The Electoral College has finally finalized the 2016 US Presidential Election with Donald Trump declared the definitive victor. Anti-Trump forces had hoped the Electors of the Electoral College might realign their votes with the popular vote to pick Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, but they will now have to either accept the new President or seek a recall vote. Where Trump supporters saw recent efforts to influence the outcome of the Electoral College vote as a means to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy, the outcome of the Electoral College vote neither undermines nor reaffirms Mr. Trump’s legitimacy. The Electoral College fiasco only undermines democracy in the US.
Despite winning the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, a Hillary Clinton victory by the Electoral College would have called into question the legitimacy of a Hillary Clinton Presidency and done far more to undermine America’s democracy. President Donald Trump won based on the long-held rules of all US Elections. Hillary Clinton’s Electoral lose is the product of the Electoral College working. Convincing the Electoral College to upsurge those rules, because a portion of voters do not like the outcome, discredits the legitimacy of US elections. For the most part, the Electoral College is an outdated, unnecessary institution, but the need to protect the rights and interests of minorities from the will of the majority continues to exist.
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Russia’s alleged state-sponsored hacking of US political organizations, including the DNC, as part of an apparent attempt to influence the US political system, has sparked numerous controversies, even though the hacking itself is not particularly threatening. Revelations about Yahoo’s record-setting data breach of one billion user accounts represents a milestone for the information age in terms of the scope of hacking, yet it was received as old news. The size of the attack may have been massive, but the hackers did little in terms of introducing a new threat. The problem is the same and the need to solve that problem is the same. The ongoing and successful targeting of political organizations, corporations in all industries, and government departments, including the US Office of Personnel, have demonstrated the vulnerability of everyone. Meanwhile, the use of hacking by Russia, as well as national security agencies like the CIA, NSA, and FBI, remind the world that everyone with the capacity is hacking without proper governance limiting their activities. Over the past few years, cyber security has grown to be a major concern. In response, government and private entities have done a great deal to help address internet security threats, yet it clearly has not been enough. Donald Trump and his largely unexpected victory over establishment-favorite Hillary Clinton has been made the focal point of an alleged plot by state-sponsored Russian hackers to intervene in the 2016 Presidential Election. Although the actual impact of any attempts by the Russian government to skew US elections with strategic, one-sided releases of hacked documents and public misperceptions is likely no greater than those of biased media outlets, undue foreign influence on the US government is intolerable. With that in mind, this story has a great deal more to do with Vladimir Putin and America’s national security apparatus than the 2016 Presidential Election.
Accusing state-sponsored Russian hackers, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, of attempting to manipulate the 2016 Presidential Election results, with a “high degree of certainty,” is the CIA. Figures like Donald Trump have cast doubt on the credibility of the CIA’s assessment, which appears greatly based on speculation, but the American People long ago lost the trust and faith needed to simply accept the weakly supported conclusions of the CIA or any another national security agency. Due to the often secretive nature of national security , critical mistakes, e.g. nuclear weapons in Iraq, and overreach, America’ national security apparatus has spent years undermining its own credibility and, therefore, its mission. The Obama Administration and the 114th Congress will spend their final days investigating claims that Russian hackers attempted to skew election results in favor of Donald Trump. The United States is the most powerful nation on the planet. Undue influence over the US government is, therefore, a prize coveted by those who seek power from across the globe. Although special interests groups and every sort of lobbyist imaginable have spent decades “hacking” America’s political system in order to push their own policy agendas over the collective interests of the American People, the 2016 Presidential Election has forced the threat of cyber warfare to democracy into the spotlight.
Unfortunately, the crimes allegedly committed by Russian hackers are not the only attempts by hackers to skew US election results. In the spring of 2016, Anonymous Hacktivists decided to rally support for a massive attack on Donald Trump’s primary campaign, because they found him offensive. Where Anon Hacktivists exemplify the power of the technically skilled to empower the oppressed and oppress those they oppose, they also made themselves a threat to the democratic rights of dissenters. The crimes committed by Russian hackers, however, exemplifies the threat of state-sponsored cyber warfare to responsive democratic governance. Unlike the CIA hacking of Congress, which was revealed in early 2014, the Russian hacking also has the added dimension of undue foreign influence. The Syrian Civil War matters to the world, aside from humanitarian reasons, because the conflict has the potential of spreading and enflaming lesser conflicts across the highly unstable, insecure region and beyond. Where European powers, the US, and Russia have vested interests in the conflict due to the threat of globalized terrorism, Europe is also under economic strain due to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Overtaking Al Qaeda and Boko Haram as the face of globalized terrorism, due to its brutality and once rapid expansion, the Islamic State has forced Americans to pay attention to the Syrian Civil War.
It would be logical to conclude rivals should unite in battle against the common threat of the Islamic State, especially with Assad’s near victory in Aleppo, but such a conclusion ignores the fundamental reasons for the Syrian Civil War and US-Russian tensions. With control of Aleppo returning to the government of Bashar al-Assad, thanks largely to Russian military intervention against rebel factions, the Syrian Civil War feels like it is about to end with a victory for the Assad regime. Far from victory, the Assad regime has simply reclaimed the responsibility of securing Aleppo from terrorism and guerrilla warfare with a military on the verge of collapse and an inability to rebuild the nation he led to ruin. |
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April 2020
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