No Corporation is an Island

"You know what they want? They want obedient workers.  Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it." - George Carlin

You might have seen this in the news lately: Seattle has announced a plan to tax corporations that make over $20 million per year $275 per employee, in order to raise revenue for affordable housing and programs that help the homeless.  Reportedly, Seattle's new tax is gaining traction with a handful of Silicon Valley cities, but it's also drawing a fair amount of criticism.  Can you guess why? You got it - Amazon will likely respond by simply moving its offices somewhere else.  In fact, Amazon has hinted that it's considering such a move.  Man, what a bunch of fools those city officials are! Their plan is going to cost the city both jobs and revenue.


Except that Seattle (kinda) has the right idea.  I don't agree with Seattle's new tax - how much control does the city council think Amazon and the other corporations really have over the local housing market?  But I would get behind a similar concept, like steep monetary penalties for wealthy companies that can, but choose not to, pay their workers a living wage.  (Looking at you, Walmart.  Along with just about every fast food franchise.) Those companies' workers have to make a tough choice to cope with shortfalls, given their salaries: go without, work a second job (if possible), or rely on government assistance.  It shouldn't be that way.  They deserve wages that will let them cover basic necessities: food, clothing, a decent place to live, the means to afford the inevitable medical emergency.  I don't think that's too much to ask.  Let's penalize the companies that hoard the revenue and make their employees subsist on scraps.

By this point, I can practically see people objecting.  (That's right, I can see you out there, saying "What is this bullshit?" to yourself.  Hang on, I'm getting to you.) I've been hearing the same objections, more or less, for years, so let me write a few words to address them. 

First, people often say that low wage jobs don't deserve higher wages because they don't require a lot of skill.  Well, go work one of those jobs some time.  There's a lot more work involved than most people realize.  Take a fast food worker.  The act of grilling a burger, deep-frying some chicken wings, or preparing whatever fast food an establishment serves, isn't terribly difficult.  Try doing it nonstop for an entire shift, though, including when you're under pressure because a huge crowd of people showed up at the same time.  Don't forget that you'll be performing some other task like cleaning or stocking during the slow times.  So yeah, fast food employees work their asses off all day. They absolutely deserve a living wage.

Second, opponents argue that it will negatively affect businesses.  I can kinda/sorta see that, if it's a mom-and-pop operation we're talking about.  Small businesses have thinker profit margins, so requiring them to pay higher wages will probably cause a lot of them to go out of business.  But we're not talking about mom & pop businesses.  Walmart (I like to single it out because it's the king of asshole companies) raked in $482 billion in FY 2016, so it could easily spare some of that to give its employees a boost.  Here's a Fortune article that crunched the numbers, so I don't have to.  Point is, just about any retail/restaurant/fast-food franchise could provide pay & benefits without suffering much lost revenue.  If it really wanted to. 

Of course, this won't happen, because companies are obsessed with their balance sheets.  Businesses that can will just move to a place where they don't have to pay employees as much - just like Amazon is hinting it might do.  Hmm, that sounds familiar, like something that happened before. . .wait, it's on the tip of my brain. . .oh, I know! Outsourcing! That happened mostly in the 1990s so I think it's been long enough for us to gauge the impact.  How'd that work out for everyone involved?

Not so well, right? Sure, it was great for the companies: they got a ready supply of inexpensive labor, and saved money by paying pennies on the dollar, with no perks like insurance or a pension.  But for everyone else, not so much.  A lot of companies moved to America's immediate neighbor to the south, but later packed up and moved again when they found a better bargain elsewhere.  Think about that: the companies thought Mexico was too expensive.  In other words, the competition for those manufacturing jobs basically became a race to the bottom.  Remember that piece of info, because you will see it again.  And the American economy took some hits too.  Several million American factory workers (sources vary from 5MM to 14MM) were unceremoniously dumped back into the job search, with a predictable effect on wages, per the law of supply and demand.  Here's a graph that helps explain it, courtesy of the University of Toronto (and some modifications by yours truly.)  You'll notice that when you increase the labor supply (shown here by the dashed line labeled S2), wages go down.

