“The Russians hacked the election!” is the cry—and the media and Democratic Party hacked half of Americans’ brains.

Vladimir Putin could be sitting somewhere rubbing his hands together with glee.

The story here isn’t that, as recently reported, alleged Russian intrusion was more extensive than originally thought, involving election systems and voter databases in 39 states. It’s not that the hackers changed Americans’ votes in any way—that didn’t happen. It’s that the goal of this intrusion, according to the Obama administration, was to “undermine confidence in the election.”

By this measure, the hack was successful beyond the cyber-intruders’ wildest dreams.

For months now, driven by the mainstream media, we’ve been eating ourselves alive. Millions of Americans believe the November election was “stolen,” and there have been riots, vandalism, arson and attacks on Donald Trump supporters, partially because some people have been made to believe they’ve been cheated by the system. The president has been portrayed as treasonous, even though ex-FBI director James Comey said Trump wasn’t under investigation for “collusion with the Russians.” There has even been talk of impeachment over this ginned-up, much-ado-about-nothing story.

Now, if you were a hacker bent on destabilizing the U.S., how would you react watching this spectacle? How hard might you be laughing? Talk about playing into the enemy’s hands.

This is occurring even though election-system hacking isn’t unprecedented. As Time reported in 2013, both Democratic and Republican tech experts said that “foreign and domestic actors tried to steal policy and political secrets and influence the race through cyberattacks” prior to the November 2012 contest. Cyber-warfare is nothing new.

What is new is the reaction to it. Machiavellian types are using the story as a tool, and gullible types are playing the fool. It’s reminiscent of what Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, once a journalist and KGB operative, said about the USSR’s efforts to destabilize the U.S.: They would feed false, subversive stories to unsuspecting but sympathetic American entities, which would then quite naturally run with them. As he described the subversion, the KGB would just give a little push—most of the damage was “done by Americans, to Americans.”

Similar to how the Soviet Union aimed to destabilize the U.S. during the Cold War, the Russians seek to do the same today. There’s another constant, too: The American Left is still making it happen.

The frenzied desire to damage Trump has led to confusion, conflation and obfuscation. Some mix together the intrusion into the 39 states’ systems and the DNC/John Podesta hacks resulting in the Wikileaks revelations. Yet the former, again, changed no votes, and what really is the complaint about Wikileaks? As one lifelong, rank-and-file Democrat put it on a May edition of Face the Nation, the Democratic gripe boils down to, “If we hadn’t been caught lying, we’d be running the country right now.”

In contrast, there’s simply nothing there regarding the allegations against Trump. As Comey admitted under oath and Democratic law professor Alan Dershowitz has pointed out, the president may order the FBI to halt any investigation he wishes and may fire the bureau’s director for any reason whatsoever. The FBI is not a fourth branch of government. It is an extra-constitutional part of the executive branch—of which the president is chief.

Moreover, what of the hacking’s source? It was reported last month that the CIA is capable of faking a Russian hack. While I don’t consider this the most likely scenario, is it unfathomable that an intelligence agency would lie? Is it beyond comprehension that intelligence agencies seeking to gin up antagonism toward Russia, would fake such intrusion?

In addition, CNN reported that even if Russians perpetrated the hacking, “It is unknown if those attempts are related to election fraud and government hackers or run-of-the-mill cyber criminals, who also tend to be based in Russia.”

Part of the tragedy here is that our elections are imperiled—by voter fraud “done by Americans, to Americans.” A 2016 Project Veritas sting operation caught Democratic operatives scheming to commit vote fraud, with one adamantly exclaiming, “We’ve been bussing people in to deal with you f*****g a******s for 50 years and we’re not going to stop now.” Additionally, NYC’s Democratic election commissioner admitted that “there is a lot of voter fraud” and that “they bus people around to vote.”

Given the above, the claims that perhaps millions of illegal aliens voted in the 2016 election aren’t so surprising; note also that a 2014 study indicated that enough non-citizens cast ballots to swing close elections—in favor of Democrats.

Of course, exposing the true election thieves doesn’t interest the media and Democratic Party because this is about power, not principle. Trump wasn’t supposed to “collude” with the American people to win last November—and he, and they, will not be forgiven.