I don't know if it should be any less disturbing to think that Julian Assange tipped the election. Hilary had long been enemies with the hacktavist culture after they embarrassed her State Department. Assange and Snowden (who lives in Russia) have been in fear of US prosecution and endless detention in a Supermax facility ever since. Even Glenn Greenwald was afraid of entering the US for publishing the articles in The Guardian. There was never any doubt that Assange was targeting Hillary and Hillary alone. He played the media just like Trump, hyping his document dumps as bombshells so damning it would land Clinton in prison even though the material turned out to be relatively innocuous. Whether you believe the CIA about the Russians, there is no doubt that foreign actors had unprecedented influence on this year's election.
For Putin, the prize is Syria. Clinton had been talking about imposing a no fly zone over the country. However implausible, that was still a threat to Russia who has been providing air support for Assad's forces as they crush the Free Syrian Army, the "good" rebels, in Aleppo. The FSA now faces certain annihilation. The fate of the citizens of the besieged city is less certain. The answers to that grim question will greet us early in the new year.
Putin also heard a lot to like in the isolationist rhetoric of Trump's campaign. He would love nothing more than for the US to abandon NATO. He will likely test Europe's resolve to defend Ukraine. Putin will likely pose a serious challenge to Western Democracy in the coming years and he will not be bullied by tweets.
The Orwellian revelations of 2016 should frighten everybody. There is no doubt that we have been gamed. There is no way the blatantly unqualified and infantile Trump could have won a Presidential election even four years ago. The conservative media conglomerate has achieved the total coup that it had been working feverishly for since the Clinton administration and now they literally own the US government.
What should be pointed out that, ultimately, it was not the propaganda of lies that did Hillary in. It is was the propaganda of filtering. Hilary's flaws were very real but the filtering of our social media institutions made her a candidate of nothing but those flaws. She was robbed of her humanity which was always something she was hopelessly inept at defending. So just enough people chose a manchild who wore his monstrous flaws on his sleeves like a badge of honor over a candidate who was never able to be anything but a symbol of the system everyone despises.
This is becoming a serious world and it is just like the US to elect a clown to lead us. I think most of us on Team Love are a bit shellshocked at witnessing Team Death trounce us so soundly last year. We, that have truth on our side, have compassion on our side, that have science on our side, we that supposedly have Hollywood on our side, that supposedly have mainstream media on our side, we with all this messaging power, have been clobbered by lies, bullying, bigotry, nativism, and incipient violence.