Quote (Goomshill @ 20 Jul 2018 21:27)
you know what the problem with hypotheticals is?
I mean, we have proof that Hillary/DNC actually did collude with the Ukraine (manafort ledger), and proof she/they colluded with Russian sources (steele dossier), both with the purpose of influencing the election. Heck the FEC even fined Bernie for colluding with a foreign government and it didn't even make the papers. And here we are two years of wild accusations against Trump later and it looks further than ever that any actual knowing collusion took place. Yet you still want to deal in the hypothetical. You can use hypothetical scenarios to debunk claims and identify the weaknesses of theories, but they're all too spurious when you want to construct one in the absence of evidence. Take the hypothetical case where Putin did have kompromat on Trump and did collude with him. In that scenario, you have to come up with rational explanations for why Putin would never deploy his kompromat even after years of Trump pooping all over Russia. 3 rounds of sanctions, 2 rounds of tomahawks on assad, blowing up 200 russians in battle, sending lethal arms like patriot missiles to ukraine and poland ($200 million more released just today), undermining his energy leverage with LNG shipments and opposing nord stream 2, denouncing him on skripal and election hacking, ejecting diplomats, closing consulates, etc etc etc etc. Such a theory needs to explain how all that can happen and Putin did not use his leverage to stop it. You can't keep rationalizing every action as a false flag gambit, then its nothing but tinfoil nuttery. Also, you must rationalize the theory by figuring out how it all managed to stay secret this long. With every journalist in the western hemisphere digging desperately to try to find collusion, and an intelligence community so leaky that the public gets to know what Trump eats for breakfast, there's no way such a conspiracy could be kept hidden for so long. Same problem as the 9/11 crackpots, Maddox had a good piece on debunking conspiracies back when everyone screaming about it now was in diapers.
It reeks of desperation when the best the anti-Trump conspiracy theorists can hope for at this point is the kind of offense that is either not illegal, or an FEC violation that's normally punished with a slap on the wrist, minor fine and sending kids on their way.
People want to believe in conspiracies. People would rather delegitimize their opposition than address their arguments. Our political discourse is all about impugning motives on a scale never seen before in American politics, not even prior to the civil war when ideologues at least did each other the service of acknowledging the contrasting views as they spat upon one another and beat them with canes.
proud to deliver
What does Hillary Clinton and the DNC's wrongdoing have to with potential Russian interference and Trump?