Why does mainstream media often sound so wide-eyed and 'childlike'? It's a ploy

The mainstream press is using faux naiveté as they hope to persuade what they perceive as naïve millennials that only if a Democrat wins a race can they be assured the voting was above board and not compromised by sinister forces both here and abroad.

For instance mainstream media reported dramatically last week on the so-called "Operation Chaos" being employed by Republicans in which they were planning to vote as Democrats for presidential hopeful Vt. Sen. Bernie Sanders because he is considered by many the weakest link in a general election against President Trump.

Pundits declared this new tactic a bizarre and underhanded ploy by the evil Grand Old Party.

But actually this has been done for decades whenever savvy Democrats and Republicans, who knew their candidate was a primary shoo-in, crossed the aisle and voted for the weakest candidate on the other side.

Now if you're voting in an open primary state, you just pick up the ballot of your choice and vote. If you're in a closed primary state, you can still switch, but you have to do it within certain timeframes, but you can still do it.

So this is not some new heinous ploy cooked up in some diabolical GOP voter-fraud lab as the headlines tried to infer.

Oh, while we're on politics, let's throw out this ludicrous assertion that election meddling began in 2016.

That's simply not true and according to several sources, the worst offender is the United States, according to Wikipedia.

A 2016 study by Dov H. Levin found that, among 938 global elections examined, the United States and Russia (including its predecessor, the Soviet Union) combined had involved themselves in about one out of nine, or 117, with the majority of those, 68 percent, being through covert (secret), rather than overt (public), actions.

The same study found that "on average, an electoral intervention in favor of one side contesting the election will increase its vote share by about 3 percent," an effect large enough to have potentially changed the results in seven out of 14 U.S. presidential elections after 1960.

According to the study, the U.S. intervened in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000, while the Soviet Union or Russia intervened in 36.

But the mainstream press, again feigning naiveté, would lead you to believe it all started with Trump vs. Clinton and only Russia - and never the U.S. - would do such a thing.

Remember the greatest degree of Russian influence pedaling came in the form of manipulative Facebook advertising, oftentimes backing Hillary as well.

So think before you like that political meme. It could be run by Russian bots.

And remember what they don't tell you in a story is more telling than what they do.