"We get to vote? Big deal. People get to vote in Rwanda, Russia, the Congo and countless other autocratic states as well." The OP below covers our last election and the reality that is our politics today, read it but be aware you may learn something that challenges your assumptions.
"Trump’s popularity with “heartland” rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election investors that half of Trump’s supporters were a “basket of deplorables.” There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary’s “deplorables” blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 gaffe: telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a campaign finance profile closer to Romney’s than Obama’s in 2012 – and not the Republican making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas."
"In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump’s ironic, fake-populist “outreach to blue collar workers” would help him win “more than half of all voters with a high school education or less (including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/0...e-white-house-reflections-on-a-recent-report/
"FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: 'The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel. They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers, not Russia. American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots, I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate…"
“…stories hyping ‘the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.’ By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up ‘tensions between groups already wary of one another.’ Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report….”
Quotes above from link above.
'Noam Chomsky on the Populist Groundswell, U.S. Elections, the Future of Humanity, and More'
https://www.ineteconomics.org/persp...u-s-elections-the-future-of-humanity-and-more
"Trump’s popularity with “heartland” rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election investors that half of Trump’s supporters were a “basket of deplorables.” There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary’s “deplorables” blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 gaffe: telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a campaign finance profile closer to Romney’s than Obama’s in 2012 – and not the Republican making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas."
"In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump’s ironic, fake-populist “outreach to blue collar workers” would help him win “more than half of all voters with a high school education or less (including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/0...e-white-house-reflections-on-a-recent-report/
"FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: 'The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel. They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers, not Russia. American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots, I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate…"
“…stories hyping ‘the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.’ By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up ‘tensions between groups already wary of one another.’ Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report….”
Quotes above from link above.
'Noam Chomsky on the Populist Groundswell, U.S. Elections, the Future of Humanity, and More'
https://www.ineteconomics.org/persp...u-s-elections-the-future-of-humanity-and-more
