Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

The Furies picked out this article themselves. They wanted us to get a better handle on how events of today are reflected in events of days when they were very young. They hope it will help.
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The ancient Greeks had alternative facts too – they were just more chill about it

Joel Christensen, Brandeis University

In an age of deepfakes and alternative facts, it can be tricky getting at the truth. But persuading others – or even yourself – what is true is not a challenge unique to the modern era. Even the ancient Greeks had to confront different realities.

Take the story of Oedipus. It is a narrative that most people think they know – Oedipus blinded himself after finding out he killed his father and married his mother, right?

But the ancient Greeks actually left us many different versions of almost every ancient tale. Homer has Oedipus living on, eyes intact after his mother Jocasta’s death. Euripides, another Greek dramatist, has Oedipus continue living with his mother after the truth is revealed.

A challenge I face when teaching Greek mythology is the assumption that my course will establish which version of the story is correct. Students want to know which version is “the right one.”

To help them understand why this isn’t the best approach, I use a passage from Hesiod’s “Theogony,” a story of the origin of the universe and the gods by the poet Hesiod. The narrator claims the Muses, inspirational goddesses of the arts, science and literature, appeared to him and declared “we know how to tell many false things (pseudea) similar to the truth (etumoisin) but we know how to speak the truth (alêthea) when we want to.”

Now, that is quite the disclaimer before going on to describe how Zeus came to rule the universe! But the Greeks had different ways of thinking about narrative and truth than we do today.

The truths are out there

One such approach focuses on the diversity of audiences hearing the story. Under this historical interpretation, the Muses’ caveat can be seen as a way to prepare audiences for stories that differ from those told in their local communities.

A theological interpretation might see a distinction between human beliefs and divine knowledge, reserving the ability to distinguish the truth for the gods alone. This approach anticipates a key tenet of later philosophical distinctions between appearance and reality.

The Muses also set out a metaphysical foundation: The truth exists, but it is hard to comprehend and only the gods can truly know and understand it. This formulation establishes “truth” as a fundamental feature of the universe.

The meanings of the words used are important here. “Pseudea,” used for “lies,” is the root of English compounds denoting something false – think pseudonym or pseudoscience. But notice that Hesiod uses two different words for “truth.” The first, “etumon” is where we get the English etymology from, but this Greek word can mean anything from “authentic” to “original.” The second, “alêthea” literally means “that which is not hidden or forgotten.” It is the root of the mythical river of forgetfulness, Lêthe, whose waters the souls of the dead sample to wash away their memories.

So to the Muses — who were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory — “truth” is something authoritative because it is “authentic” in meaning and “revealed” or “unforgettable.”

The Muses’ implication is that truth is derived from ancient origins and is somehow unchanging and, ultimately, unknowable for human beings.

Indeed, this formulation becomes a bedrock of ancient philosophy when authors like Plato insist that truth and reality must be eternal and immutable. Such assumptions about the truth are also central to absolutist approaches to beliefs, whether we are talking about religion, literature or politics.

But what good is knowing about the nature of truth if it is ultimately inaccessible to mortal minds?

From teaching Greek texts I have become increasingly convinced that the Theogony’s narrator quotes the Muses not merely to evade responsibility for telling an unknown story nor to praise the wisdom of the gods. Instead, he is giving us advice for how to interpret myth and storytelling in general: Don’t worry about what it is true or not. Just try to make sense of the story as you encounter it, based on the details it provides.

Myth and memory

The treatment of “truth” in Greek myth can be informative when looking at modern research in cognitive science and memory.

The memory scientist Martin Conway, in studying how people construct stories about the world and themselves, has argued that two basic tendencies, correspondence and coherence, govern our memories.

Correspondence refers to how well our memory fits with verifiable facts, or what actually happened.

Coherence is the human tendency to select details which fit our assumptions about the world and who we are. Conway’s studies show that we tend to select memories about the past and make observations on the present which confirm our own narrative of what actually happened.

We already know that much of what we understand about the world is interpreted and “filled in” by our creative and efficient brains, so it should be of little surprise that we selectively pick memories to represent an absolute truth even as we continually revise it.

