That is populism in a nutshell. It is anti-rationalism at its heart. There's no real ideology - that's how it applies to both Chávez and Trump, Corbyn and Orbán. People want to believe what feels "instinctively" correct, because the intellectual overhead of modern society leaves the majority of the population unable to deal with the reality that political and economic systems are incredibly difficult to understand without hours of study and thought. That is uncomfortable, so people rebel against intellectualism, because it's easier to be told lies through 30-second videos and feel well informed, rather than sitting through a 20-hour session that one might need to truly understand a niche of a niche. The more they read, the less they understand, so disengage from it altogether and go with their gut (designed for tribes of monkeys) because the cognitive overload is too much to bear.
It's so exhausting having the same conversation every time. A friend reads something on reddit, flips out about it. Asks in our signal chat "can anyone explain this" as bait. Occasionally I take the bait and explain the extreme thing through a centrist lens. Now I'm instantly on the side of whoever did the bad thing and spend the next 90 minutes explaining rationality until we arrive at the center. Things calm down. 3 days go by, and my friend visits reddit again...
Please don't reduce decades of friendship with a person to a couple dozen words I posted on a website and think you can judge what friendship means to me.
I was talking about the impact of the current state of the world on existing relationships.
Who said they’re contributing to the problem? Perhaps you are by constantly downplaying what sounds like wilful ignorance on the part of your friend? Some people’s ignorance does not deserve the same respect as others’ reasoning. Your friend sounds like they enjoy trolling you.
Playing the little devil on cheshire's shoulder, I see. Maybe it's not for the best to encourage people to stop being gracious in times of high political turmoil.
It's very sad, but this applies to what seems like everyone now. Required reading for internet users should be The Anatomy of Peace by the Harbinger Institute. I suppose you'd have to peel people away from their social algorithms though, which might be an impossibility due to the decreasing attention span. The more I live in this world, the more I realize that this seems like the new norm, and hate it. I grew up around a lot of great people with big hearts, and I just don't get it. I think John Coffey said it best when hes said "Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other."
I am still surrounded by people with big hearts, but I think they have separated themselves into a family/friends/acquaintances persona and a "political entity" persona which is increasingly hostile and more frequently exercised due to social media bubbles. People who are openly hostile (and sometimes outright homicidal) on social media are still cuddly teddy bears in person, but the more they access that anger and hate for people they'd normally foster relationships with, the more our ability to find commonality erodes.
I have an uncle that I've always been fond of who recently has spouted some mind-bending support of the current administration, and it was like talking to someone who lives in another dimension. My Dad too was indoctrinated by Fox News (because he was spending a lot of time with my grandparents) and some of his political views are irreconcilable with the man I knew growing up.
This is very well said. I've also noticed the jekyll and hyde thing - for several years now and I've seen people that act basically like extremists online be some of my favorite people in person. Both right and left leaning. Very bizarre and sad stuff. I'm fairly conservative, but we need to be able to call a spade a spade when it comes down to it.
