Virginia Study: Increased School Bullying In Areas That Voted For Trump

2016 Virginia presidential vote by county.

A new survey of Virginia school students that correlates bulling with areas that voted for Donald Trump has yielded results that, personally, I do not find surprising whatsoever: Bullying is higher in areas of Virginia that voted for Trump in contrast to areas that voted for Hillary Clinton.  The results parallel the findings of past studies cited on this blog hat found that children raised in "conservative Christian" homes showed lee empathy toward others and were more inclined towards bullying of others. Given that evangelical "Christians" are Trump's strongest support group, it should be little surprise, therefore, that bully levels are higher in pro-Trump areas.   A piece at NPR looks at the study findings.  Here are excerpts:

After the 2016 presidential election, teachers across the country reported they were seeing increased name-calling and bullying in their classrooms. Now, research shows that those stories — at least in one state — are confirmed by student surveys.

Francis Huang of the University of Missouri and Dewey Cornell of the University of Virginia used data from a school climate survey taken by over 150,000 students across Virginia. They looked at student responses to questions about bullying and teasing from 2015 and 2017. Their findings were published Wednesday in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

In the 2017 responses, Huang and Cornell found higher rates of bullying and certain types of teasing in areas where voters favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Seventh- and eighth-graders in areas that favored Trump reported bullying rates in spring 2017 that were 18 percent higher than students living in areas that went for Clinton. They were also 9 percent more likely to report that kids at their schools were teased because of their race or ethnicity.

In the 2015 data, there were "no meaningful differences" in those findings across communities, the researchers wrote.

While bullying rates in areas of Virginia that voted Republican went up in 2017, rates went down in places that favored Clinton.

Their findings could lend credence to the anecdotal reports from teachers around the country after the election, says Dorothy Espelage, a psychology professor at the University of Florida who researches bullying and school safety in middle and high schools.

"Anybody that's in the schools is picking up on this," she says. "You don't have to be a psychologist or a sociologist to understand that if these conversations are happening on the TV and at the dinner table that these kids will take this perspective and they're going to play out in the schools."

"Parents should be mindful of how their reactions to the presidential election, or the reactions of others, could influence their children," Cornell, a psychologist and professor of education at UVA, said in a statement. "And politicians should be mindful of the potential impact of their campaign rhetoric and behavior on their supporters and indirectly on youth."

Regardless of where and how it happens, adds Francis Huang, "bullying is something that can still be addressed and brought down in schools."

Again, to me the findings are not surprising.  Trump's base represents some of the foulest, most racist and most cruel elements of America's population. While they parade around sanctimoniously pretending they are pious - at least while not carrying their AK-47's - they simply are not nice people.  Indeed, the biblical Pharisees look like nice and amazing people compared to Trump supporters and evangelical Christians.

In terms of Virginia itself, the red areas on the map above should be avoided if one values progressive values and decent treatment of others.

The Insane Fury of the Democrat Online Left Toward Buttigieg (and Moderate Democrats)

Back in early 2017 Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders thrust themselves into Virginia's Democrat gubernatorial contest pushing a far left candidate and trashing Ralph Northam who ultimately went on to win the primary and the general election.  Had Warren and Sanders and their far left followers prevailed, in my view, Virginia likely would now have a Republican governor and who knows where control of the General Assembly would now lie.   All that mattered was that Northam did not meet their standard of ideological purity and wasn't radical enough.  Never mind that Northam ran on perhaps the most progressive agenda of any gubernatorial candidate in Virginia history.  It was a near repeat of how the far left was similarly disenchanted with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and seemingly stayed home or voted for third party candidates - think Jill Stein - to throw the election to Donald Trump.  History is repeating itself at the national level again as the left of the Democrat coalition attacks moderates and pushes an agenda that likely would help re-elect Donald Trump.  A prime target of the left's wrath is Pete Buttigieg whose sin is not being radical (and un-electable) enough to meet the left's purity tests.  Absurdly, some of the far right in the gay community whine that Buttigieg is not "gay enough."  From my experience, one is either gay or not, which underscores the idiocy of these folks. A piece in CNN looks at the lefts targeting of Buttigieg and moderates and, in my view, secure a Trump victory in 2020.  Here are excerpts: 

Increasingly, their opposition to Buttigieg is turning to fury, fueled by a boisterous online ecosystem of progressives who are driving anti-Buttigieg commentary and memes. They view him as beholden to corporate interests, unable to win over the diverse Democratic base that these activists take pride in, and disinterested in the systemic change they believe the country desperately needs on issues like the influence of big money on politics and climate change and systemic racism.

