The Expressive Function of the Russia Freakout

[All Along The Watchtower]

No one can explain what Russia did or why I should care. Why is it so difficult to put this in clear language? Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand what has happened.  Most of your post went over my head.

I’ll pretend to believe that you didn’t understand my post and will simply reiterate that the Putin autocracy and the Trump campaign collaborated in Trump’s triumph in the hopelessly corrupted 2016 US presidential election. There’s plenty of solid evidence for anyone who cares to look at it, but the standard of proof and “transparency” being demanded by tedious litigators and polemicists like Glenn Greenwald of US intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and special prosecutors is ridiculous beyond belief, as if they would jeopardize ongoing investigations in the misplaced hope that the “skeptics” would change their views.

But go ahead and dismiss all of this. I don’t expect you to change your mind, anyway.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I probably shouldn't have bothered entering this thread because it is turning out to be exactly what I thought it would be.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I believe that Jacobin's point was that Democrats are choosing poorly if they emphasize this issue based on the belief that voters are especially interested in it. There is a strong perception that this is the motivation behind MSNBC's virtually non-stop coverage and Steny Hoyer's Greg Stillson-style demagoguery on the House floor.

Yes, we should 100% conform our policy decisions to what the voting public thinks is important. After all, that's why the Border Wall is necessary. I've always said that Barack Obama's biggest failure was not providing his birth certificate sooner, which many of the voters clearly wanted. If only in 2014 he focused on what the voters wanted, which was stopping ISIS members from coming through the Mexican border with Ebola in order to infect us, then perhaps we wouldn't be in this predicament at all...

Of course, this line of argument is absurd, as there is a difference between what public figures mention in public discourse (and what they do as part of their jobs, e.g., run hearings, introduce and debate legislation) and how they campaign. Your implication is that public discussion of the Russia campaign is unnecessary because it's irrelevant to the voters (which is false), but of course that's a dumb argument because the job of being a Congressman entails one third of running the federal government, under which the Mueller probe and all other aspects of this story fall.

[Storebought]

I am very concerned about my vote being nullified by the actions of a racist and anti-American foreign power, either acting alone, or worse, in concert with others who want my vote nullified in any way. People literally died for a right to vote you all seem so intent on dismissing as an irrelevance.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

No one can explain what Russia did or why I should care. Why is it so difficult to put this in clear language? Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand what has happened.  Most of your post went over my head.

I’ll pretend to believe that you didn’t understand my post and will simply reiterate that the Putin autocracy and the Trump campaign collaborated in Trump’s triumph in the hopelessly corrupted 2016 US presidential election. There’s plenty of solid evidence for anyone who cares to look at it, but the standard of proof and “transparency” being demanded by tedious litigators and polemicists like Glenn Greenwald of US intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and special prosecutors is ridiculous beyond belief, as if they would jeopardize ongoing investigations in the misplaced hope that the “skeptics” would change their views.

But go ahead and dismiss all of this. I don’t expect you to change your mind, anyway.

Tedious? Try writing a sentence with fewer than half a dozen clauses. You use adjectives like my hypertensive uncle uses salt.

PR link's post seemed perfectly legible to me. I'll volunteer to try to put it in words you might be able to understand:

No Witch Hunt! Trump's campaign ran and benefited from many Illegal Scams. There is LOTS of EVIDENCE. The only reason Traitor Trump isn't in jail already is the Deep State's respect for the law and due process. So much lawbreaking from the Trump Campaign. MAGAts don't care because they're Brainwashed by a Sick Cult. Sad!

[Fuzzy Bear]

I believe that Jacobin's point was that Democrats are choosing poorly if they emphasize this issue based on the belief that voters are especially interested in it. There is a strong perception that this is the motivation behind MSNBC's virtually non-stop coverage and Steny Hoyer's Greg Stillson-style demagoguery on the House floor.

Yes, we should 100% conform our policy decisions to what the voting public thinks is important. After all, that's why the Border Wall is necessary. I've always said that Barack Obama's biggest failure was not providing his birth certificate sooner, which many of the voters clearly wanted. If only in 2014 he focused on what the voters wanted, which was stopping ISIS members from coming through the Mexican border with Ebola in order to infect us, then perhaps we wouldn't be in this predicament at all...

Of course, this line of argument is absurd, as there is a difference between what public figures mention in public discourse (and what they do as part of their jobs, e.g., run hearings, introduce and debate legislation) and how they campaign. Your implication is that public discussion of the Russia campaign is unnecessary because it's irrelevant to the voters (which is false), but of course that's a dumb argument because the job of being a Congressman entails one third of running the federal government, under which the Mueller probe and all other aspects of this story fall.

The underlined is impossible, because voters disagree.  But it begs the question as to why there is a Trump?

One of the reasons angry voters chose Trump in the primaries, and (to a lesser extent) in the general election was the overwhelming sense that government at all levels was becoming almost totally unresponsive to the average citizen; the elected officials were going to do what they wanted, regardless of the popular will.  "Here, sir, the people govern." is a sentiment that has become progressively less true to the vast majority of Americans, and while Trump may or may not prove to be a positive step in remedying that issue, Trump's election did represent a popular effort by folks to at least affirmatively reject the unresponsiveness of their elected leaders of both parties.

For years, the majority of Republican voters chose candidates that wanted immigration laws enforced, but were offered candidates that pushed open borders.

For years, a major swath of voters in both parties saw Free Trade agreements as taking their jobs and replacing them with crappy jobs or no job at all, but when they complained and demanded action, they got lectures on diversity, retraining, and the need to be flexible and portable.  They were also asked to put their lives in perspective and compare themselves to the Global Poor, and not the fortunate Americans who were profiting off of their job losses.