 

Could outsourcing (and also technological advancements, to be fair) be responsible for the wage stagnation that's been happening for the last four decades? The number of jobs lost to technology and outsourcing ranges from 5 to 14 million, which represents about 3.9% - 10.9% of the total US workforce (these percentages are based on the April 2018 workforce of 127.2 million workers.) Those percentages are pretty big chunks of the workforce, so outsourcing & technology almost certainly played some part in wages flattening. 

And it's not just outsourcing or technological gains.  The "gig" economy, self-driving vehicles, retail kiosks (okay, I guess those last two are technological gains), the "retail apocalypse". . .they're all combining to make jobs, especially stable, well-paying jobs, harder to find.  Add in factors like rising costs for housing and health care, and the result is that it is becoming harder for people to get by. 

And people realize it.  They instinctively "get it," even if they're not expert economists armed with reams of data to back up their arguments.  They've understood things haven't been getting better for years now, and they've been making their frustrations known.  The Tea Party.  Occupy Wall Street.  The 2016 Presidential election.  These have all been expressions of the population's discontent over the status quo.  They know the economy isn't working for them, and they're pissed about it.  Amazingly, Washington and Wall Street still haven't gotten the message - if the recent tax reform bill is any indication.

Seattle kind of gets it.  Its tax proposal, despite a few severe flaws, is a step in the right direction.  And also why Amazon's CEO is an asshole for threatening to relocate unless the city of Seattle gives into its demands; it knows (or should know) the lessons from recent history about how a company's race to the bottom is detrimental to the overall economy (I told you that would come up again.)  An economy is like an ecosystem, and when one part of it breaks down, it creates a ripple effect throughout the entire system.  Right now, a decent-sized portion of the workforce is at risk.  People need money to buy all the products our economy churns out, and they need good jobs to get that money.


But maybe I'm wrong.  It's hard to know how events turn out while you're in the middle of them.  Maybe this will all turn out okay, more or less.  Things turned out more or less okay after industrialization and mechanization in the mid-1800s, right? Maybe we'll be okay this time too.

But what if we're not?

"There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy." - Alfred Henry Lewis

A Few Thoughts on Weaponized Patriotism

So, it's been a long time since my last post.  Sorry about that, it's been hard to write anything lately.  I haven't had the time to crank anything out, or to mull ideas over the way I like to as part of my creative process.  Also, and this may surprise you, but I haven't had many blog-worthy ideas the past few weeks.  I finally came up with something worth writing about, though; so here we go.

The NFL/national anthem/kneeling controversy was back in the news about a week ago.  It coincidentally resurfaced a few days before Memorial Day, when there's an uptick in patriotic displays.  In a way, I find that convenient, because I see the holiday and the debate over kneeling as being somewhat related.  Memorial Day is meant to acknowledge and honor this country's fallen servicemen and servicewomen, and one of the main criticisms of kneeling during the national anthem is that is disrespectful to those same fallen.

Anyway, the issue made headlines again because the NFL recently released its revised policy concerning kneeling and other forms of protest during the playing of the anthem.  Naturally, President Trump weighed in and the media ran with it, because neither of them can pass up an opportunity to generate sensational clickbait.  I posted a link and a few sentences about it on Facebook (see the screenshot below), but I'd like to expand on it a little.

 

Here are my thoughts.

First, if your opinion resembles Trump's on this issue (or just about any issue, really), you may want to rethink that opinion.  Trump has no concept of things like selflessness, sacrifice, loyalty, duty, courage, or any of the other qualities that make a good soldier; and he doesn't have any interest in showing any respect to the armed forces. (Trump isn't a good human being for that matter, and if someone can't figure that out after ten seconds of hearing him speak, that person is a horrible judge of character.) He has made that clear on countless occasions: he belittled a POW, he disrespected a Gold Star Widow, he still hasn't visited any troops in active combat zones, he made his commencement speech at the 2017 Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremony about him--to name a few examples.  He does not give two shits about the flag, the troops, or the country, so he's not someone anybody should look to when it comes to what is or isn't patriotic.  Which leads me to my next point.