These narratives have persisted in spite of what his campaign points to as evidence to the contrary, including that Buttigieg has proposed plans to address those very issues such as a climate change plan to cut emissions to zero by 2050 and a proposal to address systemic racism that he calls the Douglass Plan.

Buttigieg supporters say the criticism has become unhinged, with some progressives eager to latch on to virtually any negative narrative about Buttigieg whether it is true or not.  There is no question: The youngest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, at age 37, isn't doing well with young Democratic voters. Since he jumped into the race, Buttigieg has gone from a little-known, small-town mayor, to representative of the Democratic Party vision has of itself as an inclusive party to, now, the arch-nemesis of certain progressive advocates.

The intense heat on Buttigieg from some corners of his party comes as he rises in both early state and national polls and vies with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a slice of the college-educated electorate. Both candidates have upped their contrasts with each other in recent weeks as the Iowa caucuses near.

"The nature of presidential politics is the better you do, the more you are tested," said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist of his campaigns. "Buttigieg has made a pretty remarkable progress in 2019. Now he is being tested as a legitimate top tier candidate and we'll see how he handles it." "It is an inevitable part of this process," he added. Buttigieg's critics cite a dramatic turn in his approach to his candidacy and are particularly incensed by his criticism of Warren on "Medicare For All." (Buttigieg, for his part, has pushed for a proposal called "Medicare for all who want it," an option that would keep private health care plans.) They consider his low standing with black and Hispanic voters to be disqualifying, and pejoratively refer to him as "Mayo Pete" for his overwhelmingly white supporters. As a result, his candidacy, in their view, is akin to the vanity project of an overly ambitious, privileged white man [as if Sanders' isn't exactly that]. "He's phony," said Adam Jentleson, when asked why he opposes Buttigieg's candidacy so strongly. 

For Washington insiders, Jentleson is a well-known figure, a former senior aide to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, a far cry from the kind of left-wing progressive candidate Jentleson now would prefer. But now, Jentleson is known online as a progressive flame thrower, leading the anti-Buttigieg charge and slamming him for his attacks on more progressive candidates like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Warren.
 Buttigieg's campaign largely dismisses the intense criticism they have experienced from people like Jentleson. "We're not focused on the small echo chamber of Washington insiders talking to each other on Twitter," said Chris Meagher, a Buttigieg spokesman, "we're focused on talking to voters about the issues that matter most to voters." He continued: "This election is about defeating Donald Trump and uniting the country the day after this president leaves office. Pete is the best candidate to do just that." The kind of attacks that have been directed at Buttigieg have puzzled the candidate as well as his aides. And as they have gone from the internet to real life, including a wave of new protests outside of his high dollar fundraisers. "It is a little strange, because I think that I broadly share a lot of the same values and goals," Buttigieg told The Washington Post's Bob Costa in an interview when asked if the protests bother him. "It's a little hard to have a conversation with them, so I don't know for sure." It has been perplexing to Buttigieg supporters that a particularly vitriolic brand of anger has been reserved for Buttigieg rather than other moderate candidates like Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President Joe Biden, both of whom share Buttigieg's positions broadly on issues like Medicare for All and college affordability. Many of the progressive voices fanning the anti-Buttigieg flames explain the disproportionate attention by pointing to Buttigieg's standing in the polls and a feeling of inevitability that Biden's candidacy is not as strong as it currently seems. The distaste among some gay Democrats to Buttigieg has been the subject of a fair amount of analysis -- even raising the interest of Tim Miller, a moderate gay Republican and former Romney aide who has quizzically observed what he believes is a disproportionate amount of vitriol directed toward Buttigieg.

"They're the meanest," Miller said. "Within the gay community, unfortunately, I think it's a lot of resentment that Pete does not represent the gay ideal -- the pre-conceived notions about what a gay President would act like."

"The idea that he's a closet Republican is absurd, but I think because of his nature as a mild-mannered, traditional-acting religious man, that it's easier to demean him as being Republican lite," he added. But for others, the part of Buttigieg's identity that is the most salient is not that he is gay, but that he is white, which they believe has insulated him from the kind of scrutiny that other candidates have been subjected to. Throughout the Trump presidency Democrats have insisted that removing him from office is a top priority, but the #neverPete sentiment is testing that.

