The money quotes to me:

In the end, the troll strategy was an export of methods Russia has used for years domestically to get citizens to see themselves not as part of a nation but as members of smaller ethnic and identity-based groups, and play all sides against each other.

and

Experts said the topics were deliberately chosen to exploit long-simmering differences in American culture.

"The point of a disinformation operation is not to create new rifts in society — it's to drive the rifts that are there further apart," said Graham Brookie, deputy director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based international relations think tank.

How does that differ from a lot of activity that happens on sites like this all the time? Day after day after day after day arguments and mantras about "white working class vs. "blacks" or "the Afro American community" or various stereotypical statements about "GOP voters" or "GOP congress" as if all members of those groups all act and think alike?

The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars, / But in ourselves.

In the end, how important it this? Russian trolls could not exploit something that's not already here. When something "goes viral", there's a virus that starts the spread. Some other kind of troll will do it in the future, whether by using Facebook or Twitter or RedState.org, etc.  Problem not going to be solved as long as people as smart as the ones participating on this website can't let go of being so tribal. Like I said: day after day after day repeating it over and over and over as if repetition will make it so. Not really so different from 19th century political sloganeering, or that damn advertising tune you can't get out of your head.

What I feel is that what the Russians have done is expose that those in the blogosphere who say what they are doing in repeating a political meme a gazillion times are not really doing "political activism." Political activism would be actually doing it, joining a political party and participating in where you wanted it to go. Not in constantly advocating where a party should go on a blog site. As if someone else is going to do that, listen to you. What the Russians show: not that much different from what is now called being a troll.

And that got me thinking: you know, in the business analysis, they keep saying with Amazon shopping et. all, not only retail is over, but salesmanship, too. Nor are repetitive slogans are gonna cut it. You've got to have good well written reviews of products and services that sound honest (even if faked) by mentioning some of the flaws while raving about it overall. Something that sounds like: analysis. Rather than: activism, tribalism, separating into groups based on race or ethnic background or class or party, etc.