How’s this for a root cause: the Electoral College means that carefully targeting propaganda at a few voters in swing states can have an outsize influence on the outcome (a reverse “law of large numbers”?) Traditional controls on political advertising were ignored by foreign propagandists buying ads to sow division and political strife. It’s ironic that the US, despite its massive geostrategic advantages, allowed an enemy into its heartland in this way.

The Electoral College isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and, regardless, solutions have to found before something worse happens (a faux social-media movement that, say, triggers a Constitutional Convention that leads to the breakup of the US would probably be a wet dream of foreign rivals).