Earlier in this thread back in March, I made a prediction:
https://gta.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=14083&p=3

- dismantle the existing educational system and require that church teachings are made a part of the upbringing of all American children: once again, very much the way a religious cult would operate. All it would take is for the Heritage Foundation to get their belief system installed in ONE generation of young Americans, and you have a huge army of willing far-right Christians brainwashed by propaganda from all media sources: FOX News (TV), social media (Musk owns Twitter, Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram), and public school.

We define our reality by the information fed to us, if all of that info says the same message, and since we don't develop critical thinking skills to question what we are told until late in adulthood, those kids are the ones who will blindly follow whoever leads the US then (Trump or his successor). The US essentially becomes North Korea or Russia, a regime where a tiny number of people sit at the top, with a loyal military to defend them, while everyone else is too hungry and too destitute to fight back.

The Trump administration is closing the Dept of Education and then will fund a new, more "patriotic" education for the kids:















And since Palantir was mentioned... here again is Palantir's co-founder Peter Thiel, who plans on talking about the Anti-Christ...



If you have friends with kids living in the US, especially in the red states, you'd best make sure that you keep a close eye on what your children are being taught at school for the next few years. Like I said, one generation to brainwash those kids and turn them into polite American Nazis.

 

AND NOW WE RETURN YOU TO:
From Russia with LEXX

Now let's wrap up our discussion about LEXX and we'll see how it ties into Russia and it's invasion of Ukraine.

As mentioned in my earlier post, the League of 20,000 Planets had been engaged in a very long war with the Insect Civilization. Humanity eventually prevailed against the insects, apparently wiping them out, and humans being humans quickly went back to daily life antagonizing one another. Humanity elected the Divine Order to govern over their society and slowly over the course of thousands of years, the Divine Order turned into a cruel religious dictatorship that normalized torture, public executions, and organ harvesting.



Finally on the orders of their holy leader, His Divine Shadow, the government hunted down and slaughtered every single one of its citizens in order to accomplish its long-hidden secret agenda: to finalize the creation of what turned out to be a giant insect called the GigaShadow, which was as large as an entire planet! All along, the human population was being raised to be nothing more than protein for this creature and never knew it. The GigaShadow was to be the insect weapon that would go out into space and consume the rest of humanity on the other league worlds.



Our heroes discover that His Divine Shadow was actually the "essence" (soul) of the last surviving Insect from the war, which had managed to hide itself from the victorious humans and go into hibernation to wait it out until humanity felt comfortable that the insect threat was truly over and became complacent. The insect then infected a lowly human with its essence, taking control of his mind and body and presenting himself as His Divine Shadow to a religious order who blindly accepted him as their messiah figure.



Even the Clerics never questioned why they were told to do the things that they did, at least, not until it was far too late and there were only 8 humans left alive on the entire planet. But it's obvious in hindsight that His Divine Shadow, the last of the Insect Civilization, wanted revenge against the humans and got it by infiltrating human society, rising to become a powerful leader, and then gradually poisoning that society by normalizing cruelty and sadism, things that we would normally find unacceptable and heinous. The surviving insect had turned daily human life into a struggle with poverty, and with just staying alive and avoiding torture and organ harvesting. After defeating the Insect menace, what SHOULD have been thousands of years of prosperity, cooperation and happiness for humanity, was instead turned into a nightmarish dystopia and mass death. All because of the enemy within.



LEXX is a story about vigilance (or the lack thereof) because the humans thought they had won the war against the insects and were then tricked into giving political power to that same enemy, who then covertly destroys human civilization. The insects are the ones who ultimately won the war (although it was a short-lived victory thanks to our heroes who manage to destroy the GigaShadow before it is unleashed).

