I think this weakness is out of date. The privatisation of mass culture via social media (, the internet, etc.) provides highly asymmetric rewards for action vi

I think this weakness is out of date. The privatisation of mass culture via social media (, the internet, etc.) provides highly asymmetric rewards for action via these "private" entities which can be strong-armed and hands-bloodied in participation in relevant "consensus-building NGOs". Absent trump's election, the whole apparatus deployed to against media companies (targeting their ad networks to defund, strong-arming censorship, strong-arming participation etc.) would have went completely institutionally unaddressed. > that would be dumb Sure, given that your opponent can be elected your boss -- which happened, and now he's taking a wrecking ball to every agency which concerned itself with these tactics. However, at the time it did not seem dumb. It seemed that trump was an existential threat to democracy. That may have even been to a degree true, but the dirty tricks approach has radicalized the far-right against the state in ways which used to be confined to the (previously targeted) far-left.