Make no mistake, I don't like Russia meddling in our elections or our affairs generally. The disconnect, I believe, is the idea that they somehow care about Donald Trump as an ally or in some ideological way. I think Russia wants to sow discontent, anger and mistrust in the US. And they're successful (with our help):
-Trump is a ridiculous person to be elected, so that helps their aim in some ways.
-Trump and Trump loyalists promote conspiracy theories which create animosity - that helps
-Anti-Trump fanatics promote conspiracy theories as well
-Trump's election enraged and weaponized media and academia to absolute bizarre levels of hysteria - which promotes Russia's goals by first creating unbridled hatred of a huge segment of the country among an influential class of Americans, and second by the response to that by citizens who both fairly and unfairly distrust academia/media
-Similarly, our institutions are undermined by a loathing of Trump which resulted in individuals in positions of power (FBI, etc.) seeking to undermine the President, as seen with the FISA abuse findings
BUT, my big caveat here is that almost all of this is enabled by us, and Russia is just pushing our buttons, so to speak. If Hillary gets elected, fine by Russia, Fox News will do the work that CNN and MSNBC are doing now. Republicans will dig up Watergate and Clinton Foundation misdeeds and divide the country, etc.
Sorry for the novel. My views can honestly be summed up with "we're not a unified country anymore on very much and there is little chance for escaping the current cycle of divide and vitriol as a result." The only caveat I have to that is that the Twitter class and you and me don't really represent most people, who just simply don't care very much. They want jobs and to be left alone, and if they can ignore the unbridgeable divides on guns and abortion and health care and free speech and religion and gender, etc., they're happy to wave the flag and act like we're all still largely on the same page.
