The United States on September 13 said the Russian news outlet RT is taking orders directly from the Kremlin and working with Russian military intelligence to spread disinformation around the world to undermine democracies.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States has gathered new evidence that exposes cooperation between RT and four other subsidiaries of the Rossia Segodnya media group, and it intends to warn other countries of the threat of the disinformation.
In addition to RT, Rossia Segodnya operates RIA Novosti, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik, but the announcement on September 13 focused largely on RT. The outlet, formerly known as Russia Today, has previously been sanctioned for its work to allegedly spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.
On a whole I agree with you. You’re absolutely right I am singling out USA because they do the most damage. But arguably, they do the most damage because their so large and influential. Similarly as China grows, their decisions cause more and more damage as well. It’s the ripple effect of a Boulder vs a pebble.
But as you’ve highlighted, the people’s voices in USA don’t seem to matter and that bothers me. There are lots of voices, but the voices that go against the establishment, even if it’s a majority go unheard. That concerns me. A democracy that doesn’t listen to its voters isn’t a democracy to me.
Worse as this goes on, it appears to me that they’ve found the perfect way to ignore voices. By conflating all issues, they’ve created a system where all that matters is politicking and not actual policies. For example, the Republicans tied immigration to Ukraine funding. That’s fucking insane, but it worked.
In my opinion. USA needs to stop worrying about other nations and needs to fix our own democracy first. Unfortunately it’s clear to me now that isn’t going to happen. Instead they’re conflating issues to keep voices silent. Like the Democrats running around saying you have to vote for them on abortion and OK so they’re still allowing the massacre of Palestinians, but it’s toted not as bad as what Republicans would do. It’s messed up blackmail. And that’s all the US politics has become.
Don’t let online discourse influence you too much. Our people tend to be fairly content with portions of the leadership, with most people having their favorites and disliking all the others. I never did actually highlight that people’s voices don’t seem to matter, our votes very much choose these people.
You wouldn’t know it here with Lemmy’s natural lean, but the average American is roughly centered on neoliberalism, most Lemmings find that somewhat upsetting and prefer to ignore the fact. Even with Biden being the oldest pres in our history, and with such unpopular things as Gaza on his record, he’s maintained a 30-40% approval rate. That’s a percentage of total Americans that approved of his Presidency. Obama, with slightly more right-leaning policies, was around 50%.
Ultimately, it’s more moderate, suburban parents that pick our leaders. They’re not as excited about change as the more progressive folk you’ll find here, they like stability, decorum, they don’t rush to judgement, they are not overly focused on foreign policy, stuff like that. They do not generally believe the country is in any sort of dire straits, they tend to underestimate global warming, they don’t particularly like people like Greta Thunberg, Just Stop Oil or pro-Palestinian protestors. They do not spend that much time on social media.
On the whole, I’d recommend not listening too much to the rhetoric of politicians or political operatives. Words are cheap, its actions once in office that tell the story. Do they cut taxes for the wealthy? Do they add or remove environmental regulations on business? Do they try to enact policies that will benefit people? The track records do vary tremendously, anyone who says its some uniparty is just spewing propaganda. They’re very, very distinct, both interparty and especially between the parties. You wouldn’t necessarily notice if you just listened to their words though, you do have to watch for actions. They do end up trying to have their cake and eat it too, and are more than willing to rhetorically dance around to try to avoid displeasing as many people as possible. They still have to vote on things though.
Who keeps down voting you? It’s weird. It’s not me. But I noticed someone seems to keep down voting you. I upvoted your post to try to counter act that. That’s annoying since they obviously even part of our conversation. Anyway, I hear you and what you’re saying. The problem is I don’t see it. Let’s take tariffs for example. I’m opposed to tariffs because it’s a market distortion, and we’ve always known that. Which party do I vote for to stop tariffs. And not just on China but in general. We should be promoting free trade, after all that’s what made USA great to begin with. Yet now that our manufacturing isn’t up to snuff we decide that the solution is tariffs? Look at what happened to the Russian Lada. In the end the only way to keep that company running was to stop the tariffs and start buying foreign products into their production.
But that’s just one example. Obviously the cease fire is another and so on and so forth. Yes, there are minor differences in policies, but none of the ones that I really care about, save abortion (I can’t even believe that’s a thing right now). But the problem is the parties use these tiny differences to pretend that they’re different. Where’s the policies to support small business? What about giving small businesses a tax break so they can catch up?
I’m sure we can all find those pet issues that they do fight over, but that’s their trick. They go out of their way to force you to focus on the small things and ignore the bigger issues. It’s not new, but OMG is it spreading like wild fire.
We are a nation based on trade. If we destroy our trade, we destroy the fabric of the nation. And everyone is so focused on destroying trade.
I’m not too worried, I seldom pay too much attention to small vote tallies, especially in long back-and-forths. Longform discussions of political nuance are also minefields, especially during an election year. lol
Yeah, the tariffs irritate me a good bit. I suspect that foreign policy is largely what is driving them, but that makes me fear that more China-hawkish types are being a little too successful in pushing their opinions. I’m pretty sure they’re just a geopolitical weapon though, as opposed to domestic protection. Trump wanted a trade war, he was seeking to punish China for intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, etc. Not that shit wasn’t happening, but I don’t think trade war was a good answer, nor do I think it’s too late to reverse course instead of doubling down. Global economics aren’t really my strong suit though, so I do have to admit I could be mistaken on something. Still though, I do believe that trade helps secure peace, and peace is the preferable state of affairs. So trade should be encouraged on that alone, not discouraged.
Not just minor differences, higher vs lower taxes is pretty huge. So is business regulation in this era. I have no interest in living in an actual oligarchy, by some actual council of billionaires. What the communists like to claim, but literal and overt, instead of billionaires merely having an outsized degree of influence due to the power of mass media technologies and how money can influence mass perceptions. The perceptions are still what directly controls our government, the necessary middleman between billionaires and govt that prevents them from getting everything they want. At a sufficient degree of wealth and power, they can get rid of that middle man via a transition to a different form of government, which I have no interest in seeing. Reducing their wealth is becoming a necessary precaution, we’ve reached a point on par with the Gilded Age, and we need to deal with our robber barons. Fortunately, we do have candidates and politicians desiring to do this. An unrealized capital gains tax would be a very heavy blow to capital. Biden pushes 35%, Harris is a little weaker at 28%. Both could be higher, but these are significantly better than our current 0%.
It’s funny you mention small business too, Harris just recently started running on a 50k tax credit for new small businesses. Which I think is fair, so long as other taxes can be implemented to cover the shortfall. Really it’s higher taxes that I’m most in favor of though, personally. I dislike how strong the business sector has become in American life, and taxes are a good way to attack that.
And election reform, but that’s the hardest thing to do, since you require a filibuster-proof majority to get even one step anywhere. Probably the only thing harder than fixing immigration. When we have one party driven primarily by slowly vanishing demographics like religious affiliation, they’ve realized democracy is no longer a viable path for them. Consistently losing the popular vote each election is a pretty clear harbinger of things to come, yet they can’t switch their policies because those are core and faith-based, soooo… we’re in deep shit. lol
