>I've been debating in my head a what if scenario where Russia
>was able to fuck with our elections in 2004, but had
>successfully been able to manipulate Bush into abandoning his
>plans for Iraq. Is that a trade-off I would be willing to
>accept?

This is part of my issue below where I think our revulsion toward the idea of "influence" demonstrates some serious naivety about the origin of any of our firmly held beliefs. Accepting the fact that none of what we think is purely pressed in our own unfettered mental palace and moving then toward saying some types of influence are bad and others aren't can be fine, but I don't see a reason why the source of the influence should be the deciding factor - particularly when the desired end of that influence is often at least as easy to parse out.

The end of the Iraq War would have been a better result for every single human being on earth, except for ghoulish war profiteers and their servants in office. *Any* outside influence that could have led to that outcome would have been welcomed. And this isn't even purely an ends-justify-the-means position either, since both the ends and the means are justified in the same way that every political moment is: through power. Ethics haven't ever had anything to do with it.

For more present-tense example, I'm pretty sure Iran has an opinion on Trump2020 and if they believe matter of influencing Americans is as simple as opening some fake accounts on facebook and arguing with boomers in the comments on local news articles, they're definitely going to do it. And I hope they succeed. Nobody needs another endless, made-up middle eastern war.