The Russians Are Not Coming

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Although Hillary and Putin both like the idea conveyed by this illustration, it is not the way it happened. By a long shot.

Turns out it is possible to overstate the impact the Russians had on our last presidential election. According to the latest Mueller indictments, the Russian government spent as much as $1.25 million dollars a month to influence the 2016 elections. Imagine! If they had kept that up for only 12 and a half years, they would have almost matched what Jeb Bush spent before dropping out of the primary races in February. After spending $150 million, Jeb had managed to win the support of most, but not all, of his extended family. His mother remained on the fence.

As far as was publicly known by last November, a year after the election, Russian agents had spent $145,000 for sure, maybe $200,000 on Facebook ads designed to influence the election. All they had to do was keep that up for 705 more election campaigns and they would approximate what Hillary spent on advertising in 2016. No wonder she’s convinced they stole the election from her.

Then there was all that “hacking.” The Russians “hacked” the computers of the Democratic National Committee and posted embarrassing emails on WikiLeaks — embarrassing to one John Podesta, a familiar name to several hundred American political junkies. The thing that embarrassed him most, or should have, is that his emails were not “hacked” at all — to hack is to gain unauthorized access to a computer, using another computer. But Podesta was pfished; that is, somebody pretending to be Google asked on line for his email password and the idiot gave it to them. (Damn those smooth talking devils!) As a result, the country decided that the Democrats were too stupid to govern and gave the election to Trump. Or something like that.

If that doesn’t scare you enough, consider that multiple unnamed sources now agree that the Russians really did hack — that is, gained unauthorized access to — 21 state “election systems,” or, no, wait, it was actually 39 states, um, except that they did not actually hack those states but attempted to, and they succeeded in, oh, several cases. Maybe one.

Dare we ask what, exactly, are these “election systems?” They have nothing to do with counting votes, as seems to be widely assumed, they are the lists of registered voters in the state. And what could the Russians to do that list if they did successfully hack it? They could delete names, or declare voters deceased, or otherwise cause confusion, which would be short lived because the information in the states’ databases comes from the individual counties, which maintain the lists. There are 3,142 counties (or county equivalents) in the United States. Hack away, Boris, you have a ways to go yet.

But wait, (I hear you wail) what about all those fake news stories? Russian bots (which according to the dictionary are the larvae of the botfly, and are found mainly in fresh manure) generated 2.1 million fake Tweets about the election. That is a number that can all by itself set your hair on fire unless you happen to know that about a quarter of a billion Tweets about the election were sent, of which maybe half were viewed. Fake Russian tweets made up one-half of one per cent of the total.

Political scientists have been striving to measure the effects of all forms of political advertising, in order to estimate reliably the numbers of minds, and hence votes, that were changed by all this Russian activity. The results are in. The number is zero.

The talking heads keep marveling at the Russian operation’s “sophistication,” primarily because they knew what swing states were. Anybody who listened to cable news for five minutes anytime during the two years preceding the election knew that a swing state was, and which ones they were. The entire Russian operation was run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a legendary Russian caterer. I am not making this up, he is universally known as The Chef.

In addition to hacking and tweeting, the Chef sent out secret agents to infiltrate the American heartland, vacuuming up expertise on winning hearts and minds. One of their nefarious schemes was detonated in May of 2016 when they duped a recruit (I am NOT making this stuff up, the recruit was identified in the Mueller indictment as “a real U.S, Person) into standing in front of the White House with a sign reading “Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss.” When the recruit became suspicious — President Obama was not 55, and his birthday was not in May — the agents admitted that the sign was a greeting for their boss, the Chef, to see on TV live from the White House.  

I do not mean to make light of the seriousness of the fact of Russia’s intrusion into our national election. It does seem to have less to do with changing American policy and more to do with screwing over Hillary, whom Putin hates, but still; it was illegal. But taking into consideration its actual performance, I am moved to echo once again Scott Peck’s famous observation: It is well that evil is so stupid.