Donald Trump and his campaign must be smiling broadly.  If Trump wins re-election, as in 2016, the far left of the Democrats will bear a significant guilt for that result which will be the antithesis to all they allegedly support. 

Trump Loving Rural America: Its Own Worse Enemy

Continuing the theme of the last post on a broader scale a piece in The Independent authored by one who grew up in a small town rural area looks at why Donald Trump - and GOP policies in general - are supported by rural voters even though they do nothing to help them economically.  It also looks at the predominating closed mindedness and racism (even as residents would swear they aren't racist) that are primary force behind their war against modernity itself in many ways. It is seemingly impossible to bridge the political and economic gap between rural and urban areas as the divergence in levels of education and acceptance of those who are different continues to grow. Most maddening is the refusal of so many - but not all - rural/small town residents to that their economies will not improve as long as they are so hostile to change and those who are different from themselves.  Here are article highlights: 

I grew up in a small town in California, with a population of just over 2,000. When I was in the third grade, my classroom had exactly one black student. It was an election year: George H W Bush versus Michael Dukakis. When the traditional student poll was held, she was the only student who said she preferred Dukakis. Other students pressured her until she changed her vote to Bush.

It’s hard to overstate the small-town social pressure to conform. . . . For many in rural America, it’s downright logical to deny objective reality on any particular issue. Supporting a Democrat might mean a better standard of living in some ways. But, it will also come at a personal cost.

People especially value the opinions of those who model success in their daily lives. Donald Trump spent years playing a successful businessman in a game show that many of these people watched regularly. To them, he’s practically a hometown success story. Of these, there are too few. Between 2008 and 2017, 99 per cent of America’s job and population growth was in metropolitan areas. Rural Americans are being left behind.

So, when those rural Americans not coming up with ways to make their own problems worse, they’re looking for out-groups to blame. Like the minorities who live in those thriving urban centers, and have an increasingly equitable share of power in Washington, DC. Rural voters are far more likely to believe that black and Latinx people are abusing government assistance programs, for example. The racist resentment is vast, and a growing body of research has found that support for Trump is fueled almost entirely by hatred of out-groups: In 2016, the strongest predictors of Trump support were bigotry and lack of education.

All of this is coded in political language, of course — which is why simply being female, or a person of color, is enough for voters to view a candidate as more left-of-center than their actual policy positions. To far too many, the word “liberal” has become a slur for anyone who doesn’t look like them.

[T]o them, racism is a Klansman in a movie. It isn’t a contemporary power structure, or an implicit bias that gets black teenagers killed. They don’t see that. They can, on the other hand, see themselves struggling. They just very earnestly do not get it. The minorities they do know are — like that little girl in my third grade class — pressured to fit in, to stay quiet.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that rural teens are stubbornly less likely to pursue higher education than their urban counterparts, even as the low- and middle-skill jobs in their areas disappear.

So, Trump’s attitudes really aren’t any different from the actual feelings of many rural Americans. How can they condemn him for it? Even if they don’t agree, they can identify him with people they love, in spite of those attitudes. He is their father, their uncle, their boss — and his re-election slogan may just as well be, “I don’t see what’s so racist about that.”

It will surprise no one who has lived in rural America, or pays attention to Trump’s tweets, that Trump voters are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. Institutions like science, education and government are run, after all, by liberals. Many Americans will see a story in the newspaper as less trustworthy than the meme or obvious hoax site shared by someone they know.

Add to the equation a steady diet of fringe media with no accountability itself and you have a rural population that largely believes Trump is no more guilty of corruption than the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bushes, or anyone else. The perception is that he is just being given a hard time because he happens to be one of them.

Rural America supports Trump because they believe that urban elites hate him — and they believe that urban elites hate them, too. And I don’t think they’ll turn on him in significant numbers until they stop seeing him as one of their own.

Meanwhile, of course, rural residents continue to want taxes derived from urban residents to bail them out economically. 

New Proof Wikileaks Worked With Russia to Elect Trump

Meanwhile, if Trump's overt racism is not enough to drive true patriotic Americans away from his regime, CNN has a new bombshell on how Wikileaks worked hand in glove with Russian intelligence to see Trump elected in 2016. The report further validates the Mueller Report findings on Russian election interference.  The take away?  Trump supporters - and sadly, Bernie Sanders supporters - were played for fools by the Kremlin.  The CNN piece looks at surveillance reports that confirm Julian Assange's close work with Russian operatives and the timing of the drops of stolen DNC documents and emails to most help Trump and drive Sander's supporters away from supporting Hillary Clinton once she became the Democrat nominee.  Here are highlights (read the entire piece):

New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The documents build on the possibility, raised by special counsel Robert Mueller in his report on Russian meddling, that couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy.

