More Americans don't know the difference between truth and fiction
An increasing number of Americans don't know how to distinguish between fact and fantasy, how to determine what may be true and may be false.
This has always been an issue, but in contemporary times the process went like this, in my very brief summary of this article :
1. 1960s: The hippy and New Age generation's "make your own reality."
2. Conspiracy and paranoia in the 1970s from both the left and right, from the Weathermen to John Birchers, plus the UFO/Bigfoot/Moon landing hoax etc. fads. Jimmy Carter said he had witnessed a UFO and this wasn't considered a big deal.
"Relativist professors enabled science-denying Christians, and the antipsychiatry craze in the ’60s appealed simultaneously to left-wingers and libertarians (as well as to Scientologists). Conspiracy theories were more of a modern right-wing habit before people on the left signed on. However, the belief that the federal government had secret plans to open detention camps for dissidents sprouted in the ’70s on the paranoid left before it became a fixture on the right."
3. By the 1980s, "relativism" and fantasy-based thinking had become standard.
4. In the 90s, talk radio, the rise of the Christian Right, and anti-Clinton conspiracy theories (Vince Foster etc) started making conspiracy theory and fringe views more central to mainstream politics in the GOP. Enter the Internet, making the fringe even more accessible.
5. The 2000s and the rejection of the "reality-based community" by Karl Rove and the G.W. Bush White House; Americans bought "WMDs" hook, line and sinker.
6. 2010-present: Conspiracy theory running wild in the anti-Obama voices (Birtherism, secret Muslim, FEMA camps for Tea Partiers) resulting in the first conspiracy-theorist president.
You see it all through society now. POVs that were once considered the "lunatic fringe" are now common: mass shootings are staged by the government in order to facilitate gun contol, Hitler was a leftist, white males are under attack by a conspiracy, the FBI is conspiring to impeach the president, NASA & every science academy in the world are conspiring with "Globalists" to push a nefarious hoax of Climate Change onto mankind. Evolution is dismissed a "mainstream thinking" in favor of belief in Noah's Ark to explain differentiation of the species.
This fantasy-based thinking is all over: in the Oval Office, Congress, our neighbors, our families. Personally I have found it among tons of people I talk to. They simply reject evidence to the contrary of what they want to believe. They have their private, far-out theories and beliefs and their own far-out sources to support the theories and beliefs.
The articles point out that this process happens with all political stripes, but especially right-wingers. You see it on Internet forums all the time. RWers reject all middle-of-the-road sources and cling to well-known fake news sites. They reject articles like the ones in this OP because it's The Atlantic and Vox, even though the articles are long, in-depth, non-political analysis. They reject their fellow conservatives who are not in the fringe , calling them RINOs, "establishment", etc. (They adopted that from the hippy-radicals who fought "the establishment.")
Point out the fact that, on the scale of contemporary world democracies, the Democratic Party is centrist and the GOP is far right, and they go berzerk. Many European schools are teaching children how to spot fake news, and they have a greater grasp on how to understand what is true than many American adults.
Now we have a president who is is a conspiracy theorist, who champions the wacko Alex Jones , who rejects any news he doesn't like as "fake." But this process didn't start with this president and it won't end when he's gone.
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Very good article, thanks.
Good article LMM.
There is a sheen of irrationality across our entire set of public 'discussions' in America today. I believe the majority of Americans believe in one conspiracy or another, or many.
I think that to be careful, one should not believe anything they read or hear, and due to the invention of Photoshopping, only half of what they see WITH THEIR OWN EYES.
The key to the resurgence of 'the untruth' is...............................?
Perhaps the success of a certain 'political bent' to comprehend and understand the effectiveness of The Goebbels Philosophy?
Nice cherry picking only what you wish to espouse.....
My take after reading that, (and having lived through a lot of it) is this statement he makes...
This is why I am cynical where it comes to one side decrying the other side.
this is a post reality world, and both sides have their fantasy ideals of what the world actually is.
That is the point of his article.
It points the finger at both sides.
Therefore I agree with his conclusion.....
Two different sets of whacko's vying for control of everyone.
Both sides? Of what?
The neo-realists and the ultra-socialists.
Both sides living in a fantasy world, nee.. post reality world.
"An increasing number of Americans don't know how to distinguish between fact and fantasy, how to determine what may be true and may be false."
I don't find it they "Don't Know How", I find it more to be they "Don't Want to Know", as long as it fits the narrative they want to hear !
I'm NOT biased......I see BULLSHIT from ALL sides !
If I have my news, and you have yours, and both of us rely on truthiness — the uncontestable “essential” truth of our beliefs, regardless of facts — it’s impossible to have a conversation. And when people who disagree can’t have a conversation they are much more likely to fight.
Seems I've seen this behaviour on NT a few times.
I've stated the issue this way before; there are those who want to go back to a time that never existed, and there are those who want to go to a future that cannot exist.
Well said!
there are those who want to go back to a time that never existed, and there are those who want to go to a future that cannot exist.
Steve, you're a modern day buddha, lol.
There is far too much information out there, it is hard to tell the difference between true news and editorialized opinion passed off as real news. This is on both sides of the fence. Far too much reliance on 'someone' told me 'so I have to run with it before verifying' it to be part of the 24x7 news cycle. Polls are passed off as accurate fact, but as every pollster knows, you can tilt poll results to get them to say what you want them to say.