I've noticed a sharp uptick in people utterly detached from reality lately where presumably the former checks to keep people grounded, like a critical news ecosystem, or a robust education system, has imploded.
In these hyper-partisan environments, everyone is afraid to tell the whole truth because Team A might use pieces of Team B's statements against them (see the sibling comments about feminism and global warming, or anything around the current election, but any and every partisan topic applies). So what happens is people choose tidbits of truth that fully support their side's claims and ignore the rest of truth, and make sure everyone on their team follows suit. These tidbits of truth then get used in broader contexts and somehow become universal truths. These now universal truths are not questioned in one's own echo chamber because it would work against their shared goals.
Team B then admonishes Team A within the Team B echo chamber because of the obvious ignorance of reality of the truth tidbits that became universal truths. The (not so) funny thing is that Team B is completely unaware that they do exactly the same thing.
So, inside the Team A echo chamber all you hear is how the other side is completely ignorant of reality, suppresses the truth, ignores facts, outright lies and deceives, while our team is where the logic and reason exist. And the exact same thing is happening in the Team B echo chamber. Both teams are equally fervent about their superiority over the other team. And both sides have the same answer to the problem: get rid of the other team's echo chambers and everything will be fine.
The actual truth cannot exist in this kind of environment.
When reality becomes inconvenient to people, they'll happily ignore it and do whatever it takes to get by. As long as they're not ignoring something that's going to imminently harm them, they can get away with it for a long, long time, especially when they can find a community that reinforces it.
You also never know what people actually believe, in their heart of hearts, and they may be professing nonsense so they can signal that their in some group, or because it's what they think you should believe, or what you they think that you want them to believe, etc.
It feels like we're slowly falling off the trajectory of the Renaissance and Enlightenment; avoiding fatalism about that is my main challenge right now.
You used to need substantial capital to earn the reputation as a serious news organization, but now the barrier to entry is a vaguely-authoritative domain name and social media accounts.
But for the people in charge its more like:
"would you gain more authoritarian political power by promoting that we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?"
Now lets add another wrinkle... lets say by the magic of groupthink 99% of one population is already a devout member of one belief system. If 50% of climate scientists (small group though they are) were dyed in the wool Republicans then coming out against them would cost votes prestige and power. But if they already are indoctrinated to hate you and your race and your religion and your group, you don't lose very much in a practical sense by signalling against them. In fact as a member of the opposition you probably should oppose them on general principles and your own group expects you to live up to your ... devoutness.
I've seen it, watching people nearby me convert to denialism. I have to admit I agree with them on a lot of smaller details. A fascination with symbolic level commitments that are a rounding error WRT altering the Earth's long term problems but ruin innumerably human lives in the short term. "This symbolic proposal will help absolutely nothing in the long term, but in the short term it'll sure destroy a lot of jobs, jobs for people that our political group are trained to bitterly hate..."
Absolute power corrupts absolutely and its not hard to absolute power in the form of political consensus in legacy mass media, academia, hollywood, SV. And with that absolute power comes corruption. Telling the truth becomes an act of disbelief or apostasy, or you can faithfully believe while knowingly lie. Its not just the left, in that any group thats 99% composed of one political group tends to fester and get smelly, there's plenty of this on the right. You can only gain power by a public display of ever more devout true believer statements, truth is gone out the window. Ask yourself if people gain power in academia or the legacy media by telling the truth or by loudly proclaiming their devotion to the political causes that 99% of them share... that's what post-truth world means. A healthy balanced competition would force the truth to make an occasional appearance, but in a polarized consensus of groupthink its just a legacy fable. Remember when that stuff was about the truth? Yeah not so much anymore.
Combine the two ideas above and its a real mess. Atomized individuals and groups are broken off into groupthink hubs that rapidly share no common ground or affection with any other group and their interactions are based on gaining internal strength by showing their devout belief by denigrating the opposition. Traditionally this leads to revolution and civil war. I'd be surprised if the 50 states are together much longer. Frankly I can't wait, as the younger I am the better I'll come out in the rebuilding, assuming I survive. I'd rather rebuild at age 50 than age 70, for example.
Most newspapers, television and radio stations, along with the big new sites are controlled by a handful of companies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...) that are far from left-leaning.
Rupert Murdoch, as but one example, is the driving force behind Fox News. Is that part of some grand left-wing conspiracy?
The number of left-leaning publications is pretty thin. The Huffington Post, parts of MSNBC, The Daily Show, and a case could be made for The Economist and The Guardian. For every one of those there's a dozen like The Daily Mail or USA Today.
> I'm not sure the SJWs have anything in common with the vast majority of the country...
"SJW" is a strawman pretty much by definition, but those who get slammed as being one are typically in the under 30 crowd which are generally more accepting and understanding of social justice issues. The so-called SJW group has more in common with their generation than "the majority of the country", but that's how things always are.
She's also being painted as a communist by the extreme right which are so far to the one side of the political spectrum that everyone else is considered a "liberal" by comparison.
I agree that the left/right stuff is irrelevant when it's establishment and profit driven.
If you want actual left-leaning news you need to visit publications that don't give a fuck, like The Rolling Stone or Vice Magazine where they're not part of the establishment and have nothing to lose.
The challenge now is to predict whether society in 50 years is going to look more like "Idiocracy" or "The Walking Dead".
Either way, I don't foresee a good future for the human race.
Hopefully, in some parallel universe, humans have avoided this fate, and are continuing the trajectory of the Enlightenment, and will proceed to exploring the stars, going where no one has gone before.
I'm not sure which is worse.
I can't wait to see all the conspiracy theories that pop up around self-driving cars.
ELON MUSK DIDN'T GO TO MARS, WAS ALL TO DODGE TAXES.