Second, anybody who tries to frame patriotism as an in- vs out-group thing should be treated with skepticism.  They usually have an ulterior motive.  It could be an attempt to derail a discussion--calling someone unpatriotic tends to put them on the defensive and reframe the debate really quick. For example, remember the backlash against the Dixie Chicks after they criticized former president Bush in 2003? Or how Joe McCarthy exploited anti-Communist fervor for political gain? You'd think this would be obvious, but there seem to be a lot of people out there who don't get it.  

Third (and last), here are two things that patriotism should not be.  It should not be coercive, and it should not be unquestioning.  You can express your patriotism however you wish, but you should not expect others to express it in the same way.  You should also not shy away from asking the hard questions--particularly to how the armed forces are employed, since "respecting the troops" is at the core of this debate.  Disagreement is not disloyalty, and citizens should be automatically skeptical when the civilian leadership calls for the troops to be committed somewhere around the globe.  American troops are deployed in a number of places that, despite doing work to improve the local conditions, have very little to do with protecting America and its citizens.  Why, for example, are we in Afghanistan some seventeen years later? And how does getting involved in the Syrian civil war make us all safer? These are the questions people need to ask - no, demand - of their elected representatives, and it's not unpatriotic to do so.  

That's all I've got.  I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend, and is enjoying what remains of it.

Skin in the Game

What do you think is worth going to war over? What would you consider a good enough reason to send dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of American servicemen and servicewomen into battle in a faraway land, knowing for sure that a decent percentage of them will come home either with psychological trauma, lifelong physical injuries, or in a flag-draped coffin?

In the last 72 hours or so, I've been seeing a lot of discussion among foreign policy elites about the usefulness of America's airstrikes in Syria in terms of how the strikes benefit American interests.  I've seen some say the strikes have no benefit at all, while others say they they were absolutely necessary; but one thing that many elites seem to agree on is that an overseas military intervention, under the right circumstances, in the name of American interests is perfectly acceptable.

"American interests." Those two words tend to set my teeth on edge.  I'll explain why later, but for right now, I want to briefly discuss American interests as they relate to the strikes in Syria.


First, let's figure out what American interests are. I pulled this bulleted list from former President Obama's 2010 National Security Strategy, because who better to articulate the country's interests than its president? (In case you're wondering why I used Obama's NSS instead of Trump's, it's because Obama's had a neat, reader-friendly list and Trump's did not; and I wasn't going to read all sixty-eight pages for this.) According to Obama's NSS, America's interests are as follows:

• The security of the United States, its citizens, and US allies and partners;
• A strong, innovative, and growing US economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity;
• Respect for universal values at home and around the world; and
• An international order advanced by US leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.

Do the strikes in Syria seem beneficial when you weigh them against the four items on this list of interests? The strikes were a response to Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own citizens - a purely domestic action - so while the chemical attacks were undeniably horrific, there's nothing about them that threatens any other nation.  One could make an argument that the Syrian refugee crisis threatens America's interests, but this recent chemical attack does not, in my opinion.

Now that I've talked about the strikes in Syria, let's circle back to why the term "American interests" irks me.

America's interests, as defined by the Obama NSS, are so broad that they can be (and have been) used to justify US involvement just about anywhere in the world.  An ally's neighbor threatens them militarily? Access to a vital natural resource is at risk? A humanitarian crisis, whether man-made or due to natural causes, is ongoing somewhere? Send in American troops to resolve the situation. Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia, South Korea, Iraq, and so on...the cost in terms of Americans' and locals' lives, not to mention the enormous price tag, has never seemed worth the benefit to me.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think these military interventions provide no benefits at all.  The American economy needs all sorts of goods from other nations to keep running: raw materials, electronic components, food, industrial chemicals, etc. Consumers need the goods created from these items, and companies need the steady flow of these goods to not be jeopardized, which means the United States has a stake in keeping the countries that provide these materials stable: no costly wars or civil unrest.  Sometimes ensuring that country's stability requires us to do unpleasant things such as propping up a despot or intervene in a conflict that doesn't appear to concern us.  That's the reality of the global economy, and it's not going away any time soon.  It's also a fact of human history: wars are often fought over access to resources.

