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Are they just doing the sort of thing that we've been doing? We've been overthrowing other countries since the early 20th century. I bet we've tried to undermine Putin as well. Is this blowback?

Are you Russian Maksutov or did you get mad and leave when the communism fell?

ajax18 wrote:Are you Russian Maksutov or did you get mad and leave when the communism fell?

"The communism fell?" Hmm. Don't tell the remaining Marxist regimes in operation. No, I'm not Russian or a fan of Marx or communism. Maksutov was a designer of optics.

Maksutov wrote:Are they just doing the sort of thing that we've been doing? We've been overthrowing other countries since the early 20th century. I bet we've tried to undermine Putin as well. Is this blowback?

blowback?
depends upon who started it, correct?

Maksutov wrote:

ajax18 wrote:Are you Russian Maksutov or did you get mad and leave when the communism fell?

"The communism fell?" Hmm. Don't tell the remaining Marxist regimes in operation. No, I'm not Russian or a fan of Marx or communism. Maksutov was a designer of optics.

Don't let him fool you, Ajax. His real name is George Carlinski and he is from the Smirnoff Oblast.

Maksutov wrote: Is this blowback?

Karma.

Blowback implies that its a consequence of some action we took. 9/11 was blowback. This doesn't look like blowback. More like, "a taste of our own medicine."

But that doesn't obligate us to like it, defend it, or look the other way about it. I suspect none of us are fans of Henry Kissinger, but even if you supported previous election meddling, one would hope experiencing it directly would just prompt a change of heart about that.

I heard an interview with Ben Rhodes when his recent book came out. Some may recall he was a speechwriter and advisor to President Obama. In it he described a late meeting with Putin where Obama tried to pursue multiple discussion points but Putin was obsessed with the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych the former President of Ukraine. Rhodes paints the picture of Putin seeing this move as a direct threat by the West towards him and his allies, and likely why Putin feels justified in the moves he's made since including the annexation of Crimea, subversive attempts to bring Ukraine back into Russian influence rather than NATO, stepping in to prevent Assad being overthrown in Syria, and also explicit retaliation in the US to destabilize American society.

If true, which seems plausible, we could probably consider the 2016 election meddling as blowback though I don't think that's the right term. I'd prefer to view it as an escalation that we were blind to (and apparently some people still are). I'm inclined to view the Obama presidency as a bit weak when it came to supporting the uprisings that occurred throughout the middle east and Ukraine, probably due to a naïve sense that Democracy would prevail on its own in an almost divine right of kings way, substituting superior ideology in the place of king.

And THAT, in my mind, is receiving blowback at home and abroad.