So I'm furious that the Russians tipped the election to Donald Trump. I can't say I'm surprised by it, though.
I've read a lot of analyses about how the Russians did it and the various effects on the electorate. I've read critiques of the media for playing into the hands of Russian hackers and WikiLeaks. What I haven't seen much about is why tens of millions of Americans were primed to be played for suckers.
Why were so many of us ready to buy into a what Internet trolls (some paid by Russian spy agencies) spread around Twitter? Why were John Podesta's emails interpreted as anything other than run-of-the-mill politics? Why were we so inclined to believe the worst about us? Why did we not see propaganda for what it is?
***
A couple months ago, the NPR podcast Planet Money tracked down a writer who wrote and spread right-wing disinformation via social media so he could cash in on the advertising.
SYDELL: And this brings us to the article we have been tracking this whole time, the one about the FBI agent who was killed after his alleged involvement in leaking Clinton's emails. Jestin did not write it, doesn't know the real name of the contributor who did, but he did publish it, and he says it got 1.6 million views over 10 days.
COLER: You know, the people wanted to hear this, you know? So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional - the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then, you know, had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums, and, boy, it spread like wildfire.
SMITH: The story was quickly debunked on sites like snopes.com. And the real paper in Denver, The Denver Post. But for lots of Trump supporters, this did not matter.
COLER: They don't care that it was debunked, you know? Snopes is run by George Soros and is a Obama mouthpiece to them. And, you know, the credibility of these kind of sources, I guess, has been just tarnished so much that nobody even listens anymore.
(Emphasis mine)
They asked him why he didn't do the same for an audience of gullible liberals.
SMITH: And Jestin (Coler) says, at least in the beginning, he was an equal opportunity prankster. He tried to peddle fake news for lefties, he says, making up vile things about conservatives.
COLER: It just has never worked. It never takes off. People will always say - you know, you'll get de-bunked, like, within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.
***
Yes, it's horrifying that it's being done by a foreign power with malicious intent and it's fair to say this is one of the most successful campaigns carried out by foreign espionage service against the U.S.
However, we, the voters, laid the groundwork for it to work. A significant chunk of the electorate has been mainlining propaganda that tells them that not only are liberals and Democrats wrong, they're actively and purposefully seeking to destroy America. They are capable of murder.
The boundaries of acceptable political discourse in our country have been decimated to the point that they really don't exist for a lot of us. Put it this way: if you think someone murdered a person for political gain, you can't then argue with that person (or people who support her) about the appropriate size of the federal budget. You chant, "Lock her up!" and equate voting for her with treason.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin didn't destroy our political norms. They just took advantage of that the fact we barely have any left.
We can blame a lot of people and organizations for spreading propaganda. We can call out the gains to be made from doing so -- money, influence.
We should also call out that many of us eagerly lapped up this stuff and have been doing so for a long time.
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