What The Release Of Russian Ads On Facebook Tells Us About Ourselves.

America, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this – but,

[Russian voice]: Have happy time looking at shiny thing. Why you have to worry about…

Hey! What the hell was that?! Anyway, as I was saying, what the Russi –

[Russian voice]: Look at this happy boy – he is watching tv, but not the news. Don’t you want to go watch tv that isn’t the news?

[Russian voice]: mmm… This looks good! I bet you are hungry, too! Close the blog and go have food! 

[Russian voice]: Perhaps you are stressed and you just need some exercise? Bonus! The gym is full of beautiful people! And …. [sounds of a struggle in the background]

Ok… I’m back! I don’t think we’ll have anymore interruptions from that guy. Ok, where was I? Ahhhh… I was about to tell you that Congress released every Russian Facebook ad run during the election cycle. The 3500+ ads are deeply disturbing in many ways. What I find most disturbing is not what it says about Russian involvement. Instead, it is what it says about us. Russia used ads designed to stir up strife and contention throughout our nation. They pitted us against one another by race, gender, political affiliation, and on, and on. None of that would matter if we didn’t take the bait, though. While the U.S. intelligence community believes the Russians decided that they wanted Donald Trump to win, they played everyone – left, right, center, and even politically oblivious, they played us all like a fiddle. America, we need to wake up. It’s time to start being proactive thinkers. It is time to pull ourselves away from television sets, the mindless Facebook scrolling, and ubiquitous self-indulgence, and figure out what the &%$* is going on around us. Otherwise, we will never be anything more than the fish in the frying pan, because we just couldn’t resist the (click)bait.