While it is excusable that no human could be vigilant over thousands of years against an insect threat thought exterminated from an old war, what isn't excusable is that the moral code of the humans eroded enough that they elected a government that made cruelty to other humans as its stated goal. I think about the story universe of LEXX a lot whenever I see some asshole online using immigrants as an excuse for society's problems. You get the government you vote for and if you vote for a cruel one, don't be shocked when somewhere down the line you too get organ harvested (or deported, as many of the "Latinos for Trump" are now finding out, or bankrupted as those Arkansas MAGA farmers are also finding out).








In the real world, we also fought a war but it wasn't with insects, it was with a bear: a Russian bear to be precise.



If you're old enough, you remember the Cold War between the United States and Russia. Rather than open warfare as we got with World War II, the Cold War marked a period where both sides, deeply entrenched in their respective ideologies, conducted mostly clandestine attacks against the other and often fought through proxies. Each side feared the growing influence of the other side's political ideology both in third-world countries but also within their own borders and went to great lengths to stop its spread (see: McCarthyism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism ).



The biggest component of the Cold War though was the nuclear arms race. Both superpowers feared that an actual full-out war might be inevitable and that meant they needed a very large contingent of nuclear weapons to fire off. They wanted to have enough missiles to target every single major city that the enemy had, not to mention destroy their farmland and natural resources. This would ensure that the enemy could never rebuild their society.




Having an ever increasingly larger and larger arsenal to show off to the world also acted as a deterrent, since both of the superpowers had grown their nuclear weapons supply so large that if it were ever used in its entirety, they could destroy the entire world several times over in what was known as mutually assured destruction or MAD.



In the DC comic book, "Watchmen", the character of Ozymandias stated his fear that the larger this arsenal got as the nuclear arms race went on, the greater the chance for an accident that would destroy all humanity:








Indeed, this was a justifiable worry, since it did almost happen at least once, back in 1983:
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-10/news-briefs/man-who-saved-world-dies-77

It's been said that what got the west off the road to self-destruction was the airing of the ABC TV-movie "The Day After" in 1983 which showed millions of Americans the disturbing result of a nuclear war on American society. It was also watched by those in the US government and was a horrific eye-opener. You can see this classic film for yourself right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPaaHSjMcw


But what finally catalyzed the end of the Cold War was Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, recognizing the financial pressure that the nuclear arms race was having on their economy not to mention dealing with uprisings in eastern Europe and food shortages that led to widespread unhappiness among the population. He introduced glasnost (openness) and Perestroika to reform communism to be more productive but this inadvertantly gave way to more demands for freedom and change.

If there is one moment that still symbolizes the end of the Soviet Union to many in the west, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which had separated East and West Germany, allowing the citizens of both sides to finally be reunited with their loved ones. Germany reunified into one country not long after. The Soviet Union itself officially came to an end in 1991.

After an attempt by hardliners to stage a coup, Gorbachev stepped down, handing over political power to Boris Yeltsin, who became the first president of the Russian Federation. Gorbachev will always be fondly remembered by the west and Europe as being instrumental for bringing about world peace (he was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize). It was his policy of perestroika that opened up Russia to the west, leading to the arrival of several American corporations such as McDonalds.

Gorbachev's legacy among his own people, the Russians, is more mixed, with a fair number of those who express bitterness over the loss of the Soviet Union. This is understandable, as Russia lost its status as a true world superpower (think of what Donald Trump has done to America in just these past few months to weaken America's reputation and status as the number one superpower, and you can understand the Russian point of view).


(Yeltsin and Putin)

Among those who wanted the good old days of the USSR back again? Vladimir Putin, a KGB agent since 1975, who eventually succeeded Yeltsin as the president of Russia and of course, would go on to rule Russia to present day. And here is where things will start to sound VERY familiar to what is happening in the world today. Once Putin got into power, he began to slowly consolidate power for himself, turning the government into something more and more authoritarian, isolating Russia from the rest of the international community, and taking on very aggressive foreign policies.



