Pouring Salt in American Wounds

It's Tuesday, October 17, 2017. A nice Pennsylvania fall day that is crisp, not quite chilly, with blue skies and just a touch of a breeze to make the tops of trees swing. As I look around, I can't help but think..Ah crap! Russia meddling in the U.S. election was/is real and was helped by paid American activists.

This recently breaking story of Russian meddling really pours salt into our wounds. According to The Guardian's article, "Russian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during election" our very own turned against us. Why does this pour salt into a wound you may ask? Well, I - like many other Americans (I hope) - just want some stinkin' stabilization to soon set in on our political landscape. Everywhere one turns there seems to be some sort of -ism or -phobe hanging out in the ether just waiting to be plodded into conversations so that its ubiquitous showings can continue to occur.  Right, wrong, or indifferent; it was nice to be able to take one topic and poke the proverbial bear in the eye to say  a ha! take that sucker!  and blow off some steam while walking away twirling our imaginary canes feeling tougher than Chuck Norris wearing his Walker Texas Ranger badge. The Russia meddling was my bear to poke (pun intended). I could take pride is rising above the barrage of verbs and adjectives of those who had been deceived by Fake News and Fake Facebook Accounts in order to create derision and division amongst the US electorate. Unfortunately, like the Catacombs of Paris - the meddling runs deeper than I had thought. 

The Guardian investigation brought to light that 10 million Americans saw the fake ads on social media and 1.2 million Americans subscribed to Russian controlled American accounts that spotlighted U.S. issues such as: race relations, gun rights, and Texas Independence aka unhealed wounds. I shudder to think how many families, friendships, and relationships in general were destroyed due to these operatives paying at least 100 American activists to push those issues with the only aim to be sewing discord among the U.S. populous.  <-- That is where the salt pouring commences. Our very own neighbors were a part of the Russian plot to do us harm. Knowing full well lives were in the balance and yet, they still went through with the purposeful mis-information. 

A silver lining if I may..is that according to the operative quoted in the article, the goal was not to support Trump, but to spotlight American issues of division. Clinton was also targeted. 

It does seem that Facebook and Google are doing their part to help fix this mess and who knows what the Mueller investigation will uncover. Whether the Trump administration is absovled from any willful mis-doings or is deemed complicit, we'll have to wait and see. If anything can be learned from this, it's to investigage our sources and try to limit our naïveté of the world in which we live. 




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