I’m happy to listen to your arguments but you must realize that you seem to be arguing against US media propaganda with…your own special brand of propaganda.

I think it must have been my tone, too.

From my view, I was just describing the events in the war, as reported, but not reported all together like I put it.

I do not say that Putin, or any other leaders, do not do things leaders do.  We’re all sinners.

But the billions spent on the American system of propaganda has been very effective at
achieving it’s objectives, and guiding mainstream perception of true history where filtering out the events Putin is responding very normally to, which are then characterized as him being evil, when he is just responding tit for tat, and most are not seeing what his acts are in response to.

I do agree with your sentiment that the United States is much less democratic that many of us like to think, and that we do have our own set of oligarchs. But I just cannot agree with any direct comparison between the U.S. and Russia. Russia has never really had a tradition of elected representation, at least at the national level. Just as one example, recall that until Alexander II freed them 1861 most Russian peasants were serfs – they were owned by the nobility, factories or the state. (The US of course had slavery, but again, in a very different form.) There are just too many differences to make a direct comparison between the U.S. and Russia.

As internet discussions go, I see nothing hostile at all…spirited maybe, but nothing more than that.

In my personal opinion, lefties dramatically overstate the corruption involved in the 2000 election.  I can understand this given the dire consequences, but ultimately it was just a close race that Gore happened to lose.  Both parties play games in situations like that and the Republicans came out on top in that instance.  Had Obama lost the popular vote and had the race come down to a few thousand votes in a heavily contested state I would prefer a situation in which Republicans nonetheless acknowledge the outcome and the presidency of Obama.  Perhaps that’s a pipe dream seeing as Republicans already routinely challenge the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency, but I’d prefer not to be a hypocrite myself by claiming that close races only count when my guy wins.

Dave Lloyd’s comment was dead on, and Gordon Stark’s had a lot of truth in it as well regarding Western propaganda. They showed mercy and didn’t even mention the 2000 Presidential “election” either..

Note that the relative political power of unions — as well as the fervor with which Republicans are trying to gut unions — demonstrates that political organization among the less-than-wealthy does have a real effect.  In fact, your other cited problem with US democracy, voter suppression, also demonstrates that ordinary citizens do have influence in our political system — otherwise voter suppression would be unnecessary.  You can’t have it both ways.

Yes, voter suppression is a problem in the US.  Unless you talk to conservatives in which case voter fraud is a serious problem (Thanksgiving w/ family was a trip in this respect).  Is it a less serious problem in Russia?  Are there perhaps even more serious problems with elections in Russia that aren’t being mentioned despite the assertions of parity between the two?

Higher up GOP officials in Florida recently flat out admitted that voter suppression was the sole reason for their recent changes to election policy. So here you have officials admitting that they were deliberately trying to hinder people from engaging in their right to vote and to subvert the democratic process.  You think anybody will go to jail?

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/why-florida-really-changed-its-voting-rules/

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/politics/election-who-got-paid/index.html

Can you provide any quantitative measures of corruption or “rigged voting” such that the US and Russia can be meaningfully compared along these lines or do I just have to take your word for it that they’re equally bad?

I don’t think people in the US have much argument that they don’t have a massive propaganda machine, or that externalizing the fascists *out there* doesn’t help make us more comfortable pretending the fascists *in here* don’t exist.

Yet that doesn’t really mean Putin should be off the hook either, does it?

One thing is kind of true though, fascism is fascism wherever you go.

the part that sent off alarm bells was:

Svetlana Kuritsyna is a patriotic Russian, untwisted by western hemisphere covert war propaganda and “social media operations”, and her view, which some call naive, is merely uncontaminated by western information warfare aggressions

When someone starts talking about contamination/purity I start getting nervous.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57525850/alexander-fishenko-accused-of-selling-hi-tech-microelectronics-illegally-to-russia-due-in-court/

I am surprised there is so much hostility to my comments, for I am not on anyone’s side as a witness in my public service work.  Can anyone explain that hostility?

In my case I am a historian, and have been central to the events about which I speak.