The way I see Putin, when viewed in the context of the story of LEXX is that Putin is the last survivor of the Cold War against the west, of a regime that was now gone and had no chance of truly competing against the military might of the US (despite retaining its nuclear arsenal). He is the last of the Insect Civilization, forced to watch as the enemy, the humans/Americans, celebrate their victory and are poised to spread everywhere in the galaxy. What can he do? He wants to "make Russia great again" but lacks the might to do so. Well, just like the final surviving insect in LEXX, he bides his time and waits for the other side to get complacent... because as far as the west is concerned, they've won the Cold War!

But time is going to be on Putin's side, because once the 2000s arrive, he has the chance to build his own GigaShadow, right in the heart of the enemy's territory.
 

America is done.

The criminals, appointed by the Felon-in-Chief, are in charge.

And we live right next door. I'm starting to feel Ukrainian.

Brainwashing your children at the place where they are getting their education:


The reason for why the Republicans declared "Antifa" as a terrorist organization:


We all knew Trump is building a luxury ballroom with taxpayer money, but this thing is going to be massive:


And even more insane tariffs:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trump-says-us-will-impose-new-tariffs-heavy-trucks-drugs-kitchen-cabin-rcna233817

There's now a claim from Trump that he will use some of the tariff money to send financial aid to the farmers whose livelihoods have been destroyed by those same tariffs. I am extremely skeptical that anything will come of this: either it will be some inconsequential amount that actually makes it into the hands of the farmers, or the money will deliberately come too late to stop foreclosure, or the application process will be way to arduous to let most farmers get the money. I'll explain in a future post why I think Trump wants these farms to fail, and not just because they have a stake in the FarmAcre farm auction business and plan on buying up the land for Trump's kids.

 

tRump's supporters are sleep-walking into authoritarianism and dragging everyone else with them.

If they think they will be, somehow, exempt from the ravages of dictatorship due to their red MAGA hats, they've got a hard lesson coming.

This will be new for Canadians too. We've never bordered on a dictatorship before and we all know how sacrosanct borders are to dictators, right? Watch for fifth columnists to welcome our new overlord.

I can hear some readers saying, "Ridiculous. tRump derangement syndrome. Blah, blah, blah." Really? Who ever imagined America becoming an enemy to its own Constitution? Who ever imagined a convicted-felon as president? Who ever imagined America threatening Canada? Who ever imagined a president demanding prosecution of his perceived political opponents? Wake up.

Madness.

This Oregon senator warns citizens not to protest (because Pete Hegseth has no problem with the military shooting civilians):








Now that FBI Director Comey has been indicted (purely for revenge reasons), who will be Trump's next target? He already said that Comey wasn't the last that would face "justice":



ALSO: I am no fan of MTG, she's been a Trump loyalist since day one and is so batshit crazy that she makes Alberta's Danielle Smith look normal by comparison. But she has taken a stand against Trump by demanding the release of the Epstein Files and is one of the few Republicans to sign the presser document. Now suddenly she's telling her followers not to believe she died of suicide if anything happens to her. Someone has clearly been trying to intimidate her into withdrawing her signature (probably Stephen Miller I would guess):



 

Last edited by TomTV (September 28, 2025 12:00 am)

A reminder that in his first term, Trump did at least have a few normal, sane people working under him and these people were able to keep Trump's craziness at bay. This time around, there are only loyalists and yes-men who will simply obey orders, which is all the more reason that those Portland residents don't give the army an excuse to use their guns on them.



This time, for Trump's second term, the Secretary of Defense (renamed to Secretary of WAR) is Pete Hegseth. So who is he?

From the article:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/12/pete-hegseth-allegations/

I'm just going to list the headlines, if you want details, please click to read the full article:


- Mismanagement, a Drinking Problem, and Sexually Inappropriate Behavior

- Rape Allegation

- His Mother Called Him “an Abuser of Women”


From:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/pete-hegseths-worldview-is-even-worse-than-his-personal-behavior

Pete Hegseth's Worldview Is Even Worse Than His Personal Behavior

Hegseth thinks we should disregard the Geneva conventions, embrace violence, and pursue a “clash of civilizations” war against Islam.

