There's been a lot of speculation lately about whether the Kremlin was the driving force behind the recent Wikileaks revelations about Hillary Clinton; and if so, "Why does Russia want Donald Trump to win the election?" Following upon this, there is no shortage of theories by HRC supporters regarding Trump's supposed weakness toward Russia, ties with Russia, and so on.
I think it's important to ask questions about the provenance of new information, and to wonder what other parties might stand to gain from passing it on. But when you start down this path, it's easy to build conjecture on top of conjecture, speculation on top of speculation, guesswork on top of guesswork. And then you're going down the rabbit hole.
Look, as a pro-Trump guy I can play this game too. Trump a Russian puppet? But that's just what they want you to think! You think Putin and his old KGB buddies are stupid? They're putting out stuff that's damaging to Clinton with Russian fingerprints all over it, so that the Americans will trace it back to Russia and say, "Hey, all this anti-Clinton stuff is just Russian propaganda!" And then the Americans will dismiss anything unfavorable to Clinton, and she'll be immunized against any and every scandal, because Russia! And in fact that's exactly what is happening, you can see it on the social media if you don't believe me.
Do I believe that that is in fact what happened? I don't know. And that's my point here: I don't know. I prefer to stick with what's known with some degree of certainty, where we can remain on reasonably firm ground. Often in life we must form theories, hypotheses, or suppositions about the unknown; but we are safest if we start from a firm foundation of facts and stick to known facts as closely as possible.
I think it's important to ask questions about the provenance of new information, and to wonder what other parties might stand to gain from passing it on. But when you start down this path, it's easy to build conjecture on top of conjecture, speculation on top of speculation, guesswork on top of guesswork. And then you're going down the rabbit hole.
Look, as a pro-Trump guy I can play this game too. Trump a Russian puppet? But that's just what they want you to think! You think Putin and his old KGB buddies are stupid? They're putting out stuff that's damaging to Clinton with Russian fingerprints all over it, so that the Americans will trace it back to Russia and say, "Hey, all this anti-Clinton stuff is just Russian propaganda!" And then the Americans will dismiss anything unfavorable to Clinton, and she'll be immunized against any and every scandal, because Russia! And in fact that's exactly what is happening, you can see it on the social media if you don't believe me.
Do I believe that that is in fact what happened? I don't know. And that's my point here: I don't know. I prefer to stick with what's known with some degree of certainty, where we can remain on reasonably firm ground. Often in life we must form theories, hypotheses, or suppositions about the unknown; but we are safest if we start from a firm foundation of facts and stick to known facts as closely as possible.
