You know what gets me most about where the USA is these days? It's such a pathetic, "own goal" situation. Yes, there's Russian psyops & a range of oligarchs in on the action, but we did this to ourselves. To be fair, a good amount of us have been saying WTF? for a long time... 1/ ...but as a nation walked right into this. We didn't just give free speech to the worst among us, we gave them a global platform at our expense. We didn't just turn our economy over to financiers, we begged them to take it, and thanked them while they fucked us. 2/

True Story: A few years back, I was teaching an ESL class with students from all over the world. The topic of the day was "Freedom of Speech" so I thought of an innocuous example and said, "If I say, 'Obama smells like potatoes!' nobody comes to arrest me." 1/5 The class chuckled appreciatively—even the Korean boys who weren't generally chucklers. I went around the room, asking students what happens if you criticize the government in their countries. The Saudis talked about the influence of social media in their country.... 2/5