The surveillance reports also describe how Assange turned the embassy into a command center and orchestrated a series of damaging disclosures that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States.

Despite being confined to the embassy while seeking safe passage to Ecuador, Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments, frequently for hours at a time. He also acquired powerful new computing and network hardware to facilitate data transfers just weeks before WikiLeaks received hacked materials from Russian operatives.

These stunning details come from hundreds of surveillance reports compiled for the Ecuadorian government by UC Global, a private Spanish security company, and obtained by CNN. They chronicle Assange's movements and provide an unprecedented window into his life at the embassy. They also add a new dimension to the Mueller report, which cataloged how WikiLeaks helped the Russians undermine the US election.

An Ecuadorian intelligence official told CNN that the surveillance reports are authentic.

After the election, the private security company prepared an assessment of Assange's allegiances. That report, which included open-source information, concluded there was "no doubt that there is evidence" that Assange had ties to Russian intelligence agencies.UC Global did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

By June [2016], Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had emerged as the de facto nominees of their parties and were gearing up for what would be a bruising general election. . . . Assange was busy back at the embassy. That month, members of the security team worked overtime to handle at least 75 visits to Assange, nearly double the monthly average of visits logged by the security company that year. He met Russian citizens and a hacker later flagged in the Mueller report as a potential courier for emails stolen from the Democrats. . . . Assange took at least seven meetings that month with Russians and others with Kremlin ties, according to the visitor logs.

Assange also had five meetings that month with senior staffers from RT, the Kremlin-controlled news organization. US intelligence agencies have concluded that RT had "actively collaborated with WikiLeaks" in the past and played a significant role in Russia's effort to influence the 2016 election and help Trump win. For several months in 2012, Assange hosted a television show on RT.

The Mueller report explicitly referenced that "Assange had access to the internet from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, England." The rest of that paragraph is heavily redacted.

It's unclear whether Mueller ever obtained these surveillance reports as part of his investigation.

Mueller concluded that hackers from Russia's military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, attacked Democratic targets in spring 2016 and removed hundreds of gigabytes of information. They created online personas -- Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks -- to transfer some of the files to WikiLeaks and publicly claim responsibility for the hacks, falsely disavowing any Russian ties.

Meanwhile, he [Assange} still has allies in Russia. Within hours of Assange's arrest, senior officials from President Vladimir Putin's government rushed to Assange's defense and slammed the US for infringing his rights, declaring that, "The hand of 'democracy' squeezes the throat of freedom."

Mueller Speaks: No Exoneration of Trump; Barr Mislead Public

Robert Mueller finally broke his silence and released a statement that he read today.  The statement confirms that Mueller's investigation did NOT conclude that Trump/his campaign had not committed a crime. Stated another way, the report in way exonerates Trump. Trump's claims to the contrary are, like so many other of his utterances, lies.  Mueller's statement also makes it clear that Attorney General William Barr has mislead the American public and seemingly has been more concerned with acting as Trump's consigliere than serving the citizens of  America.  One columnist in the Washington Post summed up Mueller's statement and the perilous state of our democracy in this manner:

If this man of precise language was not inviting Congress to impeach the president, he certainly seemed to be inviting the belief that he didn’t charge Trump with crimes only because he couldn’t. And because Mueller chooses words carefully, it’s also worth noting which one he didn’t use: “collusion.” Instead, he implicitly rebuked a president who constantly, maddeningly, refers to Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election as the “Russian hoax.” 

Mueller ended his nearly 10-minute statement where it began, and where the entire investigation began: with a Russian attack on the United States. There “were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American,” Mueller said.

If our country’s political health were better, the Russian attack would get the attention of every American. But Mueller gives us more credit than we deserve. His report assumed that our leaders would take seriously the Russian threat when presented with overwhelming evidence. It assumed that political leaders would soberly weigh the evidence that Trump obstructed his investigation.

Instead, Trump laughs about the whole thing with Putin, Republican leaders quash bipartisan efforts to protect the 2020 election from another attack, and GOP lawmakers, instead of pondering the president’s culpability and Mueller’s damning findings, demand investigations of investigators’ “treason” and attempted “coup.”  In appealing to their better angels, Mueller was naive. 

