QOTD -- Descent Into Mass Delusion

 

America’s descent into mass delusion isn’t happenstance. The demise of courageous journalism isn’t a happy accident. Its replacement with engagement-chasing infotainment and propaganda isn’t an error. It’s a global assault on reason and informed consensus, and corporations and authoritarian bullies like Donald Trump are both architects and benefactors.

For decades, academics warned anybody who’d listen that the death of your local newspaper and broadcast consolidation was creating local “news deserts,” where residents have no access to reliable, accurate local news.  [snip]

Post-election, there’s been no shortage of handwringing about how the electorate had deep thoughts about inflationary policies. But in a country where 54 percent of adults operate at a sixth-grade reading level, public polling indicates that the public was violently and intentionally misinformed on subjects like the economy, immigration, crime, and the economy.

These distorted and patently incorrect opinions aren’t manifesting in a vacuum. They’re the direct result of a coordinated assault on education standards and independent journalism, fused with a campaign to fill the heads of the electorate with pebbles, mashed potatoes, and a rotating platter of ad engagement bait and distraction.

Whether it’s lowering the tax rates of billionaires, stripping away consumer-protection standards, destroying the environment, or decimating labor rights, Republican policies historically aren’t very popular. Which is why Republicans have spent generations undermining academia, education, journalism, and expertise itself... -- Karl Bode, writing in DAME Magazine on why "America's Right-Wing Propaganda Problem Might Be Terminal."  Bode offers some prescriptions to avoid that terminal condition, including building structural media alternatives and improving information literacy skills, all of which takes enormous time, effort, and resources.  But that requires everyone on board the democracy train to be honest about the right- wing propaganda problem.  Not sure we see that even now, after nearly 30 years of Fox "News" and more than a decade after the Malignant Fascist (MF) Trump's first serious moves onto the political stage. (h/t Mock Paper Scissors)

BONUS:  More proof, if needed.