Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
Lack of intelligence isn’t the issue. Take the dumbest person you know and imagine they’re trapped in a room with no visible escape path. They panic and start destroying whatever’s in the room. They damage themselves in a fit trying to escape. Now take that same scenario but put in small creature comforts and distractions. Now your dumb friend isn’t panicking or fighting to get out. He’s still trapped and his intelligence neither helped or harmed his situation. This is what’s happened over the last 100 years, and it’s accelerated to decline.