With not much time to write a post, I thought that I would do and stick with something quite simple and one would hope a lot of people would both understand and believe. Ever since at least 2016, if not sooner, the Russians have been involved in US elections. This is illegal and an outright disregard for how the democratic process is to work. But that’s exactly what they want and why they do it. Plus, there might be some American politicians who would benefit from this and want this illegal help.
First, let’s start with a brief recap of some of the people that have benefited from this and might have illegal ties as a result. Of course, the Russians wanted Trump to win in 2016 and did a lot in order to ensure this, based on what we know about the fact news that they caused. There are a bunch of people that sadly rely on just facebook for their news or other, unreliable sources that the Russians are certain to exploit.
Josh Hawley might have benefited from Russian help, but there is currently no proof of connections between the two, just that they wanted him to win. Mitch McConnell is perhaps the most infamous person now with Russian help (even more infamous than Trump since he has a nickname now, namely Moscow Mitch) since he had said that he would deny that such a thing was happening and was only being said to help Obama.
Now there isn’t any real evidence that disproves that Russia is interfering in US elections. They would want that belief going around too. What some people, including me, are skeptical of is just how much influence they actually have. Are they actually changing the results? How much chaos are they causing, really? And are they doing it in a way where we’ll even notice the effects of what they are doing?
It wasn’t just 2016 that they affected our elections. It also happened in 2018 and is poised to again in 2020. They don’t even need to. Our own politicians are causing messes themselves that fuck everything up. Brian Kemp, for instance, didn’t need Russian help to purge more than enough people from the voting rolls that it could have changed who won that election. Trump and tons of other Republicans are complaining about vote by mail, certain that they won’t win that way yet also voting by mail themselves (at least in Trump’s case).
Still, we shouldn’t underestimate their power. We also shouldn’t excuse it just because the US has done things like it in the past. That doesn’t make what they are doing okay any more than it makes what we did okay. Plus, that was a while ago with leaders that are long gone now. It is always illegal for people to help elect someone in a country that they are not a citizen in.
It is hard to know just how much the extent of what is going on with Russia and US elections is. The threat is quite real. They like to put Republicans in charge, which should worry Republicans as much as it should worry Democrats. Plus, you wouldn’t want to learn that you didn’t take office on your own merits but only because another country wanted to sow discord in the whole electoral process of ours. This problem will not go away on its own and we can only hope that people will realize it is a problem and do whatever they can to solve it.
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