America: A Hypocritical Nation

     Now, the following article may come off as, well, un-American, and it is fine if you perceive it that way, but know I am just trying to point out facts that have been ignored by much of the general public. It has recently come to light that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee, often referred to as the DNC, in the most recent presidential election. What resulted from these hacks was the stealing of thousands of emails, emails which included damaging information about the Democratic Party and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.

     After investigating the Russian hacks, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) told a group of top U.S. senators that the hacks were aimed at helping Trump win the presidency and hurting Clinton’s campaign. Now, I know that most of you are probably tired of hearing about this recent election, so I am going to end my summary there. I know that many Americans are infuriated that Russia would even consider interfering with the American election. However, what about all of the international elections that the United States has interfered with? According to one expert’s research (Dov Levin, Carnegie Mellon University), the U.S. government has interfered with foreign elections more than 80 times all around the world between the years of 1946 and 2000. This number doesn’t even include all of the attempts to instigate regime changes or coups; if they were included, then the number would be much higher. The American government is by no means a stranger to meddling with other countries’ elections and trying to put themselves in a better position for the implementation of the U.S. agenda.

     When we actually take the time to look at Levin’s data sets, we see that Russia/the Soviet Union has interfered with half of the number of elections the United States has. We see also that the United States really likes to take a vocal stance and say that they are trying to spread democracy all around the world. Is this not a contradiction of espoused American democratic values? What this reminds me of is something that one often sees in elementary schools: there is always that one kid who tells everyone what to do, yet the second someone stands up or tells him what to do, the first child throws a fit. We are quick to forget, for example, that the United States tried to sway the Russian election in 1996, when President Bill Clinton endorsed a $10.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to try to stabilize the already-failing Russian economy.

     The United States is no stranger at all to feeling the need to try to influence other countries in their political arenas. If it benefits the American agenda, why not, right? Or should the American government stop trying to influence other countries’ elections and just let it work itself out? You know, let the people decide in actual democratic elections, wherein the winner isn’t already decided by a country that has a larger military and investment interest in the country’s natural resources? Or maybe we should just let it go and stop being that figurative pot that is always calling the kettle black.

     What I am trying to say is that we should know (all of) the facts before we start  casting shade on others for things that we too have done. Ya know, John 8:7 and all that.

     Sources: Los Angeles Times, NPR