Said Marat Mindiyarov, interviewed by the Washington Post in "A former Russian troll speaks: 'It was like being in Orwell’s world.'"
The quote is confusing with that headline. Mindiyarov was not a troll who trolled Americans. He wanted to be one of those trolls. He "would see them on smoking breaks. … They were totally modern-looking young people, like hipsters, wearing fashionable clothes with stylish haircuts and modern devices. They were so modern that you wouldn’t think they could do something like this."
He didn't get the job because he he didn't "know English perfectly," though if you read the other article WaPo published about Mindiyarov — "The 21st-century Russian sleeper agent is a troll with an American accent" — he didn't pass the test because "it wasn’t clear if his shortcoming was imperfect English or failing to bash Clinton."
WaPo makes 2 articles out of this one guy who didn't even get the job, and on the face of the clear text of 2 articles published on the same day, it contradicts itself. Fail!
Anyway, the Orwellian environment Mindiyarov encountered was as a troll writing in Russian on Russian news articles to fool Russians. He — this propagandist whose job was lying — tells the Washington Post that he quit that job — "for moral reasons. I was ashamed to work there."
And we're supposed to believe him.... why? Is he trolling the Washington Post and its readers now? They're so damned gullible! Me, I question everybody. The sad troll who longs to be a young, modern-looking hipster. (He's 43.) The Washington Post, cranking out articles about the "sophistication and ambition" of the Russian troll operation.
The Russian trolls who supposedly could imitate Americans couldn't even really do it. Look at this one:
That's just a mess! Americans don't say "a Satan." Satan is one specific character. And "her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is" should be "her crimes and lies have proved just how evil she is." And it doesn't make sense to have Satan say "If I win, Clinton wins." It should be "If Clinton wins, I win." I think! It's stupidly confusing. And that graphic! Jesus looks like Derek Zoolander. I guess somebody decided he needed to look white, but I've never seen an "American" Jesus that white (or with that much contrast between skin and hair color). Also Jesus looks tentative and Satan looks like a superhero or wrestler. And "Press 'Like' to Help Jesus Win" seems satirical.
I think there are plenty of Americans using social media taking shots at our candidates and they're doing it on their own or for pay and with much more skill and in greater numbers. These people dilute the Russians, and it's just a lot of free speech about politics. If anything, the Russians help us all become more skeptical, because they get little things wrong and you become uneasy and therefore more aware that we're swimming in propaganda.
And I suspect the Washington Post loathes social media — whether it's full of trolls or sincere Americans (and sincere foreigners!) having our say. It competes with the Washington Post's business model. I presume the Washington Post would prefer to be your go-to source for information and opinion and to be venerated as an oracle of truth. All of social media interferes with the interests of the Washington Post. And it serves WaPo's interests to scare us all about Russian trolls in social media.
And this is where, I think, the Russian trolls have some chance of success — as a tool of mainstream media in a plot against free speech in social media.
Posts
124 comments:
That's a match I would pay to see!
Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik _A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language_, 2000 pages, goes through example after example of rules you have to follow that you never knew that you knew, in order not to sound slightly off.
Foreigners haven't got much of a chance.
Althouse studies that piece a lot closer than me or the average target reader.
Or should it be targeted? So many Grammer decisions on social media.
You question everything except Marxist feminism, which is completely out of bounds.
Oh, you will question whether some feminist nonsense is extreme.
But, you refuse to question whether the entire business was bullshit from the beginning. You have too much invested in that, and as a committed lifelong careerist and master of office politics, you know the limits of what ambitious people should say and think, and where the money comes from.
Your Marxist feminism has its origins, partly, in Soviet propaganda aimed at tearing apart U.S. society. Read the recent article written by Kate Millet's sister. Millet was psychotic, drug addled, violent and she loathed the U.S. She was a Soviet troll. So, for that matter, was Betty Friedan.
"Army of Jesus" reads more like a waggish sane American trolling hysterical leftoid Americans for larfs. It's a pretty good imitation of the "deplorable" of the latters' fevered imagining. Russian trolls copy sane Americans trolling leftoid Americans trolling their own ids...
...it's trolls all the way down.
"Beware of Safety!"
"A former Russian troll speaks:"
Mindiyarov was not a troll who trolled Americans.
