One of the surest signs of #RussiaGate being bullshit has been its goalpost-shifting and vagueness. We've gone from the story that the DNC and Podesta e-mail hacks were Russian state actors coordinating with Wikileaks and the Trump campaign to "something, something Trump Tower, Facebook trolls, Cambridge Analytica." Headlines have shifted from "Russian hacking" to "Russian interference".
The truth is that if any metaphor for Russian influence on American democracy is fitting, it isn't "hacking", it's "patching".
In 2013, John Kerry and Barrack Obama first attempted to manufacture consent for war against Assad by blaming him for a chemical attack and threatening an "unbelievably small" airstrike in response. Kerry's phrasing drew widespread mockery, but was most conspicuous in his implied recognition that post-Iraq, normal, sane people in America wanted no part of policing the world or interventionism. Opinion polls at the time opposed any action 64% to 30%. Nonetheless, we seemed headed for action of some sort.
Enter Vladimir Putin with the brilliant diplomatic maneuver of pressing Syria to turn over its chemical arsenal for destruction. Syria did just that and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed full compliance with this in 2014. Putin, therefore, forced Kerry and Obama to take the more democratically legitimate position of not seeking Assad's removal. Kerry and Obama's pursuit of intervention in defiance of majority American opinionwas a "bug" in America's democracy. Putin "patched" this "bug".
In the 2016 election, America was further given the choice between Hillary "Assad must go!" Clinton and Donald "America First" Trump. Sadly, Trump seems to have forgotten the policy positions that got him elected.
Hopefully Putin can remind him.