Saturday, February 17, 2018

By all means, let's end interference in other people's elections

While I share every decent Americans disgust with Russian meddling in our elections, let's stop pretending that we are opposed to meddling in elections, generally. The United States meddles in other peoples' selections routinely, and has done so since 1892.

Democrats do it, Republicans do it, liberals do it, rightwing fascists do it. It is the Hokey Pokey of American foreign policy, everybody sticks his foot in.

Do Americans believe in democracy? You would have to say no, not at all.
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Kingdom of Hawaii, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Egypt, Greece, Italy, France, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Japan, South Korea, China, the Philippines, all of the Federated States of Micronesia, Indonesia, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Africa, Congo, Mali, Nigeria.

Those are just a few of the places where we know the United States interfered profoundly in the government processes of the local people. We didn't always interfere in elections in those places; not all those places have elections. But we interfered all right and, if we knew more about the deep state than we do know, the list probably could be extended to every nation on earth.

So by every method that we could imagine, let us forestall interference in our own government by outsiders, but forget the moral preening. The United States government has done far far worse than any Russian trolls operating out of St. Petersburg, than any Macedonian teenagers, than anybody.

It is the goal of Restating the Obvious to restate what others have already said elsewhere. I believe  this post says something you will not find, or at least not easily find stated by any American.

But guess what? The people that we interfere with know about it.

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