As for the Russian bots amplifying trump and amplifying Wikileaks, there are lots of things in this whole Russian interference that could be coincidence, taken individually, but I feel like you have to really stretch credibility to say it was coincidence when you see it all added up.
Like theoretically, I guess it’s possible that Trump hires a campaign manager who worked for free thst has ties to Putin, and that the Russian Government hacked the DNC and shortly after set up a meeting with Trump with the promise of sensitive government information to help with the election, then Instead of promising to share the hacked emails, instead shared a garbage dossier with no real information.
Similarly, it’s possible that Wikileaks actually got the DNC emails from somebody else other than russia, who was simultaneously hacking the DNC. It could also be coincidence that Russia is offering Trump assistance in the campaign, and then also retweeting Wikileaks while Wikileaks is also offering trump campaign advice, and simultaneously Wikileaks is not talking to Russia at all.
It’s also theoretically possible that everybody associated with the Trump campaign chose to lie about meetings with Russia, even though they did nothing improper.
All of these things are possible, but it’s not the simplest explanation by a long shot.
There is an interesting phenomena that occurs with humans in how we can often find ourselves deriving strongly held opinions.
Cognitive scientists and behavioral economists have done a lot of studies that confirm basically this same underlying thing. For instance, to distill it down, if you take a person that either has a neutral position or an opposite position on a two-sided issue, and you ask that person to make an argument for one side(in the case of the neutral participant) or the opposite(in the case of the already biased person), the more they engage in arguing for that side, the more they will come to actually believe in it. What is even more crazy, if another person comes in and challenges that person on the argument they are defending, even with overwhelming empirical evidence, it basically calcifies the argued position into the arguer even more.
There are a lot of varying explanations about why this happens, but we know that it does. Overwhelmingly so in study after study. It basically exposes how the very act of arguing a position creates a long-term path dependency that biases and increasingly calcifies a person's favoritism toward that bias. It's one explanation for why a society may have so many climate change denialists and creationists that are incapable of being persuaded no matter how convincing the persuader is. No matter how overwhelming the empirical facts become. Because they were pushed down a certain path at the beginning, or took on a certain position initially, and because of that initial indoctrination(self induced or influenced), it becomes almost impossible to change that without intense self skepticism. Which most people will not engage in.
That is basically etiolate. He jumped in on one side of the argument, and despite literally every single piece of evidence he previously cited going belly up, a narrative on ground as shaky as creationism, he still clings to that narrative.
Before he put me on ignore, he basically inadvertently admitted to this happening to him, when he inferred that he essentially is at the point where he takes it on faith that the Seth Rich thing will pan out for him. Despite the entire Fox News story, and the waves of evidence to the contrary, tearing that narrative apart in spectacular fashion.
My point is, I would just keep that in mind, because at least by doing so you can be entertained while he engages in an ever intensifying game of self-delusion as the evidence against him piles up. As he puts more and more people on ignore that trigger him. Under the illusion that is is them that are intellectually lacking.
