"We are being played in lots of ways."

Bookworm Room notes that her Facebook spot is full of hysterics at the possible ways Russia could have influenced our election.

Before I get to the allegations, let me start with the possible ways in which Russia could have interfered with the election:

1. It could have handed money over to anti-Hillary groups to help power their opposition to her campaign. This is what Obama did, when he handed taxpayer money over to a variety of groups in Israel that worked hard to destroy Netanyahu’s candidacy. He also interfered with Britain’s election when he made trade threats regarding Brexit. Progressives are okay with interfering with another nation’s election, provided that Obama does it. [UPDATE: A friend reminded me that Obama probably took in massive amounts in foreign donations in 2008 and 2012 because he turned off credit card safeguards.]

2. It could have hacked into computer voting machines, although it would have had to deal with the fact that each state has its own system, ranging from paper votes, to scanning machines, to fully computerized voting machines.

3. It could have spread misinformation — that is, it could have spread absolute lies.

These lies might have included stories about the fact that Hillary’s husband frequently hung out with a convicted pedophile and flew on the pedophile’s private jet to the pedophile’s private island abounding with young, very young, women. Oh, wait. Never mind. That really happened.

Russia could have said that Hillary is so abusive that she’s completely loathed by those people whose job required them to lay down their lives for her. Ah! That’s not a lie either.

Wait! I got it. Russia could have spread a lie intended to humiliate Hillary by saying that she bravely landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, only to have the truth emerge that she was greeted at the tarmac by a little girl with flowers. Sorry, sorry! The story about the sniper fire in Bosnia is indeed a lie, but Hillary spread it about herself.

My point is why would the Russians lie when the Democrat party and its candidate already have that task under control?

4. It could have requested that DNC staffers send it their passwords and, armed with that information, hacked into the DNC email server and published the Democrats’ own emails, without any amendments, spoliation, fake inserts, or other manipulation of data. In other words, it could have humiliated Democrats by exposing them for the weird, hate-filled, incompetent, racist, people they are, people who unblinkingly destroyed the people’s favored candidate (Bernie) in order to elevate a woman they agreed was incompetent and not too bright, as well as not very likely to win on the merits.

...Hillary spent an unprecedented $1.2 billion on her campaign, twice as much as Donald spent, and still lost. As it turned out, this campaign wasn’t about money. Instead, Trump bypassed ordinary media spending (no big election add buys, for example), and tweeted his way right into the people’s hearts. It helped that Hillary was a horrible candidate (as even the DNC admitted in its emails) and that the people were simply putting the final stamp on their anti-Democrat voting patterns in 2010, 2012, and 2014.

...From the conservative viewpoint, “false news” began with Walter Duranty’s lies about the Soviet Union, continued with Walter Cronkite’s lies about America’s victories in Vietnam, appeared again with Dan Rather’s lies about George W. Bush’s Vietnam record, and since then has escalated. I won’t detail all the false news stories, but I’ll remind you of just a few of them in the last decade and more:

(1) Apocalyptic anthropogenic climate change, a lie that survives only if one ignores every failed prediction and the consistent manipulation of the climate record.

(2) The Obama economy is a success, another lie that only works if one manipulates government data and creates a pretend American economy.

(3) The Benghazi massacre resulted because some obscure filmmaker put up a short video on YouTube.

(4) Obamacare saves Americans money while giving them better insurance with their preferred doctors and hospitals.

(5) Democrats freed the slaves.

(6) Hillary Clinton was an effective senator.

(7) Bill Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

(8) Barack Obama is/was a racial healer.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

My take on the hacking story is that the Russians did not commit hacking types 1-3 and, even if they had, it wouldn’t matter. As for hacking type 4 (revealing DNC emails), it’s worth pointing out that the mainstream media assiduously ignored the content of the hacked DNC emails. Those who paid attention were in the alternative media and those who read the alternative media were already opposed to Hillary. In other words, the hack, if the Russians did it, simply confirmed the readers’ preexisting biases.

...Because I believe the RNC had a better grasp on security than the morons at the DNC (“You want my password? Sure”), the only response that comes to my mind after reading the WaPo take is that, yeah, I guess it is unfair that the DNC was staffed by people stupid enough to hand over their passwords for the asking, while the RNC actually had good security methods in place. Anyway, as I noted above, the Wikileaks emails did nothing more than confirm for conservatives that the Democrat party is obsessed by race, employs people who are pretty unpleasant, and understood that Hillary was a less-than-idea candidate.

...Oh, and one more thing. This whole “scary Russia and Trump” position is a set-up. Until Trump appeared on the scene, the Democrat party was all over Putin and Russia. Hillary started it with her “reset.” Obama finished it when he laughed at Romney when the latter spoke of the threat from Russia; when he assured Putin his reelection would give him more flexibility; when he did nothing after Putin invaded Ukraine; and when he handed Syria over to Russia. We are being played in lots of ways.

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