The other shoe drops
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, hypothesis abounded. They jostled one another, each explaining a part of the elephant.
Comey’s last-minute announcement that he’d reopened Clinton’s email case cost her a few percent. Residual antagonism from Sanders supporters cost a few more. The fragmentation of news sources, Clinton’s emotional distance, and routine misogyny contributed.
And there was Russian influence.
Like long distance runners at the start of a race, multiple explanations had merit, but none was most essential. Trump’s shocking style created a cacophony, the noise blurring out distinction. In time, clarity develops. Runners spread out, and a leader emerges.
We now know that Trump’s team colluded with Russians: they met in Trump tower to plan. Russians hacked back-room emails and fed them to Wikileaks. Russian trolls spread false stories to incite fear and loathing online.
These details underscored Russia’s influence. They were revealed in the months following the election, and pushed Russia into the forefront of 2016 explanations.
The last weeks have seen the other shoe drop. Trump’s handlers, or puppet-masters, the Mercer-Bannon group, harvested 50 million Facebook users and funneled tailored propaganda to them. Cambridge Analytica worked with Russians. Twitter and Facebook were manipulated. It wasn’t just the Russians, but they were waist deep.
Add to this a scientific result. A robust study, published in Science, demonstrates that false news spreads faster and farther than truth. This held up in the face of different user characteristics. Bot traffic was incidental. It’s humans who share lies with gusto. The subjects were American.
The Russians were lucky. Or perhaps a century of totalitarian mind-games taught them what these researchers discovered: lies are more potent than truth, when networked.
If false news is a virus, social media is a vulnerable transmission system. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, author Diamond shows how biological fates led to historical outcomes. North American pre-colonial inhabitants lacked immunity to European childhood diseases, which let Europeans get a foothold and expand. Europeans lacked resilience to African diseases, like malaria. Africa is still the domain of Africans.
The U.S. appears deeply susceptible to Russian lies. Perhaps all humans are easily infected by falsehoods. But some have a more robust immunity. At this point, the U.S. does not.
Now we know that Americans were undermined by false news, tailored to make them prefer Trump, or simply dislike Clinton. “Russian meddling” has emerged as the leading cause of Trump’s upset victory, much as steroids have become the leading explanation of the 70 home-run era in baseball. No doubt Bonds and McGuire were very talented. No doubt Trump exploited American disenchantment with politics. But there were other factors that drove their outrageous achievements.
Russian influence started out as one of several explanations for 2016 results. As time passes, it’s become the primary explanation. The Russians had access to perhaps half of the U.S. electorate’s social media identities, or really their psychological profiles. They pumped tailored propaganda to them, then Americans spread it themselves. The effect devastated enthusiasm for Clinton, and generated excitement for Trump.