I recognize the unpleasant truth, and I see the inevitability of it.  Doesn't mean I have to like it, though.  Sending our troops to fight an adversary that doesn't present a clear, immediate threat to the country seems immoral to me.

But maybe I'm just out of step.

The Militaristic Undercurrent of American Discourse

"You'll be sorry you messed with the US of A - 'cause we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." - Toby Keith, Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (2002)

There was an old story I remember hearing once or twice back during my days as an intelligence analyst, about how the Soviet Union responded when four of its diplomats were kidnapped in the mid-1980s.  The Lebanese militia called Hezbollah kidnapped the diplomats to get the Soviets to put pressure on Syria, which was making life hard for Hezbollah at the time.  Well, this didn't sit well with the Soviet Union, and it responded rather uniquely.  The legend goes that the KGB tracked down a key Hezbollah leader's relative, castrated him and sent his testicles to the Hezbollah leader, then shot him (the relative) in the head.  The KGB then guaranteed Hezbollah that it would treat the militia members' in a similar fashion if the Soviet diplomats weren't released immediately.  This evidently was enough to convince Hezbollah to free the Soviet hostages.  Now, the part about Hezbollah kidnapping four Soviet diplomats is true, but the rest sounds like an urban legend.  Although, the KGB has never shied away from these types of brutal tactics, which makes this story at least a bit plausible.

So why did I bring up that story? Because it's indicative of an undercurrent of militarism undercurrent running through American society.  The story usually came up after the US had suffered an attack on its interests, such as the kidnapping of a US citizen or terrorist attack against an overseas US installation, and it often ended with a statement along the lines of "Those Russians didn't fuck around, and nobody messed with them.  Maybe if we [the US] were more like that. . ." It reflects a desire for America to be tougher, more ruthless, less restrained in the use of force.  A mindset that thinks force is the first and best solution to solving a conflict.  And it's not limited to overseas issues such as hostile nations or international terrorism:

Dealing drugs? Harsh punishments and long jail terms.

Rogue state saber-rattling? Bomb the shit out of 'em.

Civil disobedience? Make it legal to run protestors over.

You kind of see it in a lot of places if you think to look for it; hell, you see it all over the place even without looking for it.  You see it in social media posts and news article comments in the aftermath of a terrorist incident ("Let's round all those people up and throw them in camps! They ain't got no rights!") or when a hostile nation does some saber-rattling ("We should just turn that country into glass.") And, of course, you see it on the campaign trail, when politicians )who have usually never spent a day in uniform) try to outdo each other with their "tough guy" talk (for example, here's Ted Cruz in 2015, boasting that he'll "carpet bomb" ISIS if he becomes president.)

And, to nobody's surprise, we see this militaristic attitude emanate from the White House frighteningly often.  We saw it on the campaign trail.  We saw it in the belligerent rhetoric toward North Korea.  We saw it in the decision to drop the MOAB on an insurgent stronghold in Afghanistan.  And most recently, we saw it while watching a video of a drone strike, Trump showed he had no qualms with killing the target's family in the strike.

"Watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled." (Washington Post)

Let's try a thought experiment and imagine that Trump's stance becomes military doctrine.  Would it be effective? That is, would it help the military achieve its objectives? Research shows that, at least in Afghanistan, the answer is no.  I suspect that the answer would be the same for Iraq, for Syria, and for any of the other places that the United States is engaged in counterterrorism operations - because common sense tells you that people who get hit want to hit back.  History is full of cases where people fought back hard against their persecutors.  Despite being outnumbered and outgunned.  Despite whatever unimaginable atrocities a Goliath-like military can inflict upon them.  The Eastern Front, World War II.  Gaza, now.  Afghanistan, the 1980s.  I think it's safe to say that Trump's tactics would not only be unhelpful, they would be counterproductive.

