Jonathan Haidt - Why the past ten years of American life have been uniquely stupid (The Atlantic 4/11)
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A long article that is worth the time and effort. Ideological conformity on the left and right is stupefying our institutions and overall society, while the voices of reason in the middle have been almost completely drowned out. Americans of all stripes better start arresting their totalitarian impulses, because we’re already far too down that rabbit hole. And when one is in a hole, the logical thing to do is to stop digging. Logic, however, doesn’t play much of a role in #Murica, and we may very well be f**ked. America’s collective stupidity is a matter of life and death. Everything from national security, to education, to health care, to infrastructure, and so forth is now in severe peril. And we are collapsing fast, as Jonathan Haidt makes clear in this excellent piece. A couple of excerpts -
The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people. How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life?
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American politics is getting ever more ridiculous and dysfunctional not because Americans are getting less intelligent. The problem is structural. Thanks to enhanced-virality social media, dissent is punished within many of our institutions, which means that bad ideas get elevated into official policy.
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WE CAN NEVER return to the way things were in the pre-digital age. The norms, institutions, and forms of political participation that developed during the long era of mass communication are not going to work well now that technology has made everything so much faster and more multidirectional, and when bypassing professional gatekeepers is so easy. And yet American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis. (Read more)
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushes to strip Disney World of autonomy over its 27,000 acres - Exactly the actions of a textbook Fascist. DeSantis is out of control. Why are the GOP falling on their swords over this nonsense, anyway? The ‘don’t say gay’ bill is reasonable enough in of itself, as little kids do not need to be learning about sexual matters. What is not reasonable is the vitriol its proponents have displayed toward anybody - even one of their state’s biggest employers - who may have concerns. I’ve noticed a massive uptick in anti-gay rhetoric of late from the nationalist populists, and that is not accidental. If I were a gay man, or a lesbian, or otherwise on the LGBTQ spectrum, I’d be thinking about arming myself. Anybody opposed to these a**holes should be considering gun ownership. #JustSaying. (AP 4/19)
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