As individuals and groups, what we accept as “true” is conditioned by our biases and by what we want the truth to be.

With this in mind, the Muses’ warning not to obsess about whether the details in a myth are true seems appropriate – especially if a narrative making sense is more important than it being “true.”

A scene from Homer’s “Odyssey” strengthens the case for applying these ideas to early Greece. When Odysseus returns to his home island of Ithaca after 20 years, he dons a disguise to test the members of his household. A great deal of suspense arises from his conversations with his wife, Penelope, when he too is described as “someone speaking many lies (pseudea) similar to the truth (etumoisin).” Odysseus presents facts to his wife that have no counterpart in an objective reality, but his selection of details reveals much about Odysseus that is “true” about himself. He offers themes and anecdotes that give an insight into who he is, if we listen closely.

Ancient Greek epics emerged from a culture in which hundreds of different communities with separate traditions and beliefs developed shared languages and beliefs. Not unlike the United States today, this multiplicity created an environment for encountering and comparing differences. What Hesiod’s story tells his audience is that truth is out there, but it is hard work to figure out.

Figuring it out requires us to listen to the stories people tell and think about how they might seem true to them. That means not overreacting when we hear something unfamiliar that goes against what we think we know.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Joel Christensen, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Now, I’m sure you are thinking that there is a major difference between truth in myth or religious belief, and truth in actual history. There is indeed. But historians of the times of the Erinyes didn’t see that the way we do. Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, Josephus – All of them included material which cannot be proven true, and material which can actually be proven false. Historians of that time didn’t really seem to care; if it was a good story, they told it.

To give just one example of the provably false, consider the story of Nero “fiddling while Rome burned,” in some accounts watching from the roof of his home. Certainly the great fire burned for several days, and it’s also apparently true that Nero didn’t want to be an Emperor so much as an actor and/or a singer. But fiddled? There was no such thing as a fiddle at the time. There were no bowed stringed instruments at all, and very few plucked ones. There were lyres, which are a sort of two-sided harp. But that’s a minor quibble. What really undercuts the story is that Nero was not in Rome when the fire started – and by the time he did get there, his house – roof and all – no longer existed. (And don’t get me started on the collapsible boat with which he is supposed to have murdered, or tried to murder, his mother Agrippina.) So what you think you know about historical figures may in reality be just as undependable as what you know or don’t know about mythology.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, Thank you for sharing with us. Please help us, if you can, to hang onto respect for truth, and to hold on to truth which is knowable and provable, in the face of challenges.

The Furies and I will be back.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

A few weeks ago (three, to be exact) I did a mammoth article on the IRS, with emphasis on why it’s so easy for Repubicans to cheat (and of course, when they cheat the IRS, it is ALL OF US who are getting cheated. I tend to take it personally.) Now, they have come up with yet a new wrinkle to cheat us all financially, and to combine it with straight-up misrepresentation by posing as actual churches when they aren’t.
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What’s a church? That can depend on the eye of the beholder or paperwork filed with the IRS

Samuel Brunson, Loyola University Chicago

In 2016, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association told the Internal Revenue Service that it no longer wanted to be treated merely as a tax-exempt religious organization, free from the obligation to pay taxes on its income. Instead, the association – a Charlotte, North Carolina-based group that produces evangelical events, celebrates the legacy of Billy Graham and proselytizes about Jesus Christ – wanted the IRS to recognize it as a church.

The IRS complied with its request.

Similar religious groups lacking pews and parishioners are making the switch, too, including Focus on the Family, which promotes Christian heterosexual marriage; and the Navigators, an interdenominational Christian group active on college campuses.

In spite of being registered with the IRS as “churches,” these organizations and others like them don’t claim to be churches publicly. In fact, Gideons International – an association of businessmen and their wives who leave Bibles in hotel rooms – says on its website that it is neither a denomination nor a church. And yet, for tax purposes, Gideons claims to be a church.

Why would an already tax-exempt religious group want the government to treat it as a church? Because the rules governing churches are less strict.

