Russia’s secret weapon? America’s idiocracy

When, exactly, does an unemployed coal miner in Lackawanna already wary of immigrants and the “mainstream media” become convinced that his interests are best served by voting for Trump over Clinton? Will a Pizza-gate ad purchased in rubles or an “Obama Created ISIS” meme cooked up in St. Petersburg be his tipping point, or just more proof that his original prejudices were correct all along?

At what point does a millennial democratic socialist in Detroit decide to skip voting altogether to put the finishing touches on her long-awaited Jacobin essay about the Zionist hegemony encoded in Seinfeld? Is it before or after spending 20 minutes reading Sputnik’s slippery summary of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs executives? I doubt even Nate Silver would be able to tell you.

What the Russian security services have deftly done, and will continue to do, is tap into pre-existing pathologies in our society and encourage them, as an enabler might do to a drug addict or alcoholic. The extent to which active measures work is the extent to which our society is already falling apart, which is the only conclusion to draw from two recent Senate-commissioned studies into Russian disinformation and propaganda efforts online immediately before and after the last U.S. presidential election.