Fake headline. But the article itself is truthy, no doubt.
http://www.armyofjesus.com/
"We are currently in Shanghai China, Army of Jesus Ministry is dedicated to serving our Lord Jesus Christ and to what the Father God commands us to do."
"My vote goes for him"
That ain't American either.
We should be able to differentiate between foreign trolls and our own poorly English-educated people? I don’t think we can.
"Or should it be targeted? So many Grammer decisions on social media."
A better question is why did you capitalize "grammar" and misspell it.
You seem like a troll.
But you said "a lot closer than me," which someone who'd learned English from a book of rules would not write. Maybe you had that native-speakers rule book whereof rh speaks.
He... tells the Washington Post that he quit that job — "for moral reasons. I was ashamed to work there."
I doubt anyone at the Washington Post could understand what he was talking about. Probably figured something got lost in translation from Russian.
Klavan represents the religious nut prose
https://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/left-reaping-whirlwind-culture-made/
if you want a model to imitate.
He's interested in old wise rules but not good current readings.
WaPoo has many credulous readers who think Trump will be marched out of the White House in handcuffs.
It's amazing how impervious to logic, common sense or reality they are.
We should be relieved they couldn't hire Americans to troll for them. Or were they too stupid to try that?
"Beware of Safety!"
Brilliantly, accidentally true.
Nothing worse than the overwhelming comfort of guardrails and airbags. That's why I don't trust the safety of professional journalism and attempts to protect us on social media.
I presume the Washington Post would prefer to be your go-to source for information and opinion and to be venerated as an oracle of truth.
The sad part of it is that the WaPo and the NYT still consider themselves epitomes of journalistic excellence. Perhaps because their [remaining] readers' comments never call them out.
Hillary may not be a Satan, but she is a silver-tongued devil that no one dares to prosecute.
"If I win, Clinton wins" makes much more sense to me.
I just pray that the Russians are not the ones who invented Republican Jesus. That's always been one of my favorite memes.
My theory is that language learning is learning to reassemble cliches, and a lot of the actual rules come from how that tends to come out with this or that cliche.
There are lots of sources rather than single rules, so they wind up as hidden rules.
The Russians, of all people, should know something about the futility of invading vast countries like Social Media.
And I suspect the Washington Post loathes social media — whether it's full of trolls or sincere Americans (and foreigners!) having our say.
The paradox of Clown World is that its leaders are humorless. This puts them at a great disadvantage fighting troll offensives, foreign or domestic.
The US Left is working hard every day against our free speech rights. 100% true. "And this is where, I think, the Russian trolls have some chance of success — as a tool of mainstream media in a plot against free speech in social media." The Left is louder when attacking our 2nd amendment rights, but work much much harder against our 1st amendment rights. Our elites believe "the working class (and the poor) are passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state."
Althouse said ...
And this is where, I think, the Russian trolls have some chance of success — as a tool of mainstream media in a plot against free speech in social media.
This sounds like paranoia solely for the sake of paranoia. No one cares what happens on blogger. There is no bigger picture.
Nothing worse than the overwhelming comfort of guardrails and airbags.
Knocking down blogger-constructed guardrails is the function of the politically incorrect commenter.
Ralph L said...
"We should be relieved they couldn't hire Americans to troll for them. Or were they too stupid to try that?"
They probably considered it, but decided there was too much risk that American trolls would reveal the whole sordid plot to some reporter at the WaPo.
You know, none of this crap is news BTW. I remember reading about all of this almost a year ago. This same guy was interviewed 8 months ago by PBS re on the Russian troll machine. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-russias-propaganda-machine.
One of George Will's better arguments was that seatbelts may save lives but the secure feeling makes us more dangerous drivers.
Soon after the election there was a cartoon of Hillary talking to Satan:
Hillary: "I said I would give you my soul to win"
Satan: "But you didn't have a soul"
Trolls are the result of the contruction of magnificent bridges.
One of George Will's better arguments was that seatbelts may save lives but the secure feeling makes us more dangerous drivers.
That's called the Peltzman effect.
"The Left is louder when attacking our 2nd amendment rights, but work much much harder against our 1st amendment rights."
