I’m sure the Russians don’t give a flying fuck what firearms policy is in the USA, but they recognize its a hot-button issue guaranteed to divide Americans into bitterly opposed camps. And that is the goal, to sow discord.

The real genius of the Russian campaign is that they have managed to throw the media, the press, into disrepute so that the natural mechanism that questions and damps out these lies is itself not trusted. Any attempt to even say “there are Russian bots” is immediately dismissed as liberal or MSM or establishment propaganda. And it works both ways, no matter what the right wing media reports, the left won’t believe it, but the same will happen with the left wing message. No one believes anything, and after a while, the political system, and voting itself, the very mechanism of democracy is denigrated. People won’t vote because “all government is bad”, or “all politicians are crooked”. “What’s the point, everything is rigged.”

Hmmmmm. Isn’t that how Libertarians think? Are the Russians using the idea of “all government is bad” to craft their message and push their agenda? Or are they just Libertarians themselves, naturally distrustful of democracy itself and suspicious and contemptuous of its
virtues. When I hear the phrase, “Tyranny of the Majority”, that’s exactly what comes to mind. The patriots no longer believe the majority should have a voice because the majority really doesn’t know what they want, and certainly not what they deserve.

This all traces back to a conviction that the people just don’t know what’s good for them, so we have to make them accept what we know to be right. And in hard times, when prosperity, peace and justice are threatened, even the people start believing it. They will trade their freedom for security, but they wind up just settling for order.

We live in interesting times.