Trump is President because our elected officials cared too little about their wishes, and dismissed their complaints with moralizing lectures delivered from a position of how Daddy and Mommy knew what was best for the kiddies, not recognizing that the kiddies were, in fact, taxpaying, working adults.  Imagine that.  And they haven't learned.  Their government is spending oodles of time on a Russiagate investigation, not coming up with anything resembling an impeachable offense yet, and they are concluding that this whole thing is taxpayer money spent to make Trump look bad.  The positive news about Trump's accomplishments they receive increase this disconnect, and why shouldn't it?

The issues of Russiagate make a world of difference to political elites because it represents opportunities of various natures for THEM.  It doesn't make a difference to the average American; they care about staying in the middle class, or getting there in the first place, and they see a good part of their government preoccupied on a matter that will not affect THEIR lives.  Yes, I'm sure that lots of folks here, enrolled in universities, well-versed, can write impressive (and not necessarily incorrect) posts about the effects of "Russian Collusion" on our "Democratic System", but they will be written by folks who have no worries about housing, food, and supporting kids.  (That's why, as a college student, I was blown off by less educated older adults; I wasn't playing for keeps yet, and there was something to that.) 

Russiagate is not a relevant issue to the vast majority of Americans, Democrats as well as Republicans and others.  When the Democratic Party gets that, they may be poised for real progress.  Until then, their collective eyes are less than an inch away from the places where colon cancer originates.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

But, for a litany of reasons, there are always going to be disconnects between what voters care about (or what they think they care about) and what actually affects them. For one thing, so much of politics in the last several decades has become nationalized to the point that voters care about national issues that don't affect them, e.g., which people can get married in other states, infrastructure projects that don't come anywhere near them or affect a supply chain that really touches them, gun control/school safety for people who don't have kids. Additionally, due to collective action problems, issues that don't have a single clear source/solution are also lower priority for people. The easiest example to think of is climate change -- an issue that is directly affecting many people in the country and indirectly affecting everyone, and is going to get worse within most of our lifetimes, but most people dismiss it is as an issue that doesn't concern them because it doesn't act on a recognizable timescale. There are also complex issues that people often have oversimplified understandings of, e.g., health care and science policy. Yet, many people still have wildly uninformed and unsophisticated opinions about them, which often go against the grain of educated career professionals/civil servants/experts who should be (but aren't always) in a decision-making role. And I've touched on topics that are entirely domestic -- foreign policy is more important now than it ever has been, but most voters don't care about most aspects of it, because they don't think about it as directly affecting them.

It's good that Fuzzy brought up Trump, because Trump is an example of why having policies based solely around what "the people" want is a terrible and short sighted idea. Republicans generally, but Trump specifically, have exploited an irrational fear of immigrants (note: I will not respond to any part of a post that tries to turn this into a debate about immigration, so Mortimer stay out, and Fuzzy please don't go there), resulting in policies that are not only inhumane but also potentially dangerous for a country with the demographic trends we have. Demagoguery (I find it hilarious, but wholly unsurprising, that Averroes uses this term to describe Steny Hoyer of all people in an effort to defend Trump) over easily manipulatable public opinion led Trump to establish a task force for investigating voter fraud (when it was obvious to most of the country that none existed) and an agency for investigating crime committed by illegal immigrants -- issues that either don't exist or are negligible in scale and effect, but were instituted in reaction to ridiculous public will. Meanwhile, issues that do actually affect people, e.g., carbon emissions, clean air and water, financial regulations, workplace safety regulations, are getting gutted by this administration because supposedly nobody cares about them.

Which brings us to Russia. Crumpets already put up a good post giving a few examples of why this is problematic and how it affects people and, of course, people in this thread who it posed inconvenience for conveniently ignored it. We are talking about very strange, incoherent and inconsistent policy from this administration when talking about a very ambitious, nefarious foreign power. Even in the absence of direct evidence of collusion, the completely inept and insular way Trump is handling our relationship with Russia, and issues of foreign policy that involve Russia, is worrying. We are talking about an unexplained deference to a country that has a stated goal of trying to undermine the alliance system that has been the cornerstone of the western world for the last half century, disrupting relationships with our allies that are important for global trade and geopolitical strategy. Whether or not you are willing to entertain the idea of collusion, compromise, etc. we have a President who is partially unaccountable to his own intelligence services, cabinet, and legislature when it comes to one of the most important international relationships in the world, and we have bizarre moments like Helsinki, multiple breaks in diplomatic precedence, and no idea of what his long-term strategy is. Whether or not people think this issue is "relevant to them" is irrelevant, because whether or not they like it, geopolitics affects them and people everywhere else on Earth. Trade and cybersecurity are just two examples of this. It's idiotic to let people's (willful) ignorance be a justification for lack of action or apathy.

[All Along The Watchtower]

No one can explain what Russia did or why I should care. Why is it so difficult to put this in clear language? Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand what has happened.  Most of your post went over my head.

I’ll pretend to believe that you didn’t understand my post and will simply reiterate that the Putin autocracy and the Trump campaign collaborated in Trump’s triumph in the hopelessly corrupted 2016 US presidential election. There’s plenty of solid evidence for anyone who cares to look at it, but the standard of proof and “transparency” being demanded by tedious litigators and polemicists like Glenn Greenwald of US intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and special prosecutors is ridiculous beyond belief, as if they would jeopardize ongoing investigations in the misplaced hope that the “skeptics” would change their views.

But go ahead and dismiss all of this. I don’t expect you to change your mind, anyway.

Tedious? Try writing a sentence with fewer than half a dozen clauses. You use adjectives like my hypertensive uncle uses salt.

An unsurprising response. Take care.