That's because they are aware that many people do not exercise their 2A rights, and are worried about people who do. Traditionally, Americans are not afraid of other people exercising their 1A rights, although the Educational Division of the Left has been enjoying considerable success in undermining that tradition.
Today Americans are able to elect a president with godly moral principles.
That salutation has an alien, "People of Earth" quality to it:
Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is. And even though Donald Trump isn’t a saint by any means, he’s at least an honest man and he cares deeply for this country. My vote goes for him!
Hey, when you're right, you're right.
"And that graphic! Jesus looks like Derek Zoolander."
I thought Will Farrell...
"Basically, your subconscious came up with me to help you deal. Dig?"
All of social media interferes with the interests of the Washington Post.
You want it to be true, but it’s not. The Post has made a rather remarkable transition to a modern clickbait journalism
model that looks to be sustainable while maintaining its influence over Washington DC (the organization’s real value). Is it like the old days when running a newspaper business was like printing money? No, but the vast majority of Post employees weren’t even alive in those now-ancient days.
... At least when the NYT of old got snookered by Russians they could pretend not to know they might be dealing with a Russian trying to snooker them.
I think I bailed out of Zoolander early but in any case don't remember it. It was one bought because it seemed to be a cultural reference.
Russian trolls Christian Deplorables.
(US) Press like.
I bailed out of the last three DVDs I bought early for that matter. All had hopelessly trite B stories that were to supply the complication in the plot.
Earnest Prole said...
The Post has made a rather remarkable transition to a modern clickbait journalism
Sadly, this is true for all the survivors, with the notable exception of the WSJ, which was subsidized by the FOX media empire. Not sure how it survives going forward.
Hillary might be a Satan, but she's not the Great Satan.
Is it like the old days when running a newspaper business was like printing money?
IIRC, K Graham's father bought the WaPo out of bankruptcy.
The WaPo is a propaganda outfit that refuses to cover the news. WaPo ignores the real Russian collusion with the Obama Administration and Hillary campaign. Cover up.
WaPo is losing money and is propped up by Bezos. Real America distrusts all of MSM. Fake news.
Althouse and other bloggers give us better content.
Oh how the media hates the internet, even as they try to exploit it themselves. They simply aren't the gatekeepers anymore.
Brings a smile to my face, every day.
"But you said "a lot closer than me," which someone who'd learned English from a book of rules would not write. Maybe you had that native-speakers rule book whereof rh speaks."
Personally, using "me" there, instead of "I", grates on me, since I was taught that "am close" at the end is implied, which means that the entire statemenent is actually "a lot closer than I am close". But, then, I drive my partner crazy by yelling "It is I" when returning, partly, I think, because it accentuates that my grandparents were college educated, while she is the only one in her family to have completed college. And maybe nowhere is it more noticeable to me than in what sounds to my ears like her misusing personal pronouns. But then, I had maybe 7 years of Latin sometime in my misspent youth, and she did not.
Blogger rhhardin said...
My theory is that language learning is learning to reassemble cliches, and a lot of the actual rules come from how that tends to come out with this or that cliche.
There are lots of sources rather than single rules, so they wind up as hidden rules.
Stephen Pinker has several excellent books on this topic. One example is how babies regularize verbs.
"I goed to the store" Goed is past tense of go but the language has adopted older forms like "Wend," which has past tense "Went."
Those are the hidden rules and it is interesting to see how they apply.
I am loving the beginnings of springtime baseball.
Also, we have a few agents so deep in they hide in plain sight. There are information gatherers with such freedom they sometimes forget who holds the leash. Many moles are dupes, fops and fools.
Anyhoo, this Washington Post reporter I like, he is strong like bear. He is good like George Washingtons. Saved pennies are earned pennies
Jesus doesn't need me for Him to win.
I need Him to win.
D J Kennedy, What if Jesus Had Never Been Born (1994)
Terribly plotted spy thriller:
https://www.americanthinker.com
ARM, confessed troll, says there is no plot to curtail free speech.
ARM has never read about a college campus and "safe spaces" Bill shit.
A) I hate it when Althouse says it all.
B) I wish there was a “Like” button to press to help Jesus win.
C) Jesus also looks like Will Ferrel in A Night at the Roxbury.