From The Rolling Stone:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pete-hegseth-fox-co-workers-drinking-concerned-1235191278/

Pete Hegseth’s Co-Workers at Fox Were Concerned About His Drinking

"We’d have to call him to make sure he didn’t oversleep because we knew he’d be out partying the night before,” claimed one of Hegseth's former colleagues

However the real reason he was chosen is likely because he fits in perfectly with the Heritage Foundation's goals of white Christian supremacy:


A great explanation of just what the Christian far-right is:













If you would enjoy seeing a racist Christian white nationalist kick himself in the balls, as Pete Hegseth did on live TV, go here:
https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1972659477124878736

Last edited by TomTV (September 29, 2025 1:13 pm)

Insiders tell The Daily Mail what it's like working under Pete Hegseth. Yup, it's the level of incompetence and insanity that you expect from MAGA:

https://x.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/1972773857883992225

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's own staffers spill the juicy beans on his “full-blown tantrums” and "manic" behavior, exposing the pathetic truth behind his fake "warrior" persona. This drunk is having a full-blown crisis…

"There's a manic quality about him. Or let me rephrase, an even more manic quality, which is really saying something," one insider at the so-called Department of War told The Daily Mail. They added that Hegseth is "visibly distracted, fidgeting and even standing up and pacing during meetings." According to someone who "works directly with his office," Hegseth has been "erupting in tirades, raging at staffers and obsessing about matters related to his security." “Dude is crawling out of his skin,” said another source. The sources shared feeling what

The Daily Mail described as an “extra duty” recently to “temper” erratic and abrupt decisions within the department. MAGA incompetence and paranoia is spreading like a virus, making for an increasingly unstable Pentagon. This chaos was entirely predictable. A Fox News host should have never been placed in charge of the most powerful military in the history of the world.

The sources also revealed that Hegseth rammed through the pointless and frankly corny “Department of War” name change “earlier than his staff was ready” and berated staff who tried to postpone the announcement. The change was quintessential MAGA: poorly implemented and utterly meaningless, designed solely to distract the public and excite Trump’s supporters with another shiny bauble. “He takes things personally when challenged - like full-blown tantrums,” one source revealed. Hegseth apparently unleashed “tirades” when legal advisors and members of Congress challenged the military’s blatantly illegal extrajudicial strikes on boats in the Caribbean. Not done there, the sources revealed that Hegseth has grown “paranoid” and “panicked” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder despite the Secretary of Defense having some of the best security in the world.

His wife Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth, a former Fox News hack herself, is feeding into these anxieties by demanding additional security measures for him that “go far beyond measures taken to protect any other Trump administration officials.” Pentagon staffers have nicknamed her “Yoko Ono” because she insists on accompanying him to important defense meetings. “She fears Pete's a target,” one source said, adding that Hegseth himself is “rattled.”

“That warrior personae, he's spooked,” they added. It has never been more clear that this man lacks the experience, temperament, and moral character to be Defense Secretary. He’s an alleged alcoholic who previously admitted to paying $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. His own mother called him an abuser of women.

He should have never been confirmed and should resign immediately. He’s fraying under the pressure of the job and if he cracks the entire world will pay the price.

This doesn't bode well for Hegseth's meeting with the top military staff. Since he's not allowed to drink any longer, it's likely that he's found some other more secretive way to get his fix - drugs being the most obvious choice - and that could explain his manic behavior.


 

I’ve kept pretty quiet on this thread but this is the type of situation that has launched coups in the past, calling your brass fat and unfit? Putting down your military? Never a good idea. I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this one. I’d be careful with who and how many firings these yo-yos pull off, it could blow up in their faces, literally.

Dial Twister wrote:

The thing that is most baffling, to me, is the fact that so many Americans were ignorant enough to vote this pathetic excuse for a leader into power...TWICE.

