Russian Footprints on this Blog

The Russians read this blog.

 Yesterday there were an extra 200 Russian readers.  I wrote about GOP disfunction.

A lot of Russian readers yesterday.

There are about 120 daily subscribers and about 300 to 500 additional page views per day. About 500 Americans read this blog every day.

Subscribers. There are also some 1,200 additional daily subscribers, but a close look at the email addresses suggest that they were automatic robots who signed up. Those emails may then forward to real people, but I don't count them.  I only count as "real" subscribers email addresses that I recognize, i.e. an email address that includes the name of a person I know.

Direct readers. There is a big daily swing in the number of people who go directly to the blog website, from 250 to 1000 people a day, sometimes on their own, sometimes referred from Facebook.  A post on familiar personalities (Alan DeBoer or Kate Brown) get more readers.  A post describing a Greg Walden weakness gets more readers.  Posts on marijuana get reposted and circulated.

A big source of readership fluctuation is Russians readers.  For some reason Russians look at this blog.

How do I know?  Well, I don't know anything, but I see evidence.  Readers are tracked by country. Normally 98% of my readers are from the USA.  From time to time Russia shows up, with maps and specific numbers. 

   

Yesterday's post was on the disfunction of our Congress and the picture it gives the world of democratic governmental systems. The Russians and Chinese consider their authoritarian systems to be superior.  I cited the wasteful irrationality of a GOP controlled Congress refusing to pay for infrastructure improvements back when Obama was president and America was in recession with idle construction capacity, but passing it now, with full employment and contractors working overtime, to please a president of their own party.  This blog wrote that the world noticed American political hypocrisy and disfunction.  Apparently--possibly--Russians noticed too.

Normally about 85% of America readers look at this blog on a mobile device, either a smart phone or tablet.  Americans have moved from their desktops.

Two things were different yesterday. 

A big spike in Russians, and an unusually high number of people read it on a desktop yesterday.  The proportion using a Mack was lower than usual.  The new readers were all using Windows on a desktop.

This strongly implies workers, not people sitting at home drinking coffee in a living room.

I am guessing Russians employees noticed the blog and circulated it, for whatever purpose they found useful.  Were they government employees or contractors?   I don't know for sure, but that is the evidence.

Conclusion.  Trump is an experiment.   Chinese leaders speak endlessly of harmony and prosperity as their chief policy goals.  Putin squelches religious, gender, and political dissent, and defends cultural conformity. Their countries have unified government with strong political control of the media. Leaders there are in control.

In America, the politics succeeds by division, scapegoating, and siloing ones base. Blocking Obama's jobs bill and supporting Trump's makes no sense as economic or public policy.  It makes total sense as a tactic in political warfare and sabotage.  It worked politically.

There is a global credibility crisis in the forms of government.  People worldwide are questioning whether American self government actually can deal wisely with the issues that face any government.  They are watching us.  

We do not need Russian trolls to invent stories of American disfunction.  We do it to ourselves.