501(c)(3) groups

While reasons for this growing trend vary, these groups may share one main goal: keeping their donor lists private to protect their donors from public criticism or backlash.

As a professor who studies how tax laws affect churches and other tax-exempt organizations, I believe these groups overestimate the benefits their donors will receive if the groups are treated as churches. Even so, I’m concerned that groups taking this step are reducing the flow of valuable information about these organizations to the public.

To see why I’m worried, here’s some background about what’s probably the best-known section of the U.S. tax code, section 501(c)(3). It provides two benefits to organizations that meet its requirements for tax exemption. First, these approximately 1.5 million groups – including everything from familiar nonprofits like the Red Cross to National Public Radio to the lesser-known First Church of Cannabis and the Satanic Temple – generally don’t have to pay taxes on their income.

Second, some of their donors can deduct their donations from their taxable income through the charitable deduction, creating an incentive to support those groups. While groups must be organized as nonprofits to qualify for the federal tax exemption, not every nonprofit is exempt.

Eligibility requires pursuing a specific purpose, such as religion, education or charity.

These organizations face obligations to maintain their exemptions, such as filing special paperwork with the IRS every year known as a Form 990. It requires disclosing some information, including who sits on its board of directors and the highest-paid employees. Tax-exempt groups also must share select financial information, including the value of their assets, their expenditures and their revenue.

As you may know, the IRS can’t violate your privacy by releasing your tax return. By contrast, it must make all 990 forms part of the public record.

An exception

As I explained in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, an academic publication, no tax-exempt organization had to file any documentation with the IRS for the first 30 years following the modern federal income tax’s inception in 1913. That changed in 1943, when Congress decided to make all of these groups except the religious ones – whether or not they function as churches – file of annual tax returns.

By 1969, in the wake of the discovery of a number of organizations abusing their tax exemptions, Congress had begun to feel like the government needed more information. That year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have eliminated the filing exception for all religious organizations.

The House’s bill galvanized the religious community, which lobbied the Senate. Leaders like Ernest Wilkinson, the president of Brigham Young University, and the U.S. Catholic Conference argued against this legislation.

They claimed that the added paperwork would be burdensome and expensive for churches without generating additional tax dollars. They also asserted that disclosure was unnecessary because religious donors make charitable contributions based on religious obligations, not due to concern regarding the financial health of churches.

Ultimately, Congress split the proverbial baby. As of 1970, religious organizations were no longer exempt from filing 990 forms. The government did, however, exempt from this obligation churches, church associations and their “integrated auxiliaries” – that is, organizations associated with a church that receive financial support primarily from that church.

Today churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship remain free from the obligation to file the forms the IRS makes all other tax-exempt organizations submit.

Let’s be a church!

To decide whether something really is a church, at least for tax purposes, the IRS considers 14 criteria.

The criteria include the existence of a congregation, the occurrence of religious services and the ownership of property where people pray.

These criteria are vague, at least partly because of the religious freedom granted by the Constitution. That vagueness lets some organizations meet the IRS definition of “church” even if they really aren’t.

For instance, Focus on the Family allegedly claimed its cafeteria was an “established place of worship” because the group’s members occasionally pray there. It also changed the job titles of all 600 of its employees to “minister.” Those steps most likely fail to meet the standards that guided the IRS when it laid out its 14 criteria.

But the federal tax agency lacks the funding and staff it would need to verify these claims, leaving the IRS with a limited ability to challenge Focus on the Family’s assertions. (The group has told The Washington Post that its main reason to become a “church” for tax purposes was “to protect the confidentiality of our donors.”)

If the IRS recognizes a religious organization as a church, the public loses access to significant information. The public does not, however, lose any information about the organization’s donors, notwithstanding these groups’ stated goals in transitioning to churches.

Currently, tax-exempt groups required to file 990 forms must tell the IRS about their “substantial contributors” – basically, donors who give more than US$5,000 annually. But the IRS can’t release these donor lists to the public.

That is, becoming a church for tax purposes eliminates an obligation to file 990 forms, but this newfound opaqueness does nothing additional to shield donors from public scrutiny because donors never faced public scrutiny in the first place.