Russia is preparing to attack us — again. Trump is poised to benefit — again. Unlike in 2016, we now know Russia’s bad intentions, thanks to Mueller. That Trump and his allies facilitate the Russian attack by refusing to protect against it is the essence of collusion. 

Frighteningly, as the column notes, Trump, Putin, Russian intelligence agents and William Barr have other would be co-conspirators: Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and every other Republican member of Congress who continues to act to protect Trump - and their own re-election chances - and giving Trump and his base political fellatio at the express of the nation as a whole.  For those inclined to read (which rules out Fox News viewers), the following is Mueller's entire statement as published by CNN.  Read it if you question my reading of it.

Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel's Office.

The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking today because our investigation is complete. The Attorney General has made the report on our investigation largely public. And we are formally closing the Special Counsel's Office. As well, I am resigning from the Department of Justice and returning to private life.

I'll make a few remarks about the results of our work. But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office's written work speak for itself.

Let me begin where the appointment order begins: and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election.

As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system.

The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information, and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization WikiLeaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.

And at the same time, as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to interfere in the election.

These indictments contain allegations. And we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.

The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood. That is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office.

That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate.

The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign's response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.

And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the President.

The order appointing me Special Counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation and we kept the office of the Acting Attorney General apprised of the progress of our work.

As set forth in our report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime. The introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision.

It explains that under long-standing Department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view—that too is prohibited.

The Special Counsel's Office is part of the Department of Justice and, by regulation, it was bound by that Department policy. Charging [Trump] the President with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.

The Department's written opinion explaining the policy against charging a President makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report. And I will describe two of them:

First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting President because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents are available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could now be charged.

And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.

And beyond Department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of an actual charge.

So that was the Justice Department policy and those were the principles under which we operated. From them we concluded that we would not reach a determination -- one way or the other -- about whether [Trump] the President committed a crime. That is the office's final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the President.

We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the Attorney General—as required by Department regulations.

The Attorney General then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and the American people.

At one point in time I requested that certain portions of the report be released. The Attorney General preferred to make the entire report public all at once. We appreciate that the Attorney General made the report largely public. I do not question the Attorney General's good faith in that decision.

I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak about this matter. I am making that decision myself—no one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter.

There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.

The report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.

In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office.

So beyond what I have said here today and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress.

It is for that reason that I will not take questions here today.

Before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the FBI agents, the analysts, and the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. These individuals, who spent nearly two years with the Special Counsel's Office, were of the highest integrity.

I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments—that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.Thank you.

I for one are very fearful for the future if Republicans continue to put their increasingly toxic and corrupt party ahead of the best interests of the nation. Hopefully, history will deal with Trump, McConnell, Graham and others very harshly and they will rank with Hitler's collaborators who similarly worked to destroy Germany's democracy in the 1930's.

Russia's Ongoing Effort to Sow Racial Discord — and Violence — in the U.S.

If one wonders where Donald Trump and many on the far right - e.g., those who sabotaged Virginia Democrats in early February using race - who are fanning racial division in America got their agenda from, look no farther than Vladimir Putin's Russia. NBC News reports on newly reviewed documents connected to some of the Russian operatives indicted by Robert Mueller that indicate fanning racial discord - and even violence - was part of the 2016 Russian game plan to elect Trump and that the agenda , in fact continues and could be a problem in 2020.  In addition to causing division and racial hatred, a goal is to suppress the black vote and thereby help Republicans, namely Trump.  It's something blacks mentioned in a prior post ought to be conscious of as they wring their hands over Pete Buttigieg's "whiteness" (his gayness will likely also be targeted by the ever conniving Russian operatives who likely recognize the ease with which black pastors can be played).  Here are article highlights that ought to make thinking individuals of all races think twice before falling for Russia originated efforts at division and discord:

LONDON — Russians who were linked to interference in the 2016 U.S. election discussed ambitious plans to stoke unrest and even violence inside the U.S. as recently as 2018, according to documents reviewed by NBC News.

The documents — communications between associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked oligarch indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for previous influence operations against the U.S. — laid out a new plot to manipulate and radicalize African-Americans. The plans show that Prigozhin’s circle has sought to exploit racial tensions well beyond Russia’s social media and misinformation efforts tied to the 2016 election.

The documents were obtained through the Dossier Center, a London-based investigative project funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. NBC News has not independently verified the materials, but forensic analysis by the Dossier Center appeared to substantiate the communications.

