Other issues that the US faces when it wants to curtail Russian or Chinese disinformation is the First Amendment to the Constitution. We can disagree with the propaganda, but they have a right to spew it. Our legal system is designed such that it's better to allow the guilty to go free than to punish the innocent and, it works slowly building up evidence before seeking an indictment. Then, there are the many motions and appeals that slow everything down. We now also have one of our two political parties, Republicans, who no longer view Russia as the opposition, or who don't want to publicly speak out against Russia. They're much more interested in getting elected and re-elected than in protecting the country. In the "old days" people got their information in printed form and when watching news programming twice a day at designated hours. There weren't a lot of scandals about disinformation. With the Vietnam War, reporters went to Vietnam and reported from the field, showing us what war was really like. Then came the Internet and everything changed, and with the advent of AI, many people can no longer distinguish facts from disinformation and they're bombarded with it all 24/7 from so many different sources. It used to be that people who helped Russia were doing it mostly because of ideological reasons. Today, the reasons appear to be power and money. I think we need to do a much better job educating everyone on facts vs fiction and how to tell the difference, and our laws need to be updated to better reflect today's reality. I'm not in favor of changing the 1st Amendment, but I am in favor of transparent, full-disclosure laws so people know where your funding is coming from.
Very insightful. I would like to point out, I think, that “the” previous generation of the left idealizing Russia or the USSR must be thinking of the left of the 50s and earlier. The left of the 80s had no idealized vision, although questioned the aggressive approach that Reagan took toward that global rivalry. History shows the left was probably wrong about that. But we weren’t confused about who and what the USSR was
Another fundamental component of American right-wing ideology is defunding the government: making it small and weak enough to drown in a bathtub. At first, the antigovernment antipathy was mainly confined to what Republican conservatives like Ronald Reagan termed the "welfare state," the social safety net originating in the Roosevelt era following the Great Depression. At the same time, however, the Reaganite movement conservatives were strong defense hawks, who continued to view Russia as a dangerous foe.
Over time, currents from both the far right and far left of the political spectrum have commingled to undermine support for funding safety-net programs, on the one hand, and national defense, on the other. What we are now seeing are serious unintended consequences of the reflexive, simplistic defund-the-government ideology we are left with today: It has left us vulnerable to our enemies.
Other issues that the US faces when it wants to curtail Russian or Chinese disinformation is the First Amendment to the Constitution. We can disagree with the propaganda, but they have a right to spew it. Our legal system is designed such that it's better to allow the guilty to go free than to punish the innocent and, it works slowly building up evidence before seeking an indictment. Then, there are the many motions and appeals that slow everything down. We now also have one of our two political parties, Republicans, who no longer view Russia as the opposition, or who don't want to publicly speak out against Russia. They're much more interested in getting elected and re-elected than in protecting the country. In the "old days" people got their information in printed form and when watching news programming twice a day at designated hours. There weren't a lot of scandals about disinformation. With the Vietnam War, reporters went to Vietnam and reported from the field, showing us what war was really like. Then came the Internet and everything changed, and with the advent of AI, many people can no longer distinguish facts from disinformation and they're bombarded with it all 24/7 from so many different sources. It used to be that people who helped Russia were doing it mostly because of ideological reasons. Today, the reasons appear to be power and money. I think we need to do a much better job educating everyone on facts vs fiction and how to tell the difference, and our laws need to be updated to better reflect today's reality. I'm not in favor of changing the 1st Amendment, but I am in favor of transparent, full-disclosure laws so people know where your funding is coming from.
Very insightful. I would like to point out, I think, that “the” previous generation of the left idealizing Russia or the USSR must be thinking of the left of the 50s and earlier. The left of the 80s had no idealized vision, although questioned the aggressive approach that Reagan took toward that global rivalry. History shows the left was probably wrong about that. But we weren’t confused about who and what the USSR was
Another fundamental component of American right-wing ideology is defunding the government: making it small and weak enough to drown in a bathtub. At first, the antigovernment antipathy was mainly confined to what Republican conservatives like Ronald Reagan termed the "welfare state," the social safety net originating in the Roosevelt era following the Great Depression. At the same time, however, the Reaganite movement conservatives were strong defense hawks, who continued to view Russia as a dangerous foe.
Over time, currents from both the far right and far left of the political spectrum have commingled to undermine support for funding safety-net programs, on the one hand, and national defense, on the other. What we are now seeing are serious unintended consequences of the reflexive, simplistic defund-the-government ideology we are left with today: It has left us vulnerable to our enemies.