Don't forget the importance of the Citizens United ruling, which gave the green light to funnel unlimited amounts of corporate money into campaigns, reaching a crescendo in this past election when the world's richest man bought himself a President.

Reagan was in place thanks to the Southern Strategy begun a decade or so earlier to ensure a voting percentage for the GOP and religious right no matter what. There are unfortunately many other "turning points" throughout US history where we could have gone a different route but chose this one, usually because "it's always been this way" mentality.

9/11 helped but by that point Christian nationalists had already spent the 20 years since Regan tying patriotism to faith.

Whatever it is that's driving people apart isn't exclusively an American problem.

This is the scary part. The entire world seems to be shifting right again. I think a lot of it how easy misinformation and disinformation is to spread with the ubiquitous social media now, but like you said, it's complex, and there likely isn't any single factor contributing to this.

Just to chime in on Covid - I think that was a symptom caused by a lot of underlying problems, and not a cause. Granted it had its effects, but under a rational leadership from the US I don't think we would have seen what we did ever get that far. The topic here (bird flu), measles, etc. are an example of how they are more of a fever indicator from a deep infection we've had for decades and just pretended things were fine. Hell, the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War is the ultimate example of that bandage over a festering wound.

On the global stage, it's the explosion in communication tech with little to no oversight. It's not even the first time is happened in the last century. Radio, newspaper, television, whenever there's a new, faster way to disseminate information we collectively forget how important it is to regulate that shit before something bad happens. That, plus regulatory capture weakening the limits on already existing information platforms.

healthcare, and lack of job prospect in many stems field as a undergrad. almost no help in getting people into wet lab work outside of your degree, since it is the most important part of the degree

Well stated, thisis the conclusion i have come to as well. We lost an information war we did not know we were fighting.

This is solid analysis. Aside from your proposal about banning opaque algorithms, we also don’t really appreciate how powerful it is for any one human to be able to talk to millions of other humans at the same time is (as social creatures). It pathetically shrinks our world view so that it feels like we’re constantly talking about the same 10 people, when there’s so much more of your life that involves the people you work with, the people in your community, your local politics (like who’s deciding the new garbage truck schedule type stuff) that is completely absent from our online discourse.

I’d also say that the marketing and advertising industry has accelerated misinformation, distrust and overconsumption. I see about as few ads as I can figure out how (I know this because whenever I look at someone else’s experience of the same apps and services I use I can’t believe what I’m seeing), and yet I still manage to buy things, hear about things I’m interested in, and research and find out about new products. I spend money in the economy. We literally do not need this industry.

It’s interesting that you mention LiveJournal, because a lot of early internet feminists were there.

I’ve been wondering if part of the strategy has also been infiltrating feminist communities, and if they would have started learning there.

“Trans exclusionary radical feminists” always existed, but they were very much on the fringe. The only time the “men are invading lesbian spaces!” crowd would speak up was around Michfest (“womyn’s” festival or when Mary Daly (prominent 70’s academic TERF) died.

So it was a pain point that could be targeted. They use essentially the same propaganda now that they do on the right - that trans women are all sexual predators and perverts trying to get access to women. The “feminist” innovation is that they can be somewhat empathetic to “self hating gays” = straight trans women or “poor little girls deceived into mutilating their bodies by the patriarchy” = trans men. But it is supposed to be conversion therapy for us all.

Now, they dominate a lot of feminist discussion spaces. We have self identified “progressive feminists” who spend all day seething at random blogs which keep a Google alert on “transgender + rape.” Same sources that right wing nutjobs share on Facebook.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s also a response to the effectiveness of #metoo. Trolls will pretend to both be trans people and TERFs (to post creepy goony shit or send sexual/death threats). There are bad actors in the conversation, whether they are Russian trolls or American basement dwelling weirdos.

"They hate every part of capitalism without hating capitalism" comes to mind a lot

What I don't get is the bit at the end where it explains that Trump can be the guy they root for even though he is literally a smarmy big city elite who only goes to church for photo ops, doesn't pay his workers, etc. And the article is like, don't you root for Tony Stark and left-leaning talk show hosts, because they target the people you don't like?

And I'm like, no, honestly, those guys are insufferable. I need someone to explain why anyone likes them.

Also I grew up in a right-leaning area and I didn't understand their values any better when I was a kid, honestly. At least as a little kid I was religious, but when I got to high school and started asking tough questions at church it became obvious that our supposed religious leaders didn't have satisfactory answers to questions like "It would be immoral if I had the power to stop evil and didn't use it, why isn't it immoral for God to allow evil to exist?" So then I stopped being religious, too, which pushed me further out of their subculture.

(I guess some of my actual values aren't popular almost anywhere; I'm a pacifist anarchist which is fairly uncommon. So there has to be more to why people end up the way they do than where they live.)

Yeah and it’s a good piece, but there’s a huge hole or two in the reasoning. Namely that rural areas are aiding and abetting the forces that beat them down despite clear and rational evidence - in abundance - to that fact.

They’ve given up on reason. They’re hoodwinked, bamboozled, conned, and every other synonym despite clear facts and science.

And cities bad is not new, but it’s also where their hero lives. So ?

Also the thing about cheering for assholes is kinda thin.

I think it’d be better to make these arguments through the media trump voters consume. That’s the underlying mechanic of his argument anyway.

I think that this was maybe true the first time around in 2016. Trump was a brick through the window. But the 2024 election made no sense. Trumps campaign was based on hate, revenge, facisim and economic destruction. None of those values are supposed to align with your average rural republican. I also grew up around them and was raised to be a rural republican. Trumps stands for virtually none of their values. Those people changed their values this time around, including more own parents.

Yeah, that all checks out.

But their way of living is dying because that's what happens with industrialization. It's not exactly something people can fight. It's been happening for a loooooong time.

Like there aren't many, if any, ways to prevent it from happening either.

this is a good one, thank you

Democrats tried to fix it a bunch of times. Citizens United kept lobbying alive, Public Option healthcare (which would have made it almost imposible for private healthcare to compete) lost by 1 independent senator, Republicans keep getting elected to write the tax laws as they expire.

It's not from lack of trying by the DNC.

do we outlaw the use of recommender systems in entertainment products then? what does a better future look like