And in case you're thinking that upping the brutality high enough will eventually lead to victory - it's probably been tried already.  Crop destruction, land mines, torture, destroying entire villages - all of these things have been used in the past, and none of them helped achieve victory.  Further, some countries have been more brutal than the United States could ever imagine being, yet they couldn't brutalize their way to victory.  And even if they had been successful, is that the kind of behavior we want to copy?

If it seems like I'm worried about this out of some softhearted concern for ISIS or the Taliban or whoever, rest assured, I'm not.  Do the names John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, or Anwar al-Awlaki ring any bells? Lindh was a US citizen captured in Afghanistan and convicted of fighting against US forces; Padilla was a US citizen convicted of aiding terrorists; and Awlaki was the leader of an anti-US terrorist cell in Yemen.  Awlaki was killed by a Hellfire missile, while Padilla and Lindh are still serving prison sentences.  I don't particularly care what happens to them, or to any other US citizen who takes up arms against his or her own countrymen; if they happen to be in a great deal of agonizing pain before they die, I don't feel any sympathy.

What I do care about is what the way we treat these individuals says about our country and its values. There's a giant difference between sympathizing with the country's enemies and raising objections about our conduct toward those enemies.  Let's take torture: the intentional inflicting of suffering and physical harm on someone who doesn't pose any threat, and which produces questionable results.  What does it look like when a country - any country - endorses torture as an acceptable and effective method? Especially a country that prides itself on being "the land of the free" and a "beacon of democracy." The president recently nominated a CIA agent who supervised a black site where torture was routine to lead the Agency; that's not a good look for a country that has played a major role in capturing and prosecuting perpetrators of war crimes over the past several decades.  And it's not just torture; our country should be moving away from things like "preemptive" wars of choice and indiscriminate killing, yet our current head of state is okay with it. And around 40% of the citizenry are okay with him.

Ask yourselves: is a country that has a "might makes right" approach to conflict resolution the kind of country you want to live in?

Trump's Ongoing War on the Freedom of the Press

So it's been a while since my last post.  I never meant to let it lapse for this long, but sometimes things come up and you know how life goes.  Anyway. . .

There's a video circulating around showing how the news anchors for many Sinclair Broadcast Group outlets regurgitating a nearly-identical news piece.  Somebody took the time to splice a bunch of clips together, and that's the video that's been making the internet rounds.  (Or one of many videos.  I think there could be a few different ones.) Go watch this video here - it's disturbing as hell.

Imagine if you could only get your news from one source.  Even if you agreed with that source, it still presents a lot of problems. For one, you're getting all your information filtered through the outlet's preferences: the stories it deems important, the ideological slant it wants to put on it, the bits of data it chooses to emphasize or downplay, and so on.  Information is vital to a democracy: people need it to make informed decisions at the ballot box, among other things.  If one company, or a handful of companies, control a huge number of news agencies, how do you think those news sites will cover a political candidate that the company favors? Do you think voters will get a complete picture of that candidate, or will they only hear about the good stuff?

Which brings us to Donald Trump.  The Sinclair Group's "newscast" I linked to centered on the problem of "biased and false news" being shared on social media.  Now, that was a newsworthy story, so what's the big deal, right? Well, it's a big deal because this is the full script, courtesy of CNN:

"I'm [we are] extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that [name of local station] produces. But I'm [we are] concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.  The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media," the script says. "More alarming, national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think' ... This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. I [we] understand truth is neither politically 'left or right.' Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever."

Do you see how the news anchors try to convince you that their news affiliate is the only trustworthy source of news? Like how Fox News uses the slogan "Fair and Balanced" when it is anything but that.  Also, the script's wording, specifically its use of the term "biased and false news", reminds you of a certain President's catch phrase, doesn't it? I doubt that's a coincidence, since the Sinclair Group is in the middle of some business dealings that Trump Administration officials are overseeing.

