I'm starting to wonder *why* Russian trolls are treated as the Anti-Civility
Today I've learned that:
Russian trolls are making conservative Christians look like fools in the eyes of liberals
Russian trolls are sending uplifting tweets
This isn't about the Russian government, which I believe is an illegitimate terrorist regime, this is about those Russian trolls. When Russian trolls get exposed, they get scrubbed from the Internet and they appear somewhere else, and I'm starting to think it's kind of disappointing we can't engage them.
We treat them as the very anathema of civil dialogue and civil discourse, I'm not so sure they are though. Are they really that different from other actors?
I mean, we're supposed to hold hands with people who think liberalism is not legitimate... that it's a creation of the Je- George Soros. That it results from school indoctrination. We're supposed to somehow convince people who believe in QAnon/Pizzagate conspiracy theories to vote for Democrats. We're supposed to give warm fuzzy feelings to people who think America in 2019 is awful and think America in the 1950s... or the 1860s if you're a Roy Moore voter... was awesome. We're supposed to have "understanding" for people who tell immigrants "if you don't like it, you can leave" but shrug their shoulders when they encounter people who say the wrong side won the civil war.
In short: If we CAN actually convince those people on the other side of the aisle to give up their hate and vote for us, right, then what is stopping us from convincing Russian trolls to turn against the Putinist regime? And if we can't, aren't we just excusing the irrationality and "own the libs" mentality of today's right, blaming Russians, when really, it's just all them? Why are we doing that then? How would that benefit us?
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