How Russia Conquered America — Without Firing a Bullet

Medium

How I wish I had written this!

I think Russia didn’t need to fire a bullet because it realized that all it needed to do was help finish what America itself had started. The project of undoing a democracy — using a democracy. 

So Russia installed the cartoon President it chose without so much as having to lift a rifle. Everyone “failed” to see what was happening, didn’t they — sometimes pretty, well, wierdly enthusiastically? From intelligence agencies. To the press. From the media. To academics, thinkers, and pundits. From armed forces to governors. Why was that? Every single institution in the blighted and strange democracy had come to believe in a strange and perverse idea — that it was only there to undo itself. It was so busy doing that, that it didn’t notice that help was on the way, from its worst enemy. Or maybe it did — and so, even more absurdly, many celebrated this brave man who seemed to be capable of finishing the job of using democracy to wreck democracy.