Investigation into Russia Election Meddling Likely Will Disclose Only Our Lack of Faith in U.S. Democracy

The investigation into Russian meddling in United States democracy, might, after all, disclose little more than the United States’ lack of faith in democracy. The meddling hypothesis seems to be that U.S. citizens were subjected to ads that were sourced in Russia, and these ads have, or could have influenced certain citizens to vote in a certain way. Further, these particular votes, it is believed, could have caused a certain outcome in the election.

            All of this is quite speculative, the last part in particular is very suspect. Establishing causation in people’s choices is difficult, and, further, the whole investigation into Russian meddling is based on insulting assumptions about U.S. citizens, and perhaps even the very idea of democratic deliberation.

The argument from origin fallacy says that the source of a claim is not relevant to the truth of a claim. For example, if someone were to tell me that climate change is fake, and that person were invested in the oil industry, that fact would not make the statement false. That fact would simply suggest that the person might really want climate change to be false. To refute the person’s claim, one has to present the evidence in favor of climate change. Referencing the personal source of the claim is perhaps an argument about the character of the person, but not the person’s argument.

The connections here with the Russian meddling investigation are this: If someone makes an argument in favor of one particular candidate or issue, only the argument itself should be considered. The person making it is irrelevant. This is the case regardless of what country the person is from. But for some reason, national borders are believed to have a special significance. It is perhaps not coincidental (although who can know?) that Democrats tend to pursue the idea that U.S. cyber-borders have been breached by Russians at the same time that Republicans tend to pursue the idea that geographic borders are being breached by Mexicans. Both parties seem to be desperate about maintaining a sense of purity. This purity is understood on nationalistic lines, if not also, in the case of the Republicans, on racial lines.
            As for the idea that it matters that Russians were trying to influence the election, let’s consider the idea of state borders within the U.S. If there is an important election in one U.S. state, it is certainly legal for people of another state to comment on the election in that state, trying to influence public opinion. It is not even illegal to send money across state borders to buy ads that are intended to meddle in that election. Democrats, for example, sent money to Alabama in order to elect a Democrat there. And this was not because they cared about Alabama, but because one more Democratic vote is believed to be important for their purposes.  

What makes national borders different than state borders in terms of information? Reasons are lacking to explain.

In the 2016 election, for example, people in the United States invested billions of dollars of ads in each of the two major parties. Were these billions all going toward informing other citizens, or were they going into brainwashing these citizens? There is no clear answer, since we do not know what the threshold of evidence is to cause a voting choice. But it is clear that if there exist billions in domestic ads, and only a few thousand in foreign ones, it is irresponsible to conclude that the foreign source was more likely to cause the choices than the domestic one. This bad reasoning is also used in reference to third parties in an election, and it is little surprise that part of the ridiculousness of the election meddling hypothesis is that it tries to link Russia with, for example, the Green Party. Their only connection is that they are both scapegoats.

The insulting assumption behind this idea of foreign meddling in the election is that decisions are made not through quality of arguments, but through the mere quantity of appeals. Election outcomes, apparently, are determined by the ability of parties and candidates to assault the minds of citizens with a barrage of appeals.

In Iowa we are assaulted with many such appeals. I present two pieces of evidence for our investigation. The first is an ad I received in favor of Jeb Bush. It contains brain-stem appeals to fear of death, along with the inclusion of a 3D object (a di, shown on the right) that allowed the recipient to use their sense of touch to remember that, apparently, Bush is the only candidate that will give you a chance of not being beheaded by terrorists. It is one of the few signs that true democracy is still alive that, despite this incredibly stupid and expensive mailing, Bush still received hardly any votes in the Iowa Caucus.

The second example is a manipulative ad, only slightly less insulting, from the Clinton campaign. The recipient is assumed to be so naive that they believe this is some kind of government document informing them of their voting record, and encouraging them to vote again--apparently only for Clinton if you are doing it right.

Now one might think that the Bush and Clinton campaigns would not send out such ridiculous things if they didn’t have evidence that these things were worth the investment. But since they did send them out, then it’s clear that the problems with democracy in the United States are certainly not limited to the use of ads by foreign sources. Foreign manipulation is not automatically worse than domestic manipulation simply for the fact of being foreign. I don’t know how I can stop receiving all of this garbage in my mailbox, but as a stoic I am choosing not to rage at the garbage that I can’t control, but focus in the critical thinking skills that I can control. And I am going to assume that U.S. citizens are capable of doing the same thing. If they cannot, our problem is nothing more than a lack of critical thinking in our curriculum.  

--Tadd Ruetenik