You're supposed to regurgitate the Brandies "“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” statement.

You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.

Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.

Looking up and down this thread and there are people you would agree with about our situation being awful, while being extremely reluctant to blame a planned and coordinated influence campaign by an adversary. It amounts to calling our fellow citizens chumps, and that's rude.

The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.