One document said that President Donald Trump’s election had “deepened conflicts in American society” and suggested that, if successful, the influence project would “undermine the country’s territorial integrity and military and economic potential.”

The revelations come as U.S. intelligence agencies have warned of probable Russian meddling in the 2020 election.

The documents contained proposals for several ways to further exacerbate racial discord in the future, including a suggestion to recruit African-Americans and transport them to camps in Africa “for combat prep and training in sabotage.” Those recruits would then be sent back to America to foment violence . . . There is no indication that the plan — which is light on details — was ever put into action, but it offers a fresh example of the mindset around Russian efforts to sow discord in the U.S.

The blueprint, entitled “Development Strategy of a Pan-African State on U.S. Territory,” floated the idea of enlisting poor, formerly incarcerated African-Americans “who have experience in organized crime groups” as well as members of “radical black movements for participation in civil disobedience actions.”

The goal was to “destabilize the internal situation in the U.S.”

Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI and an NBC News contributor, who reviewed the documents, said that they offer a warning to the U.S. . . . “The unfortunate reality is that we’re seeing an adversary that will consider virtually anything to get what it wants, and if it means violence or splitting America along racial lines or eroding our trust in institutions, they’ll do it.”

Some of the documents appear to have been sent by Dzheykhun “Jay” Aslanov, an employee of the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based troll farm that played a key role in the 2016 Russian meddling campaign. Aslanov was one of 13 Russians indicted by Mueller in February 2018 for his role with the IRA.

The plan was shared with Mikhail Potepkin, a Russian businessman, who then circulated it more widely, according to communications reviewed by NBC News.

Both Aslanov and Potepkin have been linked to Prigozhin, a Russian catering magnate often described as “Putin’s chef.” Prigozhin was also indicted by Mueller for funding the IRA. Widely perceived as a Kremlin operative, he has been connected to a shadowy mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group, whose guns-for-hire are reported to have been involved in Russian military operations in Syria and Eastern Ukraine, according to U.S. military officials.

The Mueller report exposed how Russian trolls, employed by associates of Prigozhin, deliberately inflamed racial tensions by spreading false and incendiary stories to African-Americans via social media. Among the objectives was to suppress black turnout in the 2016 U.S. election.

“Russia understands how critical the African American vote is to determining the outcome of elections,” said Demings, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “And because we have not effectively dealt with racism as a country ourselves, I believe we've made ourselves vulnerable to foreign powers like Russia to continue to try to undermine.”

The documents also discuss how to expand Russia’s clout on the African continent and win business there, from arms sales to mining contracts. They outline propaganda efforts to target Africans and stir up negative opinions about Europe and the U.S.

“Even though these kinds of initiatives from the Russians aren’t new to us, what is new is the rapidity with which they can get this message out on social media and saturate the American consumer with these kinds of thoughts,” said Figliuzzi, the former FBI official. “That puts the Russian initiative on steroids and should scare all of us.”

Sadly

Will the Media Be Trump's Accomplice Again in 2020?

There have been many post mortems of the 2016 presidential election, some of which have been, in my view wrong - especially those who down played racism as a motivating factor for Trump voters - and some that looked at the irresponsible coverage cranked out by far too many in the media, many driven by laziness or idiotic false equivalency.  When one candidate lies repeatedly while the opponent  has science and fact based positions, a responsible journalist doesn't treat them the same and should not allow the lies to go unchallenged and unexposed. Yet we saw that again and again in 2016 - and again in 2018 during the midterms - where Trump and GOP lies were treated as if they were true and were reported as if they had equal merit with legitimate policies and positions. The other failing was the constant reporting on Trump's efforts to draw attention and cause media circuses to distract when negative stories were surfacing.  Something Trump is doing at the moment as the release of the Mueller report nears.  Sadly, many in the media seemingly have learned nothing.  A piece in the New York Times I bookmarked in January lays out how critical it is for the responsible media (which excludes Fox News) not to repeat the same mistakes.  Here are highlights:

“Pocahontas” won’t be lonely for long. As other Democrats join Elizabeth Warren in the contest for the party’s presidential nomination, President Trump will assign them their own nicknames, different from hers but just as derisive. There’s no doubt.

But how much heed will we in the media pay to this stupidity? Will we sprint to Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker or Mike Bloomberg for a reaction to what Trump just called one of them and then rush back to him for his response to that response? Or will we note Trump’s latest nonsense only briefly and pivot to matters more consequential?