 
True that Dial Twister, but I think the millions who didn’t vote are actually to blame, they could have made the difference against the trailer park patriots.

The Governor of Illinois is calling for the use of the 25th amendment to remove Trump as president.

Watch the video here:
https://x.com/morethanmySLE/status/1973353399619076172

Glad someone is finally doing it, even if it probably won't amount to anything. Trump is clearly mentally deficient.

 

He's such a needy fat boy. If he had actually served, rather than draft-dodged five times, perhaps he would have become a better person. Hah! Who am I kidding. With a father like that?

Multi-generational scum.

newsguy1 wrote:

It was a good sign that all those generals and admirals stayed in stony silence before Trump's weird lecture.  Indeed he seemed worried as he said he had never been greeted with such silence before.
Then he threatened them with firing "jokingly."
 

FOX News would have you believe that the generals laughed and supported Trump:

https://x.com/i/grok/share/j7uNxIERS61OmMVbOSnO7K0oh

> Did FoxNews add a laugh track to the stream of Trump speaking to the assembled generals the other day?

Yes, Fox News appears to have added a laugh track to its broadcast of President Trump's speech to top military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025. The event featured Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressing hundreds of generals and admirals, where Trump's opening remarks about the room's initial silence drew only "polite ripples of laughter" or "uncomfortable laughter" from the audience, according to multiple eyewitness reports and news outlets.

This subdued response contrasted sharply with the amplified, sitcom-style laughter heard in Fox's footage of the same moments, sparking widespread

accusations of audio manipulation on social media.

Raw footage from neutral sources like C-SPAN and pool reports confirms the generals' reactions were minimal and awkward, with no full-room laughter evident—Trump himself joked about the silence, saying, "I've never walked into a room so silent before... Don't laugh, you're not allowed to do that," before adding lines like, "If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room... Of course, there goes your rank and there goes your future."

Pro-Trump social media clips edited the audio to exaggerate the crowd's response, but the unedited versions align with the "nervous" or sparse chuckles described by outlets like The New York Times and USA Today.

This isn't the first such incident; a similar rumor about Fox adding "fake cheering" to Trump's June 2025 Army anniversary parade speech was confirmed via archived broadcasts.

Fox News has not publicly commented on the Quantico broadcast, but the discrepancy has fueled criticism of the network's editorial choices in portraying Trump's events.

If there was ever more proof that the US has become a banana republic... shouldn't this be the very thing that a normal FCC would censure and penalize if it hadn't been taken over by the Project 2025 authors?

 

This item appeared on social media yesterday morning and even knowing all the things I know about Trump's ego, I still hesitated to post it here because it just seemed too over the top and I wasn't sure if this was a fake post poking fun at the orange idiot. You don't get your face on currency until after you've died, as a tribute to an honorable and altruistic career in service to your country. Now the US currency is just going to be another thing he stamps the word "Trump" onto:







The irony here is that since the beginning of 2025, the Trump government has been devaluing the US dollar against world currencies in order to make it more appealing to bring industry back to the US, to make it more enticing for foreigners to buy US products, and to make it easier to service the huge debt that the country owes. I can't think of a better way to devalue the US dollar than by putting Trump's face on it!





Also, why is this government shutdown happening? It actually hurts Trump as much as it will hurt anyone else: he can't pay his own enforcers e.g. ICE, during this shutdown (even though ICE has been deemed an essential service that MUST continue during the shutdown). He can't pay the FBI either. Because just recently the Democrats won Arizona and this gave them the single extra vote needed to win on a declaration to force the full release of the Epstein Files...  except that Republican house speaker Mike Johnson has refused to swear in the newly elected Democrat in so that she can't make the winning vote.

So yes, they are going to great lengths to ensure that the Epstein Files don't get released.