It's just the WaPoo being the WaPoo. It's part of the enemedia.
“The problem with the internet is that there are no gatekeepers.” - HRC
The Russians' insistence on coming up with their own content is baffling. There's no shortage of American-made hyper-partisan content that they could have signal-boosted instead. Twitface consists mainly of people forwarding other people's stuff.
“Emergency! Emergency! Everybody to get from street!” - The Russians are Coming
That’s a great movie that nobody is going to show anytime soon, since it embarrasses the wrong people.
I think the better metaphor for commenting safety is “bumper lanes” at a bowling ally.
I can't imagine any voter being influenced by that absurd image and text. The KGB or whatever it's now called is losing its touch. It's hard to believe an official government Russian effort to influence the election could be that amateur and hamfisted. The only thing missing was an endorsement from "Igor" or "Sergei". However, I can imagine millions of WaPo types and pro-Clinton soi-disant progressives absolutely convinced that it resonated with the average on-the-fence Trump voter and tipped the scales to the dark side.
And we're supposed to believe him.... why? Is he trolling the Washington Post and its readers now? They're so damned gullible!
A gullibility born of panic at having to face up to the fact that the "most qualified woman in history" lost the election largely due to one remark she made at a fundraiser. A remark that the Washington Post and it's media brethren thought so apt that they widebanded it.
Near the end of yesterday's cafe thread Earnest Prole posted a link to a web site that lists "5 important details you might have missed in the mueller indictment" (hyperlink here).
Points number one, two, and four are very interesting. Number one is that once Trump was elected, the Russian troll farm became part of #Resistance. If their goal was to have Americans at each others' throats, then judging from the ignorant comments of ARM and Toothless and other #NeverTrump folks, the Russian trolls succeeded remarkably well.
Point two is that Mueller's indictment lets Putin and his government totally off the hook.
Point four is that the $1.25M monthly budget that has been touted by the likes of the Washington Post is their worldwide budget, not their budget for the American election.
And Earnie, please learn how to use the HTML 'a' tag.
I think that the Russians contributed to our culture with those over the top Satan/Clinton v Jesus memes. The vast maw of the internet has a thirst for content that is never slaked. Everything can be approximately understood by assuming at least two countervailing degrees of irony.
South Park did a fight between Jesus and Satan. Jesus won, but it turns out that Satan had thrown the fight.
Everybody
Everyone
I saw it on broadcast TV a year or two ago.
Wow, this Russian "attack" on our democracy is like Cuban-Missile Crisis or something.......
Big Mike said...
ignorant comments
I think CNN has the market cornered on the gullible audience. (Advertisers’ wet dream, BTW) As I said before, it’s The Gorilla Channel for the white left.
Hillary is a satain. Didn't take a Russian hipster troll to tell us what we have already know for 30+ years.
Put on the shoe, ARM. It fits.
TiV:
I do the exact same thing! Staring at my old Tele and 335 wondering whether to fire those puppies up or just sit and enjoy my tea while perusing the Althouse blog. One thing I have noticed, via my improved knowledge and technical skill, is that some songs are much more musically interesting to me despite their apparent simplicity. So, knowledge is a double-edged sword.
Think I'll finish my Lipton's and plug in my old, old Vox AC-30TB and have at it. Better wait until the Mrs. wakes up and has her morning eye-opener, though.
This rock and roll lifestyle is tough.
Readering wrote:
Althouse studies that piece a lot closer than me
I was surprised the good Professor Emerita studied readering at all. Send her a guitar if she has so much free time.
I’m sure there are Russian trolls that post here. Since they troll, they could be either pro or anti Trump posters.
Althouse comment on the grammar of a post was very funny!
One more, then I have to get to my book, oops! It’s by Dostoyevsky! Shit, I hope no camera picks it up! Anyway, a few months ago my brother visited the house where we all grew up, and it was still owned by the lady my mother sold it to, and she let him look around while she told him of the glories of Jesus in her life. He went in the basement which was exactly the same, down to the supplies of water that my dad laid in during the Cuban Missile Crisis. When my brother saw her circumstances, he left a hundred dollars on the kitchen table when she was out of the room, just before he left. I can imagine her thanking Jesus for that money. My brother doesn’t look anything like Jesus! Though he claims that I did as a college student. The whole neighborhood thought so. Anyway, there’s my Cuban Missile Crisis comment. And no, this isn’t that.
