>1) If the parties principled and upfront as befits the democratic process rather than utterly skeezy there would be nothing to selectively leak/embarrass them with.
This is incorrect both on a practically every level.
First, the Russians, in other instances where they have 'leaked' emails have both changed contents and in fact inserted emails. See David Satter[0] Because the emails were private to begin with, you are taking an enormous leap of faith to trust them as fully accurate simply because they were 'leaked.' The absolutely easiest thing to do would be to leverage any potential misinterpretations or suggestions of impropriety by inserting things to make that worse.
Second, we see a group of people intentionally, aggressively, and dangerously taking things out of context and mislead others to drive a narrative. See Pizza gate.
Third, you entire argument relies on no one ever misunderstanding another person's communication. Has anyone ever misinterpreted your actions? your words?
Yes, political parties are sometimes skeezy, so are people. But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior into not just a believe that it is universal and unfixable (which you seem to already accept) but an actual undermining of the whole system.
Those are different "Russians" - judging from the name (Cyber Berkut) they most likely not even Russians but Ukrainians, as "Berkut" is the name of the security force that has been, among others, protecting Yanukovich in Maidan events in Ukraine in 2014. Russian group would not likely take the name of Ukrainian security force - there are a lot of nice Russian names available. But pro-Russian Ukrainians (which there are a bunch of) would. In any case, the only relation of those to APT*s is that they also leaked emails. So far I don't think there was a credible claim of any Wikileaks-published DNC mails as being fake, were there?
> But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior
Wasn't that like what 90% of past electoral campaigns were doing - digging dirt on each other (going back to high school and beyond) and blowing it up into a huge deal? I don't think Russians exactly invented the whole "dig up some dirt on the opposition and talk about it incessantly" trick.
This is incorrect both on a practically every level.
First, the Russians, in other instances where they have 'leaked' emails have both changed contents and in fact inserted emails. See David Satter[0] Because the emails were private to begin with, you are taking an enormous leap of faith to trust them as fully accurate simply because they were 'leaked.' The absolutely easiest thing to do would be to leverage any potential misinterpretations or suggestions of impropriety by inserting things to make that worse.
Second, we see a group of people intentionally, aggressively, and dangerously taking things out of context and mislead others to drive a narrative. See Pizza gate.
Third, you entire argument relies on no one ever misunderstanding another person's communication. Has anyone ever misinterpreted your actions? your words?
Yes, political parties are sometimes skeezy, so are people. But the broader point here is that one group is leveraging and digging and amplifying some bad behavior into not just a believe that it is universal and unfixable (which you seem to already accept) but an actual undermining of the whole system.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/26/russi...