Obviously, the Sinclair Group executives are doing this to get on Trump's good side. Unfortunately, this is taking place at the same time while a steady flow of damning information is coming out about Trump's obstruction of justice, his ties to the Russian government, and his cabinet's unethical and possibly illegal actions.  What would happen if a number of local news stations began undercutting the Mueller investigation, peddling the "deep state" conspiracy nonsense, or distracting their viewers with whataboutism? Fox News and the right-wing media still get a lot of traction among their viewers with their fawning, pro-Trump coverage; if these outlets started parroting that message, it adds fuel to the fire.  On top of that, Trump's position to influence the Sinclair deals gives him a measure of control over the company.  We're already seeing that influence how the company operates, and the deals are still in progress.  If the Trump Administration decides in Sinclair's favor, it will be beholden to him and his cronies for as long as they serve in office.

This would effectively mean that Trump's attacks on the press are moving beyond his "brain vomit" Tweets, and could potentially be disseminated by news agencies with actual credibility, not just a BS-spewing network like Fox.  Trump's attacks on the so-called "fake news" were never in jest.  He means it when he says he wants to make them register, or censor them.  He wants to control the media and its message, and thanks to the Sinclair Group's ass-kissing, Trump could soon have an effective tool to help him with that.  That should terrify you.  It terrifies me.

A Torture Enabler's Career Path

A news story that I thought should have gotten a lot of attention was President Trump's decision to nominate Gina Haspel to be Director of the CIA.  Unfortunately, like many other important stories, it was pushed out of the news cycle by later events.  If you don't know who Gina Haspel is, that's okay.  There are probably a lot of people who don't.  Here's a quick rundown of the most important details about her: Haspel oversaw a CIA "black site" in Thailand in 2002, where agents used various forms of torture like waterboarding to extract information from detainees.  (I strongly encourage you to click on that link and read the accounts of the torture from people at the site.) She also was part of a concerted effort to obstruct a federal investigation by destroying recordings of CIA employees torturing detainees.  Neither of those things impeded her career progression, because she is currently the CIA's Deputy Director.

Haspel didn't get to where she is overnight, though: America has gotten far too accepting of an unarguably immoral practice since 9/11.  "Enhanced interrogation," Camp X-Ray, preemptive wars - they all led us to where we are now.  Our government's hands weren't clean before that, of course; but torture wasn't promoted so openly and wholeheartedly before the War On Terror.  "Dubya" basically started a course of action that has proven difficult to reverse.  Obama, to his credit, managed to rein in some of the torture programs, like the "black sites"; but he couldn't halt it completely.  And his unwillingness to make good on his campaign promises ensured that it would be an uphill battle to hold anyone accountable. There's also an argument to be made that Obama's decision to not confront the torture issue paved the way for Trump's endorsement of it.

In addition to the obvious moral (it's cruel and evil) and practical (it doesn't work) objections, there are also political ones.  It's hard to say to say "You shouldn't torture people" to countries like China, The Philippines, or Saudi Arabia when three successive presidents have said "It's okay" in one way or another.  It also sends a bad message to other liberal democracies, including our allies in Europe.  How can the US present itself as a "beacon of democracy" when we engage in such a barbaric practice? On a domestic level, it also says to the intelligence community that participating in torture, and then trying to cover it up, is not an impediment to career advancement.  Expect to see the CIA and other agencies start loosening restrictions on torture soon, if they haven't already.  ICE has already taken its cue from Trump's tone and adopted more aggressive tactics, so government agencies are taking note and responding accordingly.

"Torture is bad" is such an easy and obvious judgement to make that I'm not going to spend time explaining why.  Promoting someone who had a hand in it sends the message that torture is acceptable, maybe even desirable.  The longer torture is seen as acceptable, the harder it will be to dislodge once we decide it's not tolerable any longer.  If you disagree with my position on torture, you're welcome to do so, but don't waste your time or mine trying to change my mind.

