LegendofJoe
Member
Again, I agree. I am reminded of the documentary Before the Bridge which I saw earlier this week as it hits a lot of the big themes coming ahead.
When Barack Obama warned the Democratic Party to smarten up about problems, I thought we can handle a "slow burn" problem, even if the suffering was unjustifiable from humanistic views. But this was before we got Trump.
Slow burns are no longer acceptable, as we can easily fall into a climate where we simply choose to detonate the whole thing to the ground. If people feel this society is actively working against them -- and one has a mountain of reasons to believe this -- how many are quick to press the "eh, fuck it" button? Wasn't Trump literally this button? And of course, he got in because he has a type of charisma that can deflect things that would kill other candidates. That's a highlight of how bad things are for people, because while we can all agree he got help from another country's government, he was simultaneously the amalgamation of everything wrong of this country in the last 30 years but also the image of what we've made successes and "the guys at the top" to seem like.
What if for you and I, the concept of the GOP as enemies of reason and reality isn't really of Reagan's "children," in that our enemy today normalized the views of a senile person who created deep chaos, but one of Trump's "children?" Can this country even survive? We're barely keeping on due to the cancerous ideas, ideals, and memes of Reagan, and Trump has created an entire new platform for a new generation.
What in the world do we have to even oppose this?
Fear is what drives his supporters. And right now fear is pervasive in not only the US, but in many places around the world. This fear forms the bedrock upon which the ever growing surveillance state is built. It is counterintuitive in the age of information, but an increasing amount of people are being deceived into viewing all possibilities as equally probable. This is not the case obviously, and I believe the mass failure of responsible news reporting is the reason why this fact is not being conveyed to people.
It is critical that the distinction between information and knowledge is made. While the former is not necessarily true, the latter is verifiable and able to be documented. Most people like the time or energy to critically analyze information that is given to them to determine whether it may be credible or not; they typically don't even bother to seek out differing viewpoints. When there are so many sources of information out there it becomes incredibly easy to mislead the undiscerning. This is the greatest threat facing democracy today, as Russia is well aware.
So then the question becomes how do you elevate the sources of information that are actually supplying the truth to the population over the deceptive noise makers? Similar to the founding of the Atlantic in the 1800's an alliance of people dedicated to truth and enlightenment must be formed to attack and defeat the noise makers piece by piece. And if I had my preference it would start with Facebook.