cracks knuckles, clears throat "The unchecked proliferation of social media during the 2000s and 2010s weakened social bonds and strengthened disinformation echo chambers to the point that the Russian Oligarchy successfully elevated a populist buffoon as the Republican candidate for President in order to oppose their nemesis, Hilary Clinton. Unfortunately the country was so fractured and electoral politics so slanted that the buffoon won. The ensuing years can best be explained as a power struggle between feckless Democrats accidentally bested by an FSB dirty trick, the establishment Republicans who found themselves led by a traitorous, vainglorious oaf, and the full-throated hoi polloi and craven opportunists who internalized populist fodder as their guiding light." Everyone was worried about a political Three Mile Island. They got a political Chernobyl instead. All the rest is simply consequences.