That’s a specific question but also an overarching one — about the degree to which we’ll let him set the terms of the 2020 presidential campaign, about our appetite for antics versus substance, and about whether we’ll repeat the mistakes that we made in 2016 and continued to make during the first stages of his presidency. There were plenty.

With the dawn of 2019 and the acceleration of potential Democratic candidates’ preparations for presidential bids, we have a chance to do things differently than we did the last time around — to redeem ourselves.

Our success or failure will affect our stature at a time of rickety public trust in us. It will raise or lower the temperature of civic discourse, which is perilously hot. Above all, it will have an impact on who takes the oath of office in January 2021. Democracies don’t just get the leaders they deserve. They get the leaders who make it through whatever obstacle course — and thrive in whatever atmosphere — their media has created.

“The shadow of what we did last time looms over this next time,” the former CBS newsman Dan Rather, who has covered more than half a century of presidential elections, told me. And what we did last time was emphasize the sound and the fury, because Trump provided both in lavish measure.

And even if it’s a ghastly spectacle and presented that way, it still lets him control the narrative. As the writer Steve Almond observed in a recently published essay, “He appears powerful to his followers, which is central to his strongman mystique.”

[R]eaders’ news appetite isn’t infinite, so they’re starved of information about the fraudulence of his supposed populism and the toll of his incompetence. And he wins. He doesn’t hate the media, not at all. He uses us.

Thomas Patterson of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has been analyzing that coverage since Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency in 2015. Patterson found that for much of that year, the number of stories about Trump in the country’s most influential newspapers and on its principal newscasts significantly exceeded what his support in polls at the time justified.

And those stories were predominantly positive. . . . In stark contrast, stories about Hillary Clinton in 2015 were mostly negative.

Through the first half of 2016, as Trump racked up victories in the Republican primaries, he commanded much more coverage than any other candidate from either party, and it was evenly balanced between positive and negative appraisals — unlike the coverage of Clinton, which remained mostly negative.

Only during their general-election face-off in the latter half of 2016 did Trump and Clinton confront equivalent tides of naysaying. “On topics relating to the candidates’ fitness for office, Clinton and Trump’s coverage was virtually identical in terms of its negative tone,” Patterson wrote.

Regarding their fitness for office, they were treated identically? In retrospect, that’s madness. It should have been in real time, too.

[W]e fell prey to a habit that can’t be repeated when we compare the new crop of Democratic challengers to Trump and to one another. We interpreted fairness as a similarly apportioned mix of complimentary and derogatory stories about each contender, no matter how different one contender’s qualifications, accomplishments and liabilities were from another’s. If we were going to pile on Trump, we had to pile on Clinton — or, rather, keep piling on her.

“It was wall-to-wall emails,” said Jill Abramson, . . . . “When you compare that to the wrongdoing that has been exposed so far by Robert Mueller,” Abramson told me, “it seems like a small thing.” The considerable muck in Clinton’s background never did, and never could, match the mountain of muck in Trump’s.

Trump also benefited from the media’s excessive faith in polls and its insufficient grasp of what was happening among Americans between the coasts. “The basic flaw of the press coverage, and I count myself in it, was the total assumption that Hillary would win,” she said. “The firepower of the investigative spotlight turned on Trump was a little bit less, because no one thought he would be the president, and that was a grave mistake.”

Regardless, he won’t get any pass along those lines in 2020. There are formal investigations galore into his behavior. The media needs only to track them — and is doing so, raptly.

We need to do something else, too, which is to recognize that Trump now has an actual record in office and to discuss that with as much energy as we do his damned Twitter feed.

We’ll have evidence aplenty to demonstrate that he’s ineffective and incompetent, an approach more likely to have traction than telling voters that he’s outrageous. They already know that.  We just have to wean ourselves from his Twitter expectorations, which are such easy, entertaining fuel for talking — or, rather, exploding — heads.

“It got to the point where it was one outrage after another, and we just moved on each time,” he said. Instead, we should hold on to the most outrageous, unconscionable moments. We should pause there awhile. We can’t privilege the incremental over what should be the enduring. It lets Trump off the hook.

So does anything, really, that tugs us from issues of policy and governance into the realms of theater and sport. That puts a greater premium than ever on avoiding what Joel Benenson called “the horse-race obsession” with who’s ahead, who’s behind, who seems to be breaking into a gallop, who’s showing signs of a limp.

