When giving thought to how much we trust or should trust our intelligence agencies, I find it quite alarming that our president-elect continues to ignore these reports. I can imagine how scary it would be if someone with an ego as big as Mr. Trump's to be told that it is possible that you won, not because of your charisma or in Trump's case what he sees as his pure impressiveness, but because of outside interference. These are the facts we have been given and he should accept them or firmly challenge and ask for further investigation, though he is not. This is why that is frightening.
To start with, Mr. Trump's questioning of Russian hacking undermines the intelligence agencies that he will be working with for (possibly) the next four years. This severs the trust between our democratically elected president and the intelligence that keeps us safe. This also severs the trust between us, our intelligence, and our president because we will not know whom to trust.
Secondly, who are we to trust our president-elect? He clearly wants us to trust him more than the intelligence that we have had for years. He is a pathological liar who exudes unearned and undeserved confidence in that he believes he will be the best president ever. This questions his own legitimacy when he tells the American people what to believe about our cybersecurity and what we believe about his foreign ties.
Furthermore, can we trust our intelligence agencies? We have seen how intelligence breeches information privacy. This, to the American people, causes us to distrust the intelligence agencies. And if we knew about election interference or hacking long ago, which we did, then why was there no fuss about it until after the election. Some of this is on the media who focused attention on other things most likely the Access Hollywood tape and the debates, but someone in the intelligence agencies, in politics, or in the media could have made a bigger deal about it and further questioned the president and the intelligence but that is not what happened. Does this or does it not show distrust between the intelligence and not just our media, but between us?
The next frightening part comes from the Democratic establishment. They continue to not question the president on the intelligence either. It is their way of hiding the fact that they were defeated, sweepingly, in November not because of Russian interference, but because of Hillary and the Democratic establishment's failure to listen to fellow Americans and return to the grassroots.
Now we have a choice. We can trust the intelligence that may or may not be completely trustworthy, an incompetent puppet, or an old and worn-out establishment that defeated the party of the people in November or a fourth option. The fourth option is that we trust our fellow progressives to put pressure on both the intelligence and the presidency as well as current and future Democratic leaders to be more effective. They can pressure the agencies and Donald Trump to reach a conclusion with full assurance that everything is true, accurate, and informs the people. We can't trust anyone until we have people representing our values stand up and give us straight answers.
