Our political divide has little to do with facts. More than anything it's driven by the hyperbole produced by popular media.
I have watched the right and left respond to the media's outrage of the day, week, month, on cue, and stop just as fast, for years now.
More than anything our political divide is a result of our fandom based culture and "fans" don't care about facts. We grow up with this. If you're born in New York you're either a Mets or a Yankees fan and the other team sucks and always will no matter what the facts are.
Every night CNN and FOX compete to see who can stir up the most outrage in their fan base. We've got to the point where you're either a "fascist" or a "socialist". There is no middle ground for the hard core fan and they make the most noise.
QAnon is another fine example. Those fans love to wallow in their shared insults and disdain for those who don't "follow Q". They're "smart" and everyone else is a fool. The find great joy in believing that and they will not give it up for anyone's "personal experiences". They'll give it up when it "goes out of style".
Most fans move on eventually because trends go stale and fandom feeds on trendiness. Our "Media" is constantly looking for "the next trend" ("outrage of the month" in the case of politics) and when they see one with potential they'll push it for all it's worth and squeeze it til the last nickle is made out of it.
We all love the concept of "free speech" but we live in a time where bullshit goes viral and can be deadly when it does. Where I live 55% of my neighbors believe "masks don't work" while 1 in 70 of them who've gotten infected with covid-19 have died. Last year I saw them claim "the vaccine has a tracker chip in it", "proof that mask don't work is I can smell my farts when I wear one", "the virus is a hoax".
We have to figure out how to deal with these issues. With over 400,000 lives lost to covid-19 just here in the U.S. de-platforming bullshitters has to be on the table.
I have watched the right and left respond to the media's outrage of the day, week, month, on cue, and stop just as fast, for years now.
More than anything our political divide is a result of our fandom based culture and "fans" don't care about facts. We grow up with this. If you're born in New York you're either a Mets or a Yankees fan and the other team sucks and always will no matter what the facts are.
Every night CNN and FOX compete to see who can stir up the most outrage in their fan base. We've got to the point where you're either a "fascist" or a "socialist". There is no middle ground for the hard core fan and they make the most noise.
QAnon is another fine example. Those fans love to wallow in their shared insults and disdain for those who don't "follow Q". They're "smart" and everyone else is a fool. The find great joy in believing that and they will not give it up for anyone's "personal experiences". They'll give it up when it "goes out of style".
Most fans move on eventually because trends go stale and fandom feeds on trendiness. Our "Media" is constantly looking for "the next trend" ("outrage of the month" in the case of politics) and when they see one with potential they'll push it for all it's worth and squeeze it til the last nickle is made out of it.
We all love the concept of "free speech" but we live in a time where bullshit goes viral and can be deadly when it does. Where I live 55% of my neighbors believe "masks don't work" while 1 in 70 of them who've gotten infected with covid-19 have died. Last year I saw them claim "the vaccine has a tracker chip in it", "proof that mask don't work is I can smell my farts when I wear one", "the virus is a hoax".
We have to figure out how to deal with these issues. With over 400,000 lives lost to covid-19 just here in the U.S. de-platforming bullshitters has to be on the table.