[I]t’s on us to try to interest them [readers and/or viewers] in more and to leaven that concentration of attention with full, vivid introductions to Trump’s alternatives. Dozens of Democrats are poised to volunteer for that role, and when we in the media observe — as I myself have done — that they must possess the requisite vividness to steal some of his spotlight, we’re talking as much about our own prejudices and shortcomings as anything else. We can direct that spotlight where we want. It needn’t always fall on the politician juggling swords or doing back flips.

It’s on us to quit staging “likability” sweepstakes . . . Every four years we say we’ll devote more energy and space to policy and every four years we don’t. But in an environment this polarized and shrill, and at a crossroads this consequential, following through on that vow is more important than ever.

It’s on us not to surrender to tired taxonomies that worsen the country’s divisions and echo Trump’s divisiveness. Black voters, white voters, urban voters and rural voters aren’t driven solely by those designations, and the soul of the country doesn’t belong exclusively to former factory workers in the Rust Belt.

It’s critically important that we find ways to get at what it is people imagine government should be doing and that we really look at what kind of leadership we need.”  Nicknames have nothing to do with it. So let’s not have much to do with them.

Cyber Warfare: The Battle for American Minds

One need only look at the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom or the outcome of the 2016 presidential election to see the growing risks of foreign cyber warfare inducing societies to be deceived into taking self-destructive actions. American intelligence agencies expect things to get even worse in the future as Russia and other opponents intensify their efforts.  Who is the most vulnerable to fake news and deception on social media?  Older voters who ought to know better but who are duped into promoting falsehoods at far higher rates than Millennials. The answer as to why such is the case is still elusive although it may in part be due to Millennials' greater experience with social media and the Internet age.  It may also be that they do not carry with them the accumulated prejudices that seemingly plague older voters, especially so-called "conservatives" who are predisposed to believe outlandish propaganda.  Personally, I have seen Republican "friends" share shockingly untrue information without ever questioning the source or the information since it fits with their prejudices. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:  

Congress’s annual worldwide-threat hearings are usually scary affairs, during which intelligence-agency leaders run down all the dangers confronting the United States. This year’s January assessment was especially worrisome, because the minds of American citizens were listed as key battlegrounds for geopolitical conflict for the first time. “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways,” wrote Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats went on to suggest that Russia’s 2016 election interference is only the beginning, with new tactics and deep fakes probably coming soon, and the bad guys learning from experience.

For years, studies have found that individuals come to faulty conclusions even when the facts are staring them in the face. “Availability bias” leads people to believe that a given future event is more likely if they can easily and vividly remember a past occurrence, which is why many Americans say they are more worried about dying in a shark attack than in a car crash, even though car crashes are about 60,000 times as likely.

In an information-warfare context, we need to understand not just why people are blind to the facts, but why they get duped into believing falsehoods. Two findings seem especially relevant.

The first is that humans are generally poor deception detectors. A meta-study examining hundreds of experiments found that humans are terrible at figuring out whether someone is lying based on verbal or nonverbal cues. In Hollywood, good-guy interrogators always seem to spot the shifty eye or subtle tell that gives away the bad guy. In reality, people detect deception only about 54 percent of the time, not much better than a coin toss.

The second finding is that older Americans are far more likely to share fake news online than are younger Americans. A study published in January found that Facebook users 65 and older shared nearly seven times as many fake-news articles as 18-to-29-year-olds—even when researchers controlled for other factors, such as education, party, ideology, and overall posting activity. One possible explanation for this age disparity is that older Facebook users just aren’t as media savvy as their grandkids. Another is that memory and cognitive function generally decline with age. It’s early days, and this is just one study. But if this research is right, it suggests that much of the hue and cry about Millennials is off the mark. Digital natives may be far more savvy than older and wiser adults when it comes to spotting and spreading fake news.

The landscape may seem bleak—we’re a deception-ready species, it seems—but I have come across a touch of good news. Even as trust in institutions—including governments, media, and universities—is declining, researchers have found that trust in people is increasing. Looked at one way, such trusting behavior makes us more vulnerable to deception. But trust isn’t a one-way virtue: It often leads to trustworthy behavior—the more we trust others, the more they earn our trust. This suggests that, over time, societies can become less deceitful. There’s hope out there.

This much is clear: It will be far easier to shore up our technical defenses against information warfare than to fix our psychological vulnerabilities.

For those fearful of thinking for themselves and inclined to believe myths and falsehoods - think evangelicals - the risk of being duped increase exponentially.  Yet, these people seemingly are the last to grasp that they have been played for fools.