I work in security. Part of my job is to see the world a little different from most people. I review a lot of material with a different view that most people and some of it is not available to the general public (unless you want to spend a lot of money).

The following is an alternate, and I believe more accurate, view on the state of politics in our country:

Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova is alleged in the indictment to have participated in a conspiracy to “sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions.

The government says that the conspiracy is also part of a 2016 influence operation that dates back to at least May 2014.

Forty-four-year-old Khusyaynova, of St. Petersburg, was the chief accountant of “Project Lakhta,” an effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering, the indictment says. Prigozhin is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is often referred to as “Putin’s chef.”

Khusyaynova is accused of overseeing a $35 million budget from 2014 to 2018 that covered spending on activists, social media advertising, and promoting news postings on social networks. The Justice Department says that the proposed operating budget for 2018 alone was over $10 million.

…

Those involved in the conspiracy made extensive efforts to appear to be American political activists, and hide the fact that they were Russian. According to the indictment, the conspiracy “inflamed passions” on topics including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem controversy.

The conspiracy advised social media writers on how to write for U.S. audiences, suggesting in one instance that people of color who are LGBT are “less sophisticated” than those who are white. “Colored LGBT are less sophisticated than white; therefore, complicated phrases and messages do not work,” the guidance said, according to the indictment. It went on to suggest that infographics “work well among LGBT and their liberal allies,” but not so well with conservatives.

…

Earlier in the day, in a rare joint statement, the nation’s top law enforcement and intelligence agencies issued a warning against what they described as “ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies.”

The old adage, “consider the source”, is good advice. But what if it is extremely difficult to know the source?

A lot of the political tension in our country is not due to citizen advocates of actual extremist positions. It is due to well funded outside agitators.

I recently finished a book where I found eerie parallels to the current left-wing violence in America (Days of Rage):

Probably the most time in the book was spent on the Weather Underground (also known as Weathermen). But there was also the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and others. The author interviewed many of the leaders and participants of these violent “revolutionaries” in the writing of the book which was published in 2015. They set off thousands of bombs, robbed dozens of banks and armored cars, broke people out of prisons, and engaged in murder and kidnapping.

What I found most interesting was the white middle class students who formed the Weather Underground, for the most part, had never held jobs, and were incompetent at many basic tasks such as organizational structure, simple electrical wiring, and fixing cars. This held true when they started building bombs and blew up the house they were living in. The home was owned by the parents, away on vacation for a few weeks, of one of the members. They did know how to riot and have orgies, so, they weren’t total incompetents.

Their political philosophy and manifestos were non-sensical to most of America. In several cases people came together because they all “knew” a violent revolution was necessary because the the oppressive U.S. government had to be overthrown. They then sat around trying to figure out what cause they were taking up to rebel about. Most of the groups which where primarily white decided they were rebelling because of racism. They would have participated in the revolution because of the Vietnam war but when the U.S. pulled out they needed to find another cause. The Weather Underground political philosophy ultimate morphed a Marxist/Leninist view of utopia.

The primarily black groups thought unfair police treatment of blacks was a good cause but didn’t want much, if anything, to do with the white groups unless they had black leaders. They did allow a few white women into their groups which were useful. The women could go places and do things (for example, place bombs inside buildings) which would have drawn attention if a black had tried to do the same thing.

As is the case now, these young, naïve, idealists were financed by wealthy individuals who were sympathetic to their cause. The Weather Underground got most of their money from radical left-wing lawyers.

Also interesting was that the leaders of the Weather Underground, such as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, lived in nice homes and ate well while “underground” but their followers lived lives of crushing poverty. One guy, at a meeting at Ayers home, opened the refrigerator and saw butter. He became enraged. He couldn’t afford biscuits to put butter on and this guy had butter. Ahh… yes. Under communism some animals are always more equal than others.

Interviewed decades after their revolutionary days they marveled at how naïve they had been. With hindsight they could see it was folly that they believed their revolution could succeed. But at the time, they just believed it.

I think there are lessons for many people of many political persuasions in this book. Political revolution requires a change in the culture of the society. If you can change the culture you don’t need the violence component. If you can’t change the culture the violence has a high chance of failure. The political left learned this in the 60s and 70s and it is long past time for others to learn this lesson too.