As long as churches don’t have to share their financial details with the IRS, religious groups will have an incentive to act like churches for tax purposes. But the incentive doesn’t have to exist. I believe that if Congress were to heed its 1969 goals and eliminate the filing exemption for churches, other religious organizations would not feel pressure to act like churches.

And society would get more access to the information it needs to oversee tax-exempt organizations.

[ Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. ]

Samuel Brunson, Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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So, the biggest benefit of this scam is that, as churches, they can “protect the identity of their donors.” The other benefit is they can avoid filing paperwork, which is a financial benefit, as it saves time and money – how much depends on now much paper there is and how much you pay your staff – but probably minimal. However, not having to file adds to the secrecy. I kind of thought that, at least in principle, religions stopped keeping secrets about the time the Eleusinian Mysteries died out. But of course cons and grifters depend on secrecy and misdirection.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I absolutely realize that the IRS doesn’t even begin to have the funding and resources to investigate everything these groups are doing. So, if we are ever going to be able to enforce tax laws, the first step will be rebuilding the IRS. Please help us remember that if and when we ever get into a positon to do something about it.

The Furies and I will be back.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

With Harvey Weinstein’s trial in progress (and boy, is he lucky that he is being tried more or less simultaneously along with Trump, because he’s been spared a lot – so far), and also having been recently reminded of Megyn Kelly, I thought it might be a good time to discuss clearing up some misconceptions about sexual assault. Many of these misconceptions come about because anyone, of any gender, of any cage, can be a target for, and a victim of, sexual assault. But there is not one person, of any gender or any age, who thinks beforehand that it might happen to him/her/them. And trying to imagine what we would do, in this as in so many aspects of life, is highly self-deceiving.

The article between the double-line barriers is republished, but I have taken the liberty of highlighting a few points which struck me. The words are republished – the teal color (and bolding) are mine.
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Weinstein jurors must differentiate between consent and compliance – which research shows isn’t easy

Vanessa K. Bohns, Cornell University

Did the women accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault consent to his sexual advances of their own free will, or were they coerced?

Jurors’ answers to this question will be critical in determining the outcome of Weinstein’s trial, which began jury selection in New York on Jan. 7.

I’m a scholar of social influence, compliance and consent, and I’ve found that people often fail to fully appreciate the coercive dynamics of situations from the outside.

The jury’s task

Although more than 80 women have publicly accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault, the New York trial comes down to two accusers who say Weinstein sexually assaulted them.

Weinstein has argued that the encounters were consensual and claims as evidence emails and texts showing an ongoing, intimate relationship with one of his accusers following the alleged assault. Weinstein’s lawyer, Donna Rotunno, for her part, has stated, “I believe women are responsible for the choices they make.”

His defense team’s strategy, it appears, will be to cast doubt on the accusers’ accounts, depicting their actions as more autonomous and self-directed than the women claim their actions to have been.

To tease apart these competing accounts, jurors are likely to ask themselves, “Could these women have tried harder to avoid or remove themselves from these situations? Could they have said ‘no’ more forcefully?”

Unfortunately, research suggests that the answers people tend to come up with to these hypothetical questions don’t accurately capture how someone would actually behave in a such a situation.

We tend to imagine that people – including ourselves – would behave in bolder and more forceful ways in response to offensive and inappropriate behavior than people actually do when confronted with such behavior.

What the research says

In a classic study, researchers asked one group of women how they would respond to being asked a number of sexually inappropriate questions in a job interview.

When these women thought about this situation hypothetically, 68% said they would refuse to answer at least one of the questions, 62% said they would tell the interviewer the question was inappropriate and 28% said they would walk out of the interview.

However, when the researchers invited another group of women to take part in what they believed to be a real job interview and actually subjected them to the same questions, not a single interviewee refused to answer even one question, and hardly any explicitly addressed the inappropriate nature of the questions with the interviewer.

Moreover, participants who contemplated being asked these questions hypothetically imagined feeling angry. However, participants who actually found themselves in this situation reported feeling more afraid. Instead of confronting the interviewer out of anger, as anticipated, participants facing the interviewer in reality instead tried to appease him by smiling.

