Destroyed from Within

"America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." --Abraham Lincoln

A short while back, there appeared a couple of stories on the tracing of a possible revenue stream between Russians bent on meddling with the 2016 election and the NRA.  That story went away quickly...who knows where it went?  Disappeared into the mists of propaganda and apathy, I suppose.

But doesn't it make you wonder?  Doesn't it suggest something might be going on here that is bigger than anyone wants to imagine?

Think about it:  In whose best interests would it be to keep Americans divided, hate-filled, and anti-government...and heavily armed?  Surely this goes way beyond rednecks, the 2nd amendment, and America's peculiar attachment to deadly weapons.  Surely, too, it goes deeper than the NRA's dedication to keeping gun manufacturers fat and rich.

Put two and two together:  Russian meddling with the election, Russia's dark manipulation of American social media, and an increasingly angry American electorate bristling with uncontrolled armament.  

If this is not a textbook example of an attempt by a foreign power to bring down an enemy nation from within, I don't know what it is.  

Let's not pretend it couldn't happen.  Haven't we been guilty of the very same--if not the same actions, certainly the same desire turned mission?  We understand the process.  We may not have invented it, but we certainly have indulged in it...in Central America, in the Middle East, in the Soviet Union...  It's how nations deal with one another; always striving to be the best, the richest, the strongest, the most dangerous...through whatever means available--overt or covert.

One might even posit that, given America's geographic isolation from possible hostile nations with the ability to overpower her militarily, her greatest vulnerability is to decay from within.  Even Lincoln knew this, 150 years ago.   

Let's not be foolish enough to assume this has been lost on our enemies.