I am no social scientist so my opinion here is not professional. However, something strikes me as unusual about our current situation. Over the centuries, many countries have fallen under the control of authoritarians.
But in the cases of which I am aware, the populace did not have access to the truth – or at least enough of it. Dictators seized control by not only instilling and/or inflaming hatreds but also by suppressing the truth and eliminating debate from the public discourse. But in this case, trump — although his constant lies are believed by much of his base — has not been able to suppress accurate information to the general public. Political discourse is almost everywhere in the U. S. and the majority of the population can easily see that trump’s statements are not objective reality.
And yet, a sociopathic minority continues to propel our descent into fascism, in a crusade that seems to show few signs of abating. Is it possible that we will be first society in history that has its downfall because a certain percentage of the population had full access to the truth and actively rejected it? The trump base has willingly rejected objective reality that is readily available – and done so in a manner and degree for which I cannot find historical precedent.
It turns out when you take people who openly fantasize about political violence/ upheaval and feed them a steady diet of BS justifications for political violence/upheaval , what comes out at the end is terrorism, who’d’ve guessed?
I am no social scientist so my opinion here is not professional. However, something strikes me as unusual about our current situation. Over the centuries, many countries have fallen under the control of authoritarians.
But in the cases of which I am aware, the populace did not have access to the truth – or at least enough of it. Dictators seized control by not only instilling and/or inflaming hatreds but also by suppressing the truth and eliminating debate from the public discourse. But in this case, trump — although his constant lies are believed by much of his base — has not been able to suppress accurate information to the general public. Political discourse is almost everywhere in the U. S. and the majority of the population can easily see that trump’s statements are not objective reality.
And yet, a sociopathic minority continues to propel our descent into fascism, in a crusade that seems to show few signs of abating. Is it possible that we will be first society in history that has its downfall because a certain percentage of the population had full access to the truth and actively rejected it? The trump base has willingly rejected objective reality that is readily available – and done so in a manner and degree for which I cannot find historical precedent.
It turns out when you take people who openly fantasize about political violence/ upheaval and feed them a steady diet of BS justifications for political violence/upheaval , what comes out at the end is terrorism, who’d’ve guessed?