a febrile atmosphere in the US
"The bad is that they seem to have aimed to create a febrile atmosphere in the US and that effort appears to have succeeded"
a better way to put that, is "creating chaos". But it was like that ALREADY. The Demo-Rats and OBAKA saw to THAT... [and 'Establishment' Republo-Crats as well with their all-too-empty promises].
OK Russian counterintelligence has been accused of using destabilizing tactics before, and maybe they DID do some of that, but it was just tossing a few extra logs on an already ROARING fire.
Everyone knows the U.S. electorate is really pissed off at the moment. But only the leftist ideologues (including the lame-stream media) blame Trump or Russia for it. We put Trump in the White House to FIX IT and the *ANGER* was already there, LONG before he announced his candidacy. The reasons for the electorate being pissed off go back to the Tea Party and things like OBAKA"care" and being called a RACIST for just disagreeing, getting socialism jammed up our as... down our throats, along with an artificially stagnant economy, high unemployment [that was statistically reclassified so it didn't look bad], high 'social service' dependency, and a general sense of frustration that NOTHING was being done about it [except to make it WORSE]. AND we were being told to "get used to the NEW NORMAL".
In other words, it was a "slow boil" ready to erupt into a raging VOLCANO. I can't imagine what would've happened, had Mrs. Clinton won, but it would have been *UGLY*.
(and now the howler monkeys will call their friends to downvote me en masse, the intarweb equivalent of throwing poo. *kisses* to my fan club!)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