My colleagues and I have similarly found that people fail to appreciate how hard it is for someone to refuse inappropriate, intrusive and romantic requests.

In one of our studies, 86% of participants believed a “reasonable person” would say “no” to an invasive request to unlock and hand over their phone to us to look through, and 72% said they themselves would refuse to do so. However, when we asked participants to do just that, only 3% actually refused.

In another study, participants overestimated by 56% the number of students on a college campus who would refuse to vandalize a library book when asked to do so, and in yet another, we found that targets of romantic advances felt more uncomfortable saying “no” than perpetrators of such advances realized.

Compliance versus consent

What all of this means is that while people frequently feel coerced into doing things they don’t want to do, others tend not to recognize these coercive pressures.

As a result, we tend to view others’ actions as freer and more autonomous than they experience them. We assume someone must have wanted to go along with something on some level; otherwise they would just have just said “no,” or said “no” more forcefully.

The jury selection process is supposed to uncover potential biases in the hopes of assembling an impartial jury. Much has been made of the difficulty of putting together an impartial jury due to jurors’ preexisting biases against Weinstein.

However, the widespread bias toward interpreting compliance as consent means that jurors are just as likely to have biases against his accusers’ version of events. Unfortunately, these more entrenched psychological biases are less likely to come out during jury selection.

[ Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter. ]

Vanessa K. Bohns, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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If the discrepancies between what people think they would do and what they actually do are confusing to you, if they make you wonder what you or others probably should be doing to reduce the likelihood of injustice being done – and stubbornly defended – you are not alone. That’s why I had such a delightful “Eureka!” moment when I came across an article (“diary”) at Daily Kos called “The Big Dog Problem.”

I’m not much of a dog person, but even the most intractable cat person must in honesty admit that some dogs do some things right. The author of this diary (user name “dogsbody”) uses his observations of canine behavior, as well as examples drawn from those observations by analogy, to illustrate how people who have privilege can learn to use that privilege to lift up people who have less privilege. Of course the more privilege one has, the more applicable it is. But it’s not that long, and it’s appealingly written. I recommend it highly.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I’d ask you to help all of us who think we are empathizing with survivors, or trying to, to realize that we probably don’t have a clue – that, if we think we wouldn’t have acted the way a survivor did, we are probably dead wrong. And to listen.

The Furies and I will be back.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I mentioned earlier this week that I had seen this as a headline, and that I had found it scary (an understatement). I gather that this is not something that has never been done before, but it has certainly not been on my radar before now, and here’s the thing: Orange Judas admires Putin – follows his lead – would most certainly do anything Putin directed him to do unless forcibly stopped from doing so. So I want to know more myself, and I don’t think it would hurt any of us to know more about what is going on.

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Russia’s cabinet resigns and it’s all part of Putin’s plan

Regina Smyth, Indiana University

Editor’s note: Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry A. Medvedev, and cabinet resigned on Jan. 15.

Russian politics are often not what they seem, especially to those in the West. We asked Regina Smyth, a Russia scholar at Indiana University, to help readers understand what’s going on.

1. What just happened?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 20 years and faces term limits in 2024, has begun his effort to consolidate control and maintain his hold on power after the next elections. The cabinet and prime minister’s resignations are part of that effort.

Putin wants his majority in the parliament – the State Duma – to pass constitutional amendments that will allow him to remain in political control.

This move is not unexpected, at least among Kremlin watchers and scholars like me who have studied Russian elections over 30 years. Putin signaled the change in his annual press conference in December, where he spoke about the potential for constitutional reforms.

On Jan. 15, Putin gave his annual state of the nation address and unveiled “serious changes to the political system.” In response to the proposed constitutional amendments, which Putin is promoting as “reforms,” Prime Minister Medvedev and his government resigned.

This move should not be seen as protest, although it might be useful for Medvedev, a longtime ally of Putin’s, to feign independence and appear as if he made the move in dissent. He and Putin orchestrated similar actions in 2008 and again in 2011.

The goal of Putin and his allies is to forestall popular protest among those tired of Putin’s long reign.