Cold War 2.0?

So a lot of Americans are pissed off at the Russian government right now.  It's now clear that Putin and his cronies played a non-insignificant part in shaping the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.  Which means that Russia is at least partly responsible for saddling us with an indisputably terrible president.  What's worse, they took away Americans' trust in the electoral process.  Not only is the 2016 election tainted with perceptions of illegitimacy, but there will be a cloud of suspicion hanging over future elections - especially since the government doesn't appear to be doing enough to safeguard the integrity of the voting process.  On top of all that, Russia did more than interfere in the electoral process.  It also stirred up a lot of ill will and worsened the country's polarization.  Look around, listen to what people are saying and read the comments they're leaving on social media: Americans are deeply divided, usually over Trump's policies and conduct.  The fact is, Russia hit us pretty hard, and Americans are right to be furious.

However, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, the US Government has done its own share of meddling in other countries' elections.  I don't say that to defend what the Russian government did, but instead to point out the hypocrisy involved.  Our government doesn't have the moral high ground here, not even by claiming it was done for "very good reasons." It's also hard to promote democracy in other countries while helping to undermine it in those same places.  Now that we're getting a taste of our own medicine, we're realizing how much it sucks. 

Second, whether unintentionally or deliberately, our government has antagonized Russia several times since the end of the Cold War.  Military alliances and campaigns such as the bombing campaign against Serbia (a staunch Russian ally) and the ongoing military presence in the Balkans, the NATO expansion, and attacks against Russia's former allies, including Iraq, have all been perceived as insults at best and provocations at worse.  To get some perspective, imagine how we would feel if the Russian military had done the following: formed a military alliance with Canada, Mexico, and several Latin American nations; bombed and occupied Great Britain; and attacked Israel twice in thirteen years.  I think we'd feel more than a little threatened.

Third, and probably most important, Russia didn't create this mess out of thin air.  It recognized that America was already pretty divided on many issues, and it poured gasoline on a low-grade fire.  There were still healthy feelings of Islamophobia, homophobia, and racial tensions; media outlets willing to publish divisive "news" for ratings and revenue; a decades-long feeling of economic anxiety due to stagnant salaries or poverty wages, growing economic inequality, outsourcing, rising expenses, and ballooning government deficits; civil liberties being chipped away; and the perception of an indifferent political class.  2016 was the "anti-establishment" election; and Hillary Clinton was perceived by some parts of the country as being a significant part of the problem.  Russia simply observed the American political and cultural landscape, and saw its opening.

Russia isn't the only one who sees an opening, though.  The Russian electoral meddling has given a lot of anti-Russian hawks the pretext they've been waiting for to resume the Cold War, people like John "I never met a war I didn't like" Bolton.  You remember him, right? He was George W. Bush's Ambassador to the UN, he was super-hawkish, and he helped sell the flimsy Iraqi WMD intelligence.  Why anyone still listens to him at all is a mystery, yet The Hill recently allowed him to write an op-ed, in which he wrote, "The White House can and should now pivot to the real task ahead, which is dealing strategically and comprehensively with Russia's global efforts to enhance its influence." There are other semi-influential people like Bolton in the Beltway, and they're drooling over the possibility of a confrontation with Russia.  Judging by her policy ideas, Hillary Clinton was one of them - which was one reason I didn't vote for her. Readopting a belligerent posture toward Russia also gives the anti-Russian crowd to downplay or distract people from domestic problems, and considering how many problems this country has, a useful distraction would probably be welcomed by some people.

America has already been through one Cold War, and it wasn't very fun for most people: the threat of nuclear annihilation, anti-Communist witch hunts and infringements on civil liberties, an multi-decade arms race, money diverted away from schools/hospitals/infrastructure/etc, and so on.  Plus, America has a lot of problems at home to solve, and the last thing we need is to focus our attention and resources on an adversary thousands of miles away.  So, let's not do that again, okay?