Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

2. That's an amazing article.

we're doomed because partisanship has robbed us of our critical thinking abilities. The internet has empowered every idiot with an agenda and a 1/2 a brain and the anti-intellectual right wingers are like a petri dish filled with viruses where this kind of disease can grow freely.

But Watts believes the Russians, at least, are playing for much higher stakes than one presidential election. "The goal is to create division between communities," he says. "It is making you not trust the state. It's eroding the mandate of elected officials so that they can't govern properly. It's making people want to not participate in democracy because they think it's corrupt. It's getting you to either believe that it's all stacked against you or you just opt out altogether because you don't know what to believe. When you don't know what to believe, you'll believe anything."