you new language to talk and think about the problems we are facing.
Now, Extrapolate.
Combining what you learn on Whirlwind with how easy actions are to motivate in The Social Dilemma answers a lot of questions.
How difficult would it be to get protestors to show up and storm vote counting in places where Donald Trump and Russia need the counts to stop?
How tough would it be to prompt protesters where vote counting needs to continue to scream "Count the Votes" — While in other areas of the country where Trump needs the votes to stop being have them scream "Stop Counting Votes"?
Apparently, Not hard at all.
Google knows what state you live in. Facebook knows. Twitter knows. Instagram knows. And the Trump campaign knows. And they know so much more.
Once you have Americans hooked on your Facebook feed of disinformation and hate — you can feed them any story, even the most preposterous lies, and all their "sources" will agree and reinforce that message. And the thing is, that message can be targeted in different ways for users in different states or with different occupations or for people with different skin colors. It is even possible to target people with an inclination to believe a certain type of story with a new similar false story.
How hard would it be to spread false rumors about vaccinations — and particularly the upcoming COVID-19 Vaccine? And think of how many people a bad actor could kill with no fingerprints on the weapon.
How hard would it be to target police officers and their families on Facebook with fake news of dangerous Antifa? Or fill their feeds with stories that BLM protesters were carrying guns or other weapons hidden from view with plans to riot? Cops already think every black person they stop is reaching for a gun, even if the black guy is running away from them. So how hard would it be for enemies of America to use Facebook to feed bullshit to an already militarized and paranoid police force to make them more likely to meet protesters with violence? Has that happened? We don’t really know.
If you are a Russian Troll farm, what have you got to lose? Not a damn thing. Throw out the craziest shit, and if it sticks, you have a little victory. If it doesn’t, you move on and try something else under a different American persona. It has proven to be a piece of cake for Russian trolls to focus not just the nation's, but the Justice Department's attention on Hillary's emails. This was a complete Russian hit job from top to bottom. Character assassination was just the start of the plan.
To paraphrase a quote from Whirlwind: "Like a cow watching a train pass by, US intelligence saw Russia gaining access to Hillary's emails and more -- but they didn't know what they were looking at."
They had no reference. No idea how that information would be weaponized and used against Democrats in the election, because they had never see it done before. They saw it as regular old spying. And here were are again, with a lack of imagination on the part of US Intelligence to recognize a threat while it is in the making. Possibly the biggest Intelligence failure since 9/11. Maybe even bigger because it is still on going.
It used to be that coordinated propaganda at this level, reaching this many American's, was out of any foreign country's reach. Now, not only is it cheap to reach millions of American's instantly, but it is easy to target them with specific messages and time those messages for the most impact.
Will it Ever End?
No. Not unless we make it.
Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that no course corrections are coming any time soon to Facebook unless government regulations force those changes.
There is really no incentive or penalty for Fox News to pick up the latest confabulation by Russia and reinforce it as "news". They make money off of it. There is a segment of America that ONLY gets its news from FOX News or right-leaning Facebook feeds.
After the 2016 election, a lot was revealed about Russia — and then Trump fired Comey and brought in Bill Barr and here. we. are.
Mitch McConnell isn't going to do the right thing. Young girls committing suicide at an alarming rate! Or biggest foreign enemy influencing policy at the highest levels! A pandemic killing hundreds of thousands! That's no problem for Mitch. If it is not about judges judges judges, Mitch doesn't care.
What can we do if Biden is President?
There are a lot of things. None of them comfortable or easy.
If we are going to secure our country, the very first thing to do would be to hold open hearings, not just on Facebooks complicity of selling out America for money, but on the Republican party's complicity. These things are huge crimes. And what isn't outright criminal is immoral and should still be revealed and examined in front of the American public. Our nation can not heal without a full understanding of how it was betrayed by Trump and the GOP. And we cannot protect ourselves until we understand that we are at war with Russia and that that war is a disinformation war and is STILL GOING ON and social media is the front lines.
Just because Biden won (as it is looking now) the Russians aren’t going to quit. They have to keep chipping away. Stoking hatred and fear of others.
Laws certainly need to be passed. But until we can have a Senate that represents America, we will have to rely on Presidential Executive Orders, House Investigations and National Intelligence. We need to reopen the Crossfire-Hurricane investigation and have Intelligence investigations on all of this.
Not trying because we want to "make nice" or reach across the aisle is naive at best — and it's the best outcome Russia and Putin could hope for. Not trying to shine a light on this war is not an option.
We, the United States of America, are in an ongoing and current Disinformation War that has replaced the Cold War. This war was being actively waged on America prior to the Berlin wall coming down. It has continued through to this day. Russia, Putin and the KGB are winning. They've gotten results. And America is not only NOT fighting back, we are not even aware of it for the most part. We certainly aren’t trying to protect ourselves and our most precious assets — the ideals that bind America together and make us strong our votes and our democratic institutions.
If this war is not investigated, brought out in the open and exposed — which will include exposing the complicity of many US congresspeople along with Trump and his family and cohorts, if Facebook and Twitter are not held accountable, if nothing changes during the four short years Joe Binden has — then the American Experiment may be lost. America is not a given. Democracy is not the natural state of civilizations. Democracy takes effort and it has to be protected when under attack.
It is under attack right now. As you are reading these words the war continues.
When will American's see it and insist on fighting back?
