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

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

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.

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.)

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