They were totally modern-looking young people, like hipsters, wearing fashionable clothes with stylish haircuts and modern devices.
Such people one would hire to influence those who are "like 27 years old and literally know nothing" - as (who was it?) described the major media Washington reporters.
The Russian troll is actually a put in of agent doing Putin’s business by talking to wapo and sowing more discord
I can't imagine any voter being influenced by that absurd image and text.
I'm sure that there were plenty of people who, when they saw the ad, laughed and mocked those dumb-ass Christianists.
Has anyone else noticed the precipitous drop in trolling in Althouse's threads since Russian troll farms made the news?
"We should be relieved they couldn't hire Americans to troll for them. Or were they too stupid to try that?"
Hillary's operation priced them out of the market.
These kinds of articles are written for the "sophisticated" readers of the WaPo and the NYT. Of course their readers would never be misled by such obvious propaganda. But you just know that all of the illiterate deplorables in "Trumpland" fell for it and it caused them to vote for Trump, and against their own best interests. Go Jesus! Beat Hillary!
"the Fox Media empire"
LOL
How dare there exist a "media empire!" that doens't tow the democrat line like every other Media empire.
"The Fox media Empire"
small beans compared to the Democrat Media Industrial Complex.
ARM
"This sounds like paranoia solely for the sake of paranoia. No one cares what happens on blogger. There is no bigger picture."
The reference was to the larger social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter, et al. Each of them is at work on curtailing offensive commentary, commentary ,that is, that they believe offensive. Guess what kind of political commentary they are circling?
Has anyone else noticed the precipitous drop in trolling in Althouse's threads since Russian troll farms made the news?
I’ve noticed that liberal commenters have commented less of late also. I attribute it to the over the top Trumpism by a huge majority of commenters on this site. Why bother? The cultist mentality is so firmly entrenched in their minds that it is not possible to hold any meaningful discussion. What a sad direction the Althouse blog has taken.
Paranoia is no longer a useful concept.
Even as part of a collective, we are each of us in someones way.
Maybe if they offered a sufficient reward, they could find someone to come forward and say that Russian propaganda influenced their decision to vote for Trump. It would have to be a fairly large reward though. Not that many people are willing to publicly come forward and admit they're stupid. Perhaps, the Russians could secretly fund some people to come forward and say they believe in Russian propaganda,
"Has anyone else noticed the precipitous drop in trolling in Althouse's threads since Russian troll farms made the news?"
Actually, not as much as you think. For example, yesterday's obstruction thread was very trollerific. Perhaps, what you are most noticing is the absence of Inga and Chuck over the last few days.
And Earnie, please learn how to use the HTML 'a' tag.
In my time commenting here I’ve posted hundreds if not thousands of links. The one last night was the first ever without a hyperlink, because I was without my computer and using a balky old phone. I apologized for the lack of the hyperlink in the post. So with all due respect, Little Mike, kiss my ass.
ArnieKo,
I suggest you try a proper dialectic.
Use logic or evidence to rebut an assertion.
Then absorb the counter to your rebuttal, and respond to the points raised with logic or evidence.
Its like a tennis match.
CNN ... The Gorilla Channel for the white left.
so true.
"Over the top Trumpism"--LOL! What a perfect Russian troll comment!
Tim in Vermont- Your brother did a nice thing.
The Russians as evidenced by that illustration seem ham handed and tone deaf. The people in Hollywood are far better at this sort of thing.
Not even a Russian Troll could have set up Hillary's private Server for secret international cash donations.
Ann you are so level-headed.
This is why I like to open your website and bring my morning coffee or my evening beer to rest on your level head
Keep up the great work!
A fellow Contrarian
K Graham's father bought the WaPo out of bankruptcy.
And then it became wildly profitable. Today there is no such thing as a wildly profitable newspaper. Influence is the only true reward for an owner. And by this measure, the Post’s reconfiguration to survive and thrive in the new world of social media is remarkable. But the words failure and Jeff Bezos are generally not found in the same sentence.
Small beer
The Russians under Stalin probably had their man in the vice presidency and nobody gave 2 shits.