If anything, Trump seems to be enjoying the shutdown, posting AI-generated racist videos which I won't highlight here, and dressing himself and Project2025 insider, Russell Vought, as grim reapers ready to cut thousands of federal jobs.










 

AND NOW WE CONTINUE WITH:

From Russia with LEXX

aka "The Brainwashing of America"

Prior to the arrival of social media, any attempt by foreign enemies to influence and radicalize Americans (and Canadians) would have been difficult. Brainwashing requires regular access to the victim(s) in order to repeat the same message over and over again until it sinks deep into their psyche. They would also have to spend time creating a psychological profile of their target in order to assess what their potential weak points might be in order to exploit them. At best, a Russian agent could be sent into a den of American white supremacists to infiltrate their membership, eventually rise to a leadership position and turn them into an angry militia, and yet such a relatively small group of angry men with guns could hardly pose the kind of destabilizing threat that Putin would crave.



In 2004, Facebook emerged on the scene. Initially only available to Harvard University students, it quickly expanded to other universities in both the US and Canada before finally becoming accessible to the general public by September 2006.  By late 2007, Facebook would become popular around the world, eventually hitting 350 million users by 2009. Three years later, it would achieve a staggering 1 billion users, cementing it as the most popular social media platform.

Without realizing it, America had opened up a backdoor to let Russian influencers into the social fabric of its society, disguised in various forms. I'm sure at the time because it was still the early days of social media, the KGB didn't know quite exactly how they could take advantage of this huge vulnerability that their political rival had unwittingly opened up, but they had the backbone for a powerful psyop after already spending years cultivating "relationships" with American businessmen - and when I say relationships, I mean the Russians during the 1980s and 1990s were actively trying to recruit or compromise American businesspeople (using blackmail, or as the KGB refers to it, kompromat).



Among those Americans, was Donald Trump who was confirmed to be doing business in Moscow back in 1987, hoping to open up another of his Trump hotels in the area. From what I've read online, the KGB were very excited at the prospect of bringing someone like Trump into the fold, he was the perfect puppet or more aptly the perfect useful idiot. This term refers to someone who is naïve or credulous and who could unwittingly be manipulated to support the KGB's political agenda, without fully understanding the consequences or that they are being exploited.



NOTE that right now in 2025, the term "useful idiot" can be applied to pretty much any of the far-right wing podcasters who spout off Russian talking points to their listeners (in exchange for huge sums of Russian money). In those cases, they are given topics to talk about by the KGB e.g. "Why Trudeau is a bad leader", "Hillary Clinton eats babies and drinks their blood to live forever", "How the left-wing are violent radicals that need to be tossed into jail", etc. and don't really care why these topics are chosen only that they are being paid well for it. The key thing is to attack left-wing leaders and left-leaning causes and sow hatred.

Supposedly the KGB codename for Donald Trump is "Krasnov" according to former KGB officer Alnur Mussayev. There has never been any evidence to back up this claim, but Alnur spoke of how Trump's personality defects made him the perfect useful idiot: he was very susceptible to flattery and so he could be controlled through his ego; he was dishonest, which meant he would be willing to do dishonest things on Russia's behalf. He was greedy, and Russia had lots of money to bribe him with. He craved power and recognition, which of course the Russians would eventually use to help him win the US presidency.



Even prior to these claims made by Alnur Mussayev (in early 2025) for years many people online speculated that Trump was under the full control of Putin because the Russians had kompromat on him, captured on hidden video with him doing some very extreme sexual acts with Russian prostitutes (who were under the employ of the KGB) in a Moscow hotel. For those who don't know, it's long been an open secret that the KGB had hidden cameras in Russian hotels that catered to foreign businessmen specifically to capture blackmail footage that they could use to compel those businessmen to do their bidding. Some speculate that this is also why the Republican party members, some of whom initially were against Trump running for a second term, then seemed to make a 180-degree turn over the course of a weekend and endorse Trump (this time, there was no Russian hotel with a hidden camera but instead the location was somewhere in a Republican retreat within the US).

