Nothing wrong with being cynical and dejected given the givens imo. I’ve worked with immigrants and refugees in Canada for over a decade, and my wife and I put our Go Bag together last year for when the nazis come to kill us and take our shit. She escaped one war already and knows what’s up. The threat is real.

But the enemy LOVES it when we sit and stew in our sadness and rage. They literally study how to make us give up, and these screens we’re constantly touching are totally part of it. Don’t believe the hype. We have allies and options.

snip from the last good thing I read on reddit:

The term “disinformation” undersells the problem. Because much of Russia’s social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that’s how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it’s not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. … According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.