Right under our very noses all along...
When the Soviet Union, for a multitude of reasons, decided not to pursue the Space Race with the US following an acceleration of our NASA program; when Glasnost and treaties between the two superpowers became the norm; when Yeltsin and Gorbachev approached the West with smiles and friendly handshakes and waves, a bolstered it with compliments directed towards our country and our leaders at the time, little did it dawn on Americans that the ultimate takeover of the United States had begun.
Surreptitiously, Russia became our friend; yes, a friend of whom we were wary, but a powerful entrancing friend at that. We lowered our defenses, both real and intellectual, and allowed them to penetrate our society down to our very beings, and that included, but was not limited to by any means, our media, our social media, and alas! our voting machines.
They installed a stooge, a deep-cover agent whom they had been preparing for years - and do not think for a minute that he's the only one they engaged - and they have been systematically disassembling our country brick by brick in all terms: economic, social, racial, religious, and attitudinal. We have fallen a great deal since 1980, and we generally hadn't considered that the so-called hawks: Reagan, Bush. Sr., and their ilk would have been the patsies who opened the door for the insidious attack. It was a form of political jiu-jitsu: they didn't enlist the liberals, they enlisted the conservatives: the joke is on the Right Wing of course. And thus on us as well...
Like a movie version, Putin is the ultimate villain: we all knew his origins, he made no attempt to politically alter his stance of hatred of the West, he is brilliant and charming in his own right, and everyone played along, either because they were paid off, politically and/or socially blackmailed, or just went along with the "inevitable". The perpetrator of the crime of all crimes was hiding in plain sight: the 21st Century version of Poe's The Purloined Letter.
And so you see: the terrorists won after 9/11 inasmuch as we instilled in the population the notion that they required dictatorial-style vigilance by the State, and the Russians won the Cold War by going underground and removing the foundations of our nation.
The question is: is it too late?
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the reichwing Republican party.
They've thrown cover, used the "both-sides"/whataboutism empty arguments. Faux and Faux-light.
put the icing on the cake of globalization by allowing penetration of citizen's minds as well as their pocketbooks.
"The internet" in my terms includes the provisions for smart phones, tablets, etc., as well as access to the secrets and machinery of industry and our government. Fascists like Putin and Trump would be relatively toothless without the internet, although they would still be mostly localized criminals.
Overall, human greed, selfishness, territorialism, tribalism, ignorance and shortsightedness is what may destroy us far too soon.
There's little left of international unity at this time except for what it takes to make money and rob and pillage the earth.
Thanks for the good OP, PCIntern...........