Don't you think it would be better to both 1) get better candidates 2) stop foreign states from successfully interfering in our elections via propaganda and hacking private systems?

edit - disappointed this got flagged, it's only political because certain parts of the users turn it into flamewars. Russia intelligence was attributed as the hackers behind the DNC intrusion by top firms, and is accused of systematically coordinated the timing of damaging info with Wikipedia, the Trump campaign, and networks of social bots to successfully flip the election. Then Trump damaged NATO alliances and softened his part's platform on Ukraine/Crimea, among other things. Regrettable that we can't have a mature conversation about this critical and topical subject.

It feels like all news and ads are propaganda around elections. I guess I'd feel worse if the info was faked, and/or people would express the same outrage had it not been about "their" candidate.

Do you not recall the number of foreign Hilary supporters pushing on social media and chat rooms?

I don't, post some citations. How's that related to anything I wrote, though?

One can logically believe both - that HRC was a flawed candidate who should not have run, and that the allegations of Russian interference (mainly through an intense, mostly false propaganda campaign in favor of one candidate) are troubling and should be investigated to their fullest extent. In fact, if you believe the former, the latter should at least concern you as a citizen.

I'm still 'salty' that Bernie wasn't on the Democratic ticket.

I feel like he was actually addressing the issues of the country and could have appealed to much of the electorate that ended up voting for Trump; at least the parts of it that weren't voting for Trump based on his more headline-grabbing (and other kinds of grabbing/threatening) attributes.

At the very least, maybe we would have seen higher voter turnout. I know at least a handful of 'salty' people who didn't vote at all but would never have voted for Trump.

I agree.

Hillary's collusion with the DNC is more troubling than the Russia narrative.

The DNC betrayed Democrats and worked to 'fix' the primary. That and the associated media are the real concerns.

I do think the influence of foreign governments and the problems of un-verified, not independently (and multiply) fact-checked news are real concerns.

The behavior of the DNC is also problematic (I doubt the republicans are better; one thing Trump is correct about is "The Swamp").

The general media problem is that after 9/11 every news channel became a money-making focused machine. Not something focused on reporting the news.

These problems and others covered elsewhere are /all/ issues that need real discussions and solutions.

I fear that, ultimately, the solution is education and thought; making everyone better people that strive to resist their base emotional reactions and verify that what their feelings tell them is actually the correct course of action, and not some sophisticated persuasion.

> The general media problem is that after 9/11 every news channel became a money-making focused machine.

Small point (and one that isn't intended to negate the point you're making), but I believe that if this correlates (and I'm not sure that it does) it's not causal. The move from print to online and the increased focus on click-driven advertising vs subscriptions and 24-hour cable news cycle (which predates 9/11) better explains this than 9/11. The 24-hour news cycle is something I remember as far back as the Gulf War in 1990–91.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_news_cycle

"Russia narrative"

It was a Russian intelligence operation, not a narrative or meme. Crowdstrike's report was pretty open and shut on the intrusion side of things. Reports like this one coming out (as well as further ones, should the Mueller/FB supoenas be true) show the scope of the operation was much wider.

I always groan nowadays whenever I see a nytimes.com or washingtonpost.com byline. What "anonymous sources say" Trump/Russia theory are they going to try to get us to believe now? I thought it would go on for a month or two and then the news would be readable again, but it just keeps on going.

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100% HRC was the wrong candidate, but make no mistake the impact of this stuff is huge. Why does it have to be eithe/ or?

So Melvin Redick of Harrisburg, PA really existed then? Glad you figured that one out. Not sure why I could not see it was Hillary's fault he wasn't real.

There's a good measure for the candidate people like, the popular vote, and Hillary got 2.9 million more than Trump.

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