Reddit mentions: The best political advocacy books

Would you trust a doctor paid by the pharma industry?

Would you trust a corporate university that sells degrees?

Would you trust a hospital run for profit?

Would you trust a politician owned by pro-Israel donors?

Would you trust a media run by Comcast?

Would you trust a military spokesman about spying?

Would you trust think tanks paid by foreign countries ?

Would you trust an anti-union "non profit", an anti-environnement "non profit" and a pro-tobacco "non profit" all actually run and paid by big corporations ?

The goal of a business is to make as much money as possible.

I'm not surprised.

Believe it or not, the same phenomenon exists on reddit. As soon as you bring up certain topics or certain corporations, you will have a ton of people that will come to reddit to defend them. Sometimes they create fake accounts to look more honest. Lying is a huge industry.

Never trust shit you see online if you don't see who is behind it.

I only trust democratically run and independant organizations like community-funded consumer unions and community-funded medias

>whats your end game with these poasts about how this is all normal. or that what russia did is fair game because democrats do it too?

Not just the Democrats. The GOP too. The GOP actually employed Steele first. Reagan had a sit down meeting with Iranian officials before his election. Enormous amounts of money flowed in from Russian nationals like Gazprom leading up to drilling rights during the election. In 2008, when even a blatant loophole in the law which allowed foreign private agents to donate money was cited, and McCain attempted to close it--bipartisan support from both sides killed it in comittee

I'm side skirting nothing. I'm telling people that someone walking out at night is not a witch--because witchcraft does not exist. What I don't want here is for politicians themselves to feel like they can selectively use hysteria to force out populists; that they have ultimate control. It's the antithesis to the consent of the governed, and it's a dangerous precedence to set.

>did russia delegitimatize the outcome of our election or not?

No. Americans should not feel like transparency, or finding out the truth, negatively impacts legitimacy. You could make the argument that propaganda affects legitimacy--but if American institutions lack trust to the point that facebook posts carry more weight, than pointing to the facebook posts is looking at the symptom, not the cancer.

Which adds to my reasoning in all of this. By focusing on Russia, we don't focus on..

1.) The fact that the emails revealed the truth about DNC election tampering and bias.

2.) There is a reason why the media couldn't combat 'fake news' (Because its credibility is in the shitter--and no one helped it get there more than they did themselves.)


3.) Russia is one of many foreign and foreign interested actors who attempted to curry favor with the American public, in order to affect foreign policy--by indicating it is even POSSIBLE for one of these state actors to have such a profound effect through simply misinformation, we put the power of every election in the future in the hands of the media and the elite. All someone has to do is find a country who spoke highly of a candidate and whip up another witch hunt. Because as I said before, this is far more normal than anyone is taking into account. If we don't change the laws, and instead continue to just be outraged--then any candidate who does NOT accept the HUGE amount of aid flowing in from foreign governments will absolutely lose. However, if we ALSO allow aid to be something the media/political elite can use to destroy a candidate? We've literally granted a backdoor into our democracy for a rather small group of people to torch anyone that doesn't toe the line.

Not sure if I linked it, but if you want to see how much money and power comes into watching, read the book Foreign Policy Auction He analyses revenue streams for 2008, 200 million came in, and that was separate from media campaigns by countries meant to persuade Americans to send our troops, resources and foreign aid to other nations. In the end, the U.S. is Rome--we're the global hegemony, all trade (Roads) go through us, and our legions (Aircraft carriers). All nations, if they want to be successful, especially their private interests (Companies/Business) WILL come here to lobby. It's essential. Which means what's being called out here is normal, and it will persist unless there are some dramatic shifts in the laws. Until then, all you're doing, as said, is giving power to a small group--or to the foreign powers themselves (Imagine the power Putin has right now--if he simply said "I supported X candidate" next election? ANd he can show he REALLY did, because as I said, the connections are prolific because that's the nature of a global economy. I mean, hell, most people I talk to don't even know about 96 Chinese election issues We actually had testimony that Chinese government was actively working with the DNC to fund it, and yet no special council was called, and the DoJ actively blocked investigations, and somehow there was no need to yet obstruction. Trump's interlude with a lobbyist isn't even in the same ballpark, and yet the media and investigative storm is far more aggressive....why?)

This doesn't mean you do nothing when there is a focused intelligence campaign btw, but it's the reason why learned the lesson long ago that the proper way to counter foreign intelligence is with counter intelligence. It's why counter intelligence investigations are not made public. It was an unprecedented mistake for this to be made public, and the culpability of that can be shared among Obama, Comey, HIllary and Trump.

>you post about authoritarianism of the left, can you list some examples?

Well, it depends on what setting you're looking in. I mostly post about academics. Examples there include no platforming speakers, language restrictions on the campus, an almost mob-just mentality toward Liberal dogma that is eerily reminiscent of Family Values conservatism of 14 years ago (One family values organization, actually, rebranded itself into a feminist/women's organization, and almost all of its anti-sexuality rhetoric carried over--kind of funny. I'll try to remember the name.) If you want specific examples, I can give them to you, like microaggression monitoring, or Ayasn Hirsi Ali (For example) being named a 'hate speaker' by the SPLC, and being no platformed in multiple college campuses? The Left is losing its way, unfortunately--and I say this as someone who believes I am decidedly left.

But you'll have to be more specific, in what sphere? For me its so ubiquitous it's like calling out moral majority shenanigans; it's represented in most institutions, on many levels, but it's not nearly as extreme in some as it is in others.

Understanding is progress. A decade ago, I still found resistance to the idea that this system was "corrupt." Now even my right wing messaging friends say "corruption is the issue."

Also, locally: Cities and some states are amazing. Read Eric Liu's You're More Powerful Than You Think.

Great idea!

You’re More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen

It’s more abstract, but it completely changed my understanding of politics.

Yep it's real: https://www.amazon.com/37-Day-Mayor-Americas-Future/dp/1542977681/

How To Be Right: … in a world gone wrong