Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Victor Davis Hanson On Russiagate: "The Police Were Not Policed"

How much of this is true?
   The first two paragraphs seem obviously true:
[1] No doubt Russia must be watched for its chronic efforts to sow more chaos in American elections — despite Barack Obama’s naïve assertion in 2016 that no entity could possibly ever rig a U.S. election, given the decentralization of state voting. 
[2] Lately the heads of four U.S. intelligence and security agencies — Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Chris Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone, and National Security Adviser John Bolton — held coordinated White House press conferences to remind America of the dangers of Russian chicanery. Trump, who is prone to conflate documented Russian efforts to meddle and cause chaos with unproven accusations of Trump-Russia collusion, should heed their warnings and beef up U.S. counter-espionage efforts and cyber deterrence.
That bolded bit, in particular, is true and important in my (hunchy) estimation. This is why I'm not as impressed by the If-he's-innocent-why-does-he-act-guilty argument as many other people. He's acting a lot of ways. That is: his actions underdetermine theory choice. They can be explained by guilt, and they can also be explained by a puerile inability/refusal to distinguish (a) The Russians meddled and (b) We colluded with the Russians. Trump, remember, is not too smart as very stable geniuses go. He's also fairly indifferent to the truth, and seems to have few epistemic principles and little intellectual self-control. I'd say that he's just kind of stamping his foot and screaming NO! in the general direction of the investigation.
   What about the next paragraph:
[3]But why do our intelligence heads seem to feel so exasperated that they’re not getting through to the American people? Why do they need to reassert the immediacy of the Russian threat?
Again, there could be a couple of explanations...but I think the straightforward one gets a whole lotta presumption. I.e.: because they think Russian election meddling is a serious threat.
   After that, I don't know what to think. I just don't have a sufficiently good grasp of what's going on, largely as a result of my early decision to conserve my time and energy and just wait on Mueller... Which decision, as you can see, I'm beginning to waver on...

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