Conspiracy theories have become stunningly powerful — but here’s a simple plan to deprogram America
America is becoming an idiocracy — assuming it isn’t fully one already.
On a widely viewed cable TV network there is a new show called “Power Slap: Road to the Title,” and the title is a perfect description of the show. In this “sport” two adults slap one another as hard as they can until one of them is knocked out, cannot continue, or the “judges” stop the “competition.” The “slap-fighters” are not allowed to put up their hands to defend themselves or flinch. The participants in this human zoo have been knocked head over heels (literally) and appear to have suffered severe concussions as well as bloody and swollen faces that could result in permanent disfigurement. The crowd in the studio cheers as the competitors slap each other into oblivion.
It is all one more example of how American society is “amusing itself to death” as a culture that is infantile and broken — both socially and politically. Today’s America is extremely anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-rational, unreflective, impulsive, narcissistic and juvenile. Such a dynamic breeds fascism, authoritarianism, fake populism, white supremacy, misogyny, violence, and a larger culture of cruelty and debasement that does not value or elevate human dignity and human respect.
What can be done to lessen the power and appeal of conspiracy theories in American politics and society? . . .
→ The author’s three-part plan to address this is simple, for sure (e.g., educate people better); but much easier offered than executed.
Still, we have to try.
I’m off in a foreign land sampling salsa. If this bald eagle were smart, she’d have flown South, too.
Don’t blame me if she happens to be off flying somewhere when you click.
(Apparently, if you’d been watching two weeks ago, you’d have seen her lay an egg.)
It’s been five years since I first wrote about PRKR (at $1.10 a share) . . . and four since I bought more at a dime.
The pre-trial conference I referenced Monday took place as planned. Jury selection is now set for a week from today; the trial itself, the following Monday.
And no one knows what will happen.
Who says this stuff isn’t interesting?
