It’s a wall of text that tries to blame other countries for the decline in trust for American institutions. No doubt Russia and China do everything they can to undermine and cast doubt, but a huge amount of the reputational damage was caused from within.
no, its a detailed look at exactly how the propaganda networks from other nation states are developing and influencing global opinion in ways that are actively harmful to basic democratic principles. these things are not the same. One of the founding principles of fighting against fascism is that the only thing you cannot tolerate is intolerance. I suspect some as yet un-formulated principle is waiting to be discovered for the Internet.
China and Russia didn’t force the Supreme Court to corrupt the political system with Citizens United or force politicians to spend all day taking bribes. They didn’t cause the widening gap between wealthy and poor in America. They’re not the ones gaslighting Americans into thinking they don’t deserve healthcare. Xi Jinping isn’t the one allowing data brokers to buy and sell bulk geolocation data to anyone that wants it. Vladimir Putin isn’t the one allowing private equity to strangle businesses across America. Erdogan isn’t the one saddling young people with student debt and causing home prices to rise.
The people who have lost trust in the ability of the American economic/political system to care about them, maybe foreign autocrats lit the match but the kindling was already there.