Just imagine, Stalin's ageny a heartbeat from the presidency. He was a good Democrat so it was OK.
Now we're all spun up about Facebook trolls.
John Henry
Free the Russian 13! Where is the ACLU to protect their rights?
They should not be talking to WaPost reporters via Skype while remaining in Russia - certainly without being Mirandized.
Russian trolls are people, too.
Tcrosse
Not only is Hillary not the great satan, she's not even a very good satan.
You can't be satan with no powers. That makes her just an imp.
John Henry
"Hillary might be a Satan, but she's not the Great Satan."
Make America Great Satan Again.
"it wasn’t clear if his shortcoming was imperfect English or failing to bash Clinton."
What an eye-roller. These WAPO writers aren't really much less ham-handed than the darn Russians.
Failed Satan Hillary Clinton explains what went tragically right...
I still don't get how the WaPo thinks: "You know who we should trust? The wannabe Russian intelligence agent. He surely would never lie to an American to sow distrust!"
I'm with H>erod.
If the Rooskies were reading Anti-de-sitter's attempts at pidgen on this very website, they would realize that knowing English is not a prerequiste for posting on a blog. Except, maybe they wanted someone to read their posts, which I guess would make the aforementioned Anti-de-Sitter a poor example. IMHO. Anyway,
I dunno.
Carry on.
fill-in other trite saying here___________.
@Earnie, with all respect please mark a spot because you’re 100% ass.
Now that the childish insults are out of the way, I’m sorry, but I was reading it with my iPhone and had trouble with the copy and paste so I had to play with it a while. Hey! I gave you credit for finding that analysis, didn’t I?
"They're so damned gullible!" If they have already gulled themselves, are they still "gullible"?
Hillary is bad candidate for to be president. She is a Satan woman who's evil can cause to strengthen our enemies and make ruining of our great and prosperous country of United State of America. I am to voting on Trump who's only correct leader for glorious American Democracy. Trump-Pence in 2016 and FOREVER!!!
I was an subscriber to the e edition of the Washington Post until approximately 2 weeks ago. I finally just had it with them and the anti-Trump headlines, many of them about a Trump/Russia connection and stopped paying them my $10 tribute per month.
The media was played, and is still being played, by doing the exact thing the Russians wanted, sowing dissension between the tribes in America. My tribe is right-wing. Most of the media is left wing. There has always been an in between but now it is smaller than it has ever been. Why doesn't the media see the irony in themselves?
Another problem with the Jesus/Satan ad is that it mixes Catholic iconography (that Jesus medallion in the top right) with Fundamentalist Protestant text & imagery. This would be a cultural distinction that would fly over the head of a modern Russian.
Growing up in the deep South in the heady days of the Jesus Freaks & Campus Crusade for Christ, I saw many such pamphlets.
I gotta tell ya, every time I see this commercial for Trump Bear, I go "C'mon, you're kidding me, right?".
It's a real product alright, but I can't believe that the commercial wasn't made completely tongue in cheek.
Earnie, with all respect please mark a spot because you’re 100% ass
Sweet! I sense an imminent lovefest!
You can spot a non-American from a mile away. It's the idioms, stupid. A few years back, during the Russia/Georgia dustup, some Russian trolls showed up over at The Belmont Club. The tip-off was that they talked about the Ossetians being "bombed" by artillery. American say "shelled". We all started calling them comrade and they went away.
Angel-Dyne at 8:22 nails it. This is how the Golden Shower Left thinks deplorables think. Lacking the cultural insight to recognize hyperbolic snobbery in the current American context, the Russian troll imitates it, and winds up looking foolish or parodic.
“Blogger tcrosse said...
I'm with H>erod”
If this is original, congratulations.
"Over the top Trumpism"
Very Sly comment.
Probably not Russian.
This all sounds true, but it's hard to believe that it influenced anyone.
It seems more like a ham-handed attempt to promote the mainstream media's caricature of Trump supporters as ignorant, easily-duped hicks. You just say "Jesus" and they respond "how high" or something.
This is long-standing Marxist dogma: wily capitalists use religion and nationalism to mislead the proletariate into acting against its own interests. They buy them off with meaningless trinkets. See: Koch brothers. See: West Virginia.
