I confess. I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton for president. For months, I have been unable to put my finger on why, but now I am convinced – I was a victim of a Russian social media attack.

I’d always thought I would vote for Hillary. I looked at her and I thought to myself “Now, there is a woman of integrity. A woman with a common touch. A genuinely nice person. A statesman. Somebody who would think carefully before putting boots on the ground in foreign lands or drones in the air in foreign skies. A thoughtful leader who wasn’t beholden to Wall Street, and who didn’t believe that higher taxes and bigger government were the answer to every problem real or imagined.“

Hey, I’m a happily married man, but truth be told, I had kind of a wonkish crush on Hillary – I mean, who could ask for a better candidate?

They say contrition is good for the soul, so let me tell you my sad story.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. On Twitter. On Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, even Linkedin. I’m not proud of my social media addiction, but at the same time, I figured it was harmless. Boy, was I wrong. Little did I know that my weakness for social media made me an easy mark for the evil empire, a crispy morsel for the Kremlin masterminds.

Now I know there is a lot of politics on social media. My acquaintances run the spectrum from left to right. Many of them seem to post quite a bit of politically-oriented material. My left wing friends seem to post about 10 times as much as their troglodyte peers- perhaps they have more time on their hands, perhaps they feel their passions more deeply, perhaps their need to virtue signal is just genetically stronger… I don’t know. But I’ve always been proud that I am able to wade through posts on social media without being hoodwinked by lies or innuendo or memes of kittens.

Well, I’ll tell you – pride goeth before fall.

My pride in being a knowledgeable consumer of news extended to the mainstream media as well. Whenever I read a New York Times article that lays out a narrative that is consistent with a left-of-center, pro-establishment view of the world (i.e. pretty much every NYT article) I always look for that lonely 9th or 10th paragraph that starts out with “However, some believe that..” or “On the other hand, this view is not without critics.” Every time I find this orphan paragraph buried somewhere deep within the article, I know that the New York Times remains committed to the even-handed journalism it is known for.

Similarly, whenever I peruse the Washington Post, I am mindful of the context. Did the whistleblower leak the information to the Post? Does the information make the Post’s carefully cultivated sources look good? Does the Post oppose the current administration? If so, then the whistleblower is a hero – it’s time to start working on the screenplay for the adoring biopic. Wait, this other whistleblower leaked the information to another newspaper? WAPO supports this administration? Then let the treasonous bastard rot in the Gulags – some foreign power must have put him up to it.

Even in the depths of my remorse, I don’t mean to pick on the left of center outlets. On the right, “fair and balanced” always seemed like a euphemism for “strident and bombastic” – good if you are working the night shift and trying to stay awake, but otherwise just plain annoying. The right wing media stream is the polar opposite of NPR. NPR is a news and information purveyor where the point of view may be nonsense, but the delivery is so pleasant to the ear that even staunch conservatives are tempted to sip on a nonfat soy latte while driving their Volvo station wagon to their volunteer job at Planned Parenthood.

Ok, I’m digressing, but my point is, when it comes to consuming news and forming opinions, I was certain I was no ‘babe in the woods’. Well, dear readers, let me tell you… there are bears in that same woods. Yes sirree bob…Big fierce Russian bears.

And I was a victim.

I don’t know whether it was the Facebook ad “ Hillary is the great Satan” that started my inexorable slide from informed voter to Russian patsy. Maybe it was the tweets such as ““Hillary Clinton has a 69 percent disapproval rate among all veterans” . I don’t know. But suddenly and subtly, I found my agency slipping away. The Russian propaganda apparatus had clearly done its work. I was convinced Hillary Clinton was the great Satan. Certain that Donald Trump would make America great again. Positive that I could increase my penis size with this one weird trick… wait, sorry, I’m digressing again. Bottom line – 50 years after the Manchurian candidate, I was now the Manchurian voter – brainwashed and passive, an electoral ticking time bomb.

Sure, I’m consumed by remorse now, but I was skeptical then.

I admit it – I scoffed when people started blaming the Russians. When embarrassing emails were leaked from the DNC, I figured “what better way to distract people from the content than to claim you were the victim of an evil conspiracy?” I thought the false flag was a brilliant tactical move, and I vowed to do something similar the next time I got caught with my pants down.

When the intelligence report, ostensibly reflecting the independent conclusions of 17 different deep state intelligence agencies, provided heavily redacted but apparently incontrovertible evidence of Russian meddling, I was struck by the fact that 75% of the report was focused on allegations of garden variety muckraking by Russia Today (RT). I thought to myself – surely if I was going to provide evidence of skullduggery by a foreign power, I could come up with something more compelling than RT’s focus on America’s spotty record on issues such as police brutality?

But in the end, I was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

Special counsel Robert Mueller announced eight charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for carrying out social media “interference operations targeting the United States.” Allegedly, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a notorious Russian “troll factory” tried to sow political discord during the 2016 race by using bots to spread fake news and pro-Trump propaganda on Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media.

So that’s it. Mueller’s report proves it. I was the hapless victim of a vast conspiracy to flood social media with fake news that was both subtle and compelling. It was a campaign so nefariously effective that its 1.25 million dollar per month budget overwhelmed the impact of the 6.5 billion dollars otherwise spent to convince voters to vote red or blue. Heck, these scoundrels even tried to convince minority voters to vote third party, denying the Democratic party their god-given right to take minority votes for granted!

I feel terrible. But, as I learn to live with my shame, I take comfort in the knowledge that the FBI and the Justice Department will ensure those evil eastern bloc apparatchiks are extradited and imprisoned for their heinous crimes of setting up fake Facebook pages and unleashing astroturfed tweet storms. I know we can rely on our multitude of law enforcement agencies to focus their enforcement activities on the really important threats to our well being, to evenhandedly enforce the law without favor or privilege, or pursuit of headlines.

As I come to terms with my own abject weakness, with my seeming inability to distinguish fact from fiction, I am particularly happy that the government is pressuring Facebook and other social media outlets to identify and weed out fake news so that I, and a multitude of other poor souls just like me, aren’t forced to distinguish truth from falsehood, opinion from fact, politically correct narrative from unacceptable scaremongering.

As I hang my head in embarrassment, at least I have confidence that Mark Zuckerberg has the wisdom of Solomon. I’m sure he can apolitically distinguish fact from fiction, and sort merely unpopular views from fake news, so that I am provided with a surfeit of the former and never confronted with the latter. Most importantly, he will protect me from the daunting challenge of having to distinguish between fact and fiction on my own.

And as I wallow in my guilt over November 2016, I take further comfort in one small thing. If Zuck fails at his task, I know the government will focus on protecting me, on making sure I get only the right information. I totally absolutely trust my government to do the right thing all of the time. I’m convinced that the whole ‘trading liberty for temporary security thing’ is a false dichotomy….

I know because I read it on my Facebook feed.