1. Travis C says:

    Travis C here. Just to clear my conscious, I wrestled hard with which series to use for each part of this post. I can map the 3 levels of war to Tolkien’s canon as easily as Star Wars, and the Star Wars universe has an near-infinite amount of conflict spectrum to use. Uber-fans of each, please know you are in my thoughts as I tread into the arena.

  2. I kinda remember Tumblr putting out a post sort of recently about how Russia or some other group was using social media to sow division among Americans. The post discussed what the methods were and what to look out for in order to avoid spreading malicious posts like that. The sad part was that some people were like ‘If I agree with a post, why should I care who it comes from/hesitate to pass it on?’ It’s like some people are so tied up in yelling about things they resent that they don’t care if the yelling is only hurting them or other people in the long run.

    • Travis Perry says:

      Yeah, Russia had an issue with Estonia in 2007 because they wanted to remove a Soviet-era war monument. Hackers from Russia pinged Estonian government, military, and press servers to such a level they all became unusable for a chunk of time. They didn’t follow up with any ground action (like they did when they did similar stuff versus Ukraine and Georgia), but they showed their willingness to use cyberwar to destabilize opponents.

      I’m not sure if the Russians are specifically spreading malicious posts, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s my opinion that they are delighted to have created the doubt in the minds of much of the American electorate as to whether they put Donald Trump in the White House. That’s their new MO–disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, wherever they can. In hopes of setting us off against one another.

      • That’s clever of them in a way, and very interesting. Just wish people weren’t so careless when it comes to taking the bait/being unwilling to keep their disagreements from getting problematic. It’s kind of bad when our politics get so heated that someone sees it as a weakness to exploit.

        Reasonable arguments make sense and can help people figure things out eventually. But people seem more interested in simply flaming the side they see as wrong or evil. Or just shouting stereotypical talking points at each other.

        Well, the fact that Russia would target other nations like that is a good reminder that, even in our modern era, a lot of nations are far more self seeking than they first appear. Even if the civilians want peace, many governments would rather destabilize or obtain what they can.

What do you think?