[juliangoldsmith]

>As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.

The problem is the gap between consensus reality and objective reality.

A lot of what the American left has been preaching recently (the Russia-Trump story, for instance) has no basis in objective reality, but people believe it because everyone else believes it. When a small number of large companies control almost the entirety of the media, it's not difficult to change consensus reality.

[dragonwriter]

> A lot of what the American left has been preaching recently (the Russia-Trump story, for instance) has no basis in objective reality

This claim has no basis in objective reality.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> A lot of what the American left has been preaching recently (the Russia-Trump story, for instance) has no basis in objective reality,

Collusion by Trump campaign with the Russian government is not an issue brought up by the left specifically (if anything, it's catnip for centrists; the left have bigger fish to fry), and that you're framing it as such makes me think you're using it as an excuse to ignore it.

[chowchowchow]

That's way overstating it -- people may jump to conclusions that don't match objective reality, but the string of suspicious meetings, consistent omissions from security clearance forms and testomonies, peculiar behaviors by advisors and campaign managers, are all things that did happen in reality.

Things like 3 million illegal aliens voted in California, or Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or John Podesta running a sex ring in the basement of a pizza parlor, are better examples of ideas fully divorced from objective reality.

[juliangoldsmith]

If something being suspicious is cause to believe it, then we can believe that the Clintons had something to do with the large number of politically convenient accidents and suicides surrounding them.

Objective reality doesn't seem to be enough to cast a shadow on the Clintons. How many people on the left know much about the scandal surrounding the Uranium One deal that Hillary Clinton approved, after taking large amounts of Russian money [0]?

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton...

[tensor]

It's suspicious enough for a formal investigation. Hopefully the investigation is allowed to run it's course so that we can learn what happened. At this point you can neither say there is no connection nor that there is one.

That there are a very large number of very suspicious circumstances is fact. It also appears to be fact that Russia did try to meddle in the election. I don't see any problems with these claims.

[juliangoldsmith]

A formal investigation isn't unreasonable. The issue is that the investigator (Robert Mueller) has ties to President Trump's political opponents (the Clintons, through James Comey).

As far as Russia meddling in the election, I don't doubt that. What I would dispute is the usual media narrative, that Russia was responsible for releasing the emails from the DNC.

[chowchowchow]

> If something being suspicious is cause to believe it,

That's not what I said at all, I was talking about the reality of the suspicious acts, not the reality of their implications. But the immediate refocus to the Clintons, when nobody was talking about them, is plenty illuminating about where this will go if we keep discussing.

[juliangoldsmith]

I don't think discussing President Trump's main political opponent during the election is too large of a jump.

Are the Clintons off-limits, or do you just not want to consider the possibility that they might be up to no good?

[chowchowchow]

> Are the Clintons off-limits

Umm, no. Not off limits. But also not relevant, for the same reason I didn't bring up George W. Bush and his administration. Your pivoting of this discussion into one of my personal opinions about the Clintons is super revealing.

I truly don't know what it has to do with anything, but it appears you're trying to catch me personally in some kind of contradiction? Even if I were holding contradictory views about these matters (I don't think I am), what relevance does that have to the factuality of there being enough suspicion around the 2016 election and actors within Trump's campagin to warrant an investigation?

[juliangoldsmith]

An impartial investigation isn't unreasonable. Having an investigation conducted by someone (Robert Mueller) with ties to the Clintons (via James Comey) is.

Keep in mind that almost the entirety of the media and the political establishment in the United States opposes President Trump. If they had anything substantive on him, don't you think it would have come out after an investigation that's been going on for a year?