What did Santa bring Russia?

As I was saying, the internet is an outrage machine, an amplifier, if you will:

"They were taking both sides of the argument this past weekend, and pushing them out from their troll farms as much as they could to try to just raise the noise level in America and to make a big issue seem like an even bigger issue,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the Associated Press reported.

Well, I'd say making a mountain out of a molehill, but let's not quibble now.

“The goal is heightened tensions,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and current senior fellow at the Foreign policy Research Institute. “They’ll use organic American content to amplify to American audiences.”

“They would much rather use organic American content,” Watts explained. “It hits the audience better and it’s cheaper and more effective.”

....

Watts explained President Donald Trump is easy to exploit with “active measures” campaigns designed to destabilize democracies from the inside.

“The Russians can just sit back and say: ‘Amplify on both sides. Make people angry.’ And it works, man, God, it works,” Watts said.

Yes, yes it does.