But Alnur Mussayev's claims would suggest that the Russians didn't try to blackmail Donald Trump with embarrassing footage, they were able to sway him in the 1990s by just appealing to his personality flaws and befriending him. This might explain why Trump sometimes seems to take a stand against Russia in regards to the Ukraine war (because Trump doesn't even realize he is just a "useful idiot" to Putin and thinks he is the one in control) and why, during last month's meeting with Putin on US soil, Trump and some other senior US officials left the meeting looking pale and visibly uncomfortable: Putin got tired of using flattery and friendship to get Trump to do his bidding and simply came out and showed the Americans that they have the Epstein files and were ready to release them.

Putin is very desperate now to win the war, given that the "3-day invasion" has now spanned years, has left the Russian economy in ruins and Putin is running out of men. Time is not on his side.



By now you probably can guess what all of this is leading up to: in 2016, the presidential election was underway and their useful idiot had managed to become the Republican nominee for president of the most powerful country in the world. The Russians had years to plan around how to manipulate the American voter through social media channels, especially Facebook, and launched a huge campaign to get voters to support Trump or Bernie Sanders, while finding multiple ways to trick voters into despising Hillary Clinton (which probably wasn't that hard to begin with, I recall a large number of Democrat voters didn't like her and wanted Bernie Sanders to be the Democrat nominee and were outraged when the Democrat top brass picked Clinton over Bernie).



The existing hate for Clinton was already very strong among Americans due to her husband's sex scandal, but the Democratic leadership didn't seem to think that was enough cause to keep her from being their candidate.

SEE: "The dark depths of hatred for Hillary Clinton"
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36992955

Russia used disinformation campaigns, created fake accounts and Facebook groups that were specifically aimed at attacking Clinton, propaganda, and most importantly, they bought many, many Facebook ads.









One of the things that the regular user of Facebook forgets is that the platforms learns MANY things about you just based on your photos and your postings. Beyond the obvious things like your gender, your appearance, your age, your marital status, etc. the software that powers the Facebook platform figures out your religious beliefs, your political beliefs, your true sexual orientation (because it knows what online material you are interested in and can put two-and-two together), etc.  

SEE: "Facebook can tell your sexuality from just three page likes"
https://www.thepinknews.com/2017/11/22/facebook-can-tell-your-sexuality-from-just-three-page-likes/



Facebook forms a very detailed profile of its individual users so that it can then sell its targeted advertising service to its clients: the corporations who want to sell their product to a VERY specific customer group.







For the Russians, they could create a Facebook ad that would only target, for example, a white male Christian who votes right-wing, is middle-income, and is single. The Russians could create a different Facebook ad to target a left-wing aetheist who is poor and married. These ads would be designed to enrage or stoke fear in that specific category of voter and sway them against supporting Clinton.  The ads were created by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) and targeted divisive social and political issues such as immigration, race, gun rights, LGBTQ rights, and police brutality.

Read more about it here:
https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us-voters-before-2016-election/

In the end, Russia spent about $150,000US on 3000 Facebook ads and it was money well-spent. They tricked an unsuspecting populace into putting "His Divine Shadow" into power for a first term, giving Russia an unprecedented chance to have the ultimate insider deep within the normally secure layers of the White House.



It's worth mentioning that Russia was eagerly helped along with its efforts by America's right-wing Republicans (who obviously spread their own share of misinformation about the Democrats), the right-wing news media (FOX News), and Facebook - which just collected the cash for the Russian ads, didn't care if they were true or not, didn't put any restrictions on political ads, and probably would've wanted the Republicans to win anyway since the GOP hate regulation and the growing Facebook empire would be against any political party trying to regulate (restrict) its financial growth.

Just how were these ads so effective at enraging and motivating the voters into voting the way that the Russians wanted them vote? More on that, next time... and how you too, can make your own suicide bomber.