So this caricature conforms to the stereotypes that leftists (and perhaps Putin's acolytes as well, who also have a leftist background) have about the lower middle class and working class in Western countries.
> What a sad direction the Althouse blog has taken.
Love it when these Unidentified Commenting Objects show up to attempt shaming Althouse and her commenters.
1950s:
There's a Commie under every bed!
2010s:
There's a Russian troll in every blog!
Stay off FB and you won’t see the ads.
"And this is where, I think, the Russian trolls have some chance of success — as a tool of mainstream media in a plot against free speech in social media."
Althouse keeps hammering at this in multiple posts, so it's hard not to correct her. But, it's embarrassing to need to do so.
Most functional folks, probably almost all lawyers, and surely all law profs (except for one cheese head), know that our enshrined free speech has nothing to do w/ this stuff. We're protected from the gov limiting our speech. Nobody said that Russian attacks are sacrosanct. And there is zero legislation that supports government action that would cross w/ our free speech rights. IOW, there is no threat to our protected free speech.
Of course, Althouse is suggesting that others should limit their speech, because she doesn't like hearing their POVs, but she's not suggesting that the government should mandate such, so she's not F-ing w/ free speech either, likewise neither are those who she's trying to silence re persuasion re ironic calls for so-called free speech (which for Althosue means people should shut up and say what she likes to hear).
I wish I didn't need to embarrass the golden gal.
Tough love.
BTW, how cool is it that Althouse would focus on the "a satin" v "satin" detail re this particular example.
She's fine tuned to the tiniest difference between the homegrown loons that fill her threads (and bed) and the phony loons from Russia.
But, which loon-jabber came first?
Chicken or egg? [I know.]
Dissonance at eleven.
I'm just glad that adss has figured out that it was obama and his cronies that were in charge in November of 2016.
You'd be surprised how many lefties are unaware of that fact.
In their defense, history began anew this morning for them.
As it does every morning.
Okay, maybe I was a bit slow to figure it out.
Now I get it. Of course Althouse knows that folks and companies deciding how to jabber (w/o the government forcing limits on them) is not anti-free speech. She's just live-auditioning.
Not to mention the digital resume she's amassed re her bona fides re pushing out manipulative flim flam to cons.
She's got well over a decade of using manipulation and hyperbole to foment frothing and discord while undermining civility (aka BS) in America. [Except, sometimes she calls for us to be civil and smart, like she and DJT are doing now. But, that also bolsters her Comrade comity score. Lying and being inconsistent re logic is OK. In fact, it's desirable. Whatever it takes to make a pile of shit.]
MASTER
Make America Shit To Everyone Right.
“This is why I like to open your website and bring my morning coffee or my evening beer to rest on your level head.”
I’m like a table.
A table genius.
I wonder what kind of geezer I'll be.
The 'get of my lawn' 'Arch Bunker' archetype is offensive, unconsidered and uninteresting (no offense intended toward all y'all in these threads/posts (diff strokes fer diff folks)) IMHO.
But. I can't think of any goldens of any persuasion that are appealing.
I guess there's a sibling's father in law who's got a lot goin' on. Even there, he still has holes re the forest re trees re thinking, thereby leaving exposed flanks (logic), IMHO.
At least folks like Althouse help me to suss out what I don't want to end up as. I guess that's some sorta workable metric.
bring my morning coffee or my evening beer to rest on your level head
For the first time in forty years I thought of the Flatheads in Glinda of Oz. If I recall correctly, they carried their brains in a can because there was no room in their flat heads. I'd link an illustration but Google eliminated their image links yesterday because of a lawsuit threat from Getty.
I saw once a hilarious photoshop contest: create an ad for the American market, by foreigners who know nothing of America but stereotypes.
My favorite was an ad for an IKEA organizer that had storage space for guns, Bibles, and porn.
The Satan vs Jesus meme here reminds me of that contest very much.
"Emergency! Everybody to get from street!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZuLD1u_K4
I like the illustration. It reminds me of a South Park episode where Satan and Jesus are going to face off in a boxing match. At first, the citizens all piously bet on Jesus. Then, one by one, they refigure the odds and secretly bet on Satan.
In the end, Satan secretly bets on Jesus and then takes a dive.
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