Putin’s proposal to redefine the separation of power between the Duma, presidency and prime minister would allow parliament to select the prime minister, a power now in the hands of the president. Together with an agreement to impose strict two-term limits on future presidents, this change suggests that Putin will leave the presidency.

Future presidents would retain control of the security forces and the military but must consult the State Council.

The proposal is being touted in leading Russian newspapers as “democratic reform.” In fact, while appearing to redistribute power among the high-level players in the Kremlin, the details that will determine power relations remain vague.

On Monday, Putin’s spokesman stated that specifics will be developed in consultation with the Russian people. Given regime controls over voting and national campaigns, this nod to the people is a form of window dressing.

In making these changes and accepting the government’s resignation, President Putin is laying the groundwork for several paths to retain power, including as prime minister or head of a strengthened State Council, an advisory body to the president.

Putin’s proxies are already arguing that these reforms will prevent political crisis in 2024 and increase living standards.

2. Why did it happen?

President Putin faces two potential roadblocks if he wants to maintain political control through the next election cycle – parliamentary elections in 2021 and presidential elections in 2024.

The first problem is term limits that mandate he leave the presidency. In the face of growing urban protest and declining support for his regime’s policies, any political reforms that prolong Putin’s tenure are risky. Reform must be seen by the public as a step forward and not a step toward stagnation.

The second problem is that Putin and his United Russia party need to win large majorities in parliamentary and presidential elections. Russia’s sluggish economy and citizens’ frustration with poor government services will undermine support for regime candidates.

This plan, betting on the regime’s capacity to control elections, is risky. Outright electoral fraud will almost surely provoke protest.

Still, these so-called reforms are timed well before the election to allow Putin and his allies to rebuild support in the wake of any negative reaction. The Kremlin is preserving room to respond and correct course.

In accepting the government’s resignation, Putin blamed it for the country’s economic decline, and placed recovery and improved standards of living at the top of his political agenda.

3. What’s next?

Putin’s regime has successfully sold unpopular reforms to skeptical voters in the past. Earlier government attempts to promote pension and housing program changes provide a model for superficial responsiveness to popular demands.

To channel discontent Putin proposed a national referendum on the changes.

So Duma deputies will hold meetings in their districts. Party leaders will meet with constituents and hear their concerns. Officials will make amendments to the proposed changes that appear to address those concerns, but in ways that don’t fundamentally change their intent. The process will occur quickly to thwart any opposition organization.

The new prime minister will announce economic reforms and an infusion of state funds into the economy. These actions will also create an impression of responsiveness and win voter support.

As elections approach, the Kremlin will warn of potential crisis, offering Putin as the guarantor of stability. The message will be, as it has been in the past, that Putin is the bulwark against crisis.

4. What does this mean to the US?

While the Putin regime’s domestic policy is not popular, his ability to project Russian power abroad is. The U.S. can expect Putin to challenge its policies, as he has since the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia for its invasion of eastern Ukraine.

I believe Putin will continue to meddle in U.S. politics and elections to prolong the country’s democratic crisis. This effort will serve both domestic and international agendas, by destabilizing the U.S. and making democracy look unappealing to ordinary Russians, who associate the dismal economic and political conflicts of the 1990s with Russian attempts at democratic reform.

The trajectory is clear in Russia’s newly revealed hack of the Ukrainian firm Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter served as a board member. This effort by Russia, presumably to unearth embarrassing information about the Biden family, is likely intended to inflame partisan tensions around the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Distracting the U.S. with domestic strife also limits its capacity to challenge Russia abroad.

[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can get our highlights each weekend. ]

Regina Smyth, Associate Professor of Political Science, Indiana University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AMT, certainly this qualifies as what some mystery writers call “a break in the pattern.” If you want to solve a mystery, you look at any deviation from “business as usual” in the life of everyone and anyone, because the chances are that there is some connection. Finding out exactly what the connection is another matter. I’m glad there are people who are knowledgable about Russia looking at it, and hope we will continue to be informed. I do like to be able to sleep at night.

The Furies and I will be back.