How Oligarchs Broke the Public Square and Destroyed Shared Reality
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In Genesis, the people of Babel build a tower toward heaven.
They build it to make a name for themselves, but also to keep themselves from being scattered. The tower is not only an act of pride. It is an act of coordination: one people, one language, one city, one project, one attempt to hold themselves together against dispersal.
God does not burn the city. He does not massacre the builders. He does not erase them from the earth. He does something stranger and, in some ways, more politically devastating: he confuses their language.
The punishment is disorganization.
The people can still speak, work, desire, build, remember, and dream. But they can no longer coordinate. Their shared project collapses because shared language collapses. Babel is not only a story about human arrogance. It is a story about collective power broken by making mutual understanding impossible.
That is why Babel is the right metaphor for the platform age.
The internet promised connection. The platforms delivered a new kind of scattering: not physical dispersal across the earth, but informational dispersal across incompatible realities. Everyone remained connected. Everyone kept speaking. Everyone could publish, react, and broadcast. But the shared language of public life began to break.
That is the Digital Babel: not a world where no one can speak, but a world where speech no longer reliably becomes shared meaning.
Social media had been sold as connection. In practice, the public square became a set of privately owned behavioral environments, each optimized to keep its occupants inside. The platforms did not merely host conversation. They shaped the conditions under which conversation became visible, viral, profitable, or invisible.
That is how the Great Fragmentation moved from culture into reality itself.
First, culture stopped arriving together. Then the old gatekeepers hollowed out the institutions that had once assembled the shared room. Now the platform age completed the turn: the public did not merely lose common cultural sequence. It began to lose common reality.
Once movies, music, television, and public arguments stopped arriving together, the same break moved into news, politics, evidence, and civic life. Everyone could publish, react, and broadcast. Fewer people inhabited the same informational world.
That is the central difference between pluralism and fragmentation. A pluralistic society contains many voices inside a shared civic frame. A fragmented society contains many voices inside incompatible frames. The first can produce argument. The second produces babble.
The difference is felt in ordinary life. One person arrives at dinner with a newspaper story. Another arrives with a clip. Another arrives with a rumor from a group chat. Another arrives already certain the first two have been deceived.
The platform age did not invent that danger. It industrialized it.
The old public square was not simply destroyed by the internet. It was divided, privatized, optimized, and sold back to the public as freedom. The ancient logic was divide and conquer. The modern innovation was to turn divide and conquer into a business model.
This created a collective-action problem at civilizational scale. Political science, sociology, and economics all describe versions of the same dilemma: people can share interests, grievances, and dangers, yet still fail to act together when coordination becomes too costly, trust collapses, incentives misalign, or common knowledge disappears. A public does not become powerful merely because its members can speak. It becomes powerful when enough people can recognize the same reality, name the same problem, and believe that others recognize it too.
The platform order did not require old-fashioned censorship to weaken public power. Its incentives pointed toward something more efficient: a public that could speak constantly while understanding less together. A divided public was easier to monetize. An enraged public was easier to retain. A confused public was easier for concentrated power to govern around.
The internet was sold, at least in its most hopeful form, as a democratic expansion of the public square. It would let people find one another. It would let outsiders speak without waiting for permission. It would make information abundant. It would make institutions more accountable. It would weaken old monopolies over visibility. It would let communities form across distance. It would give ordinary people the tools of publication, documentation, organization, and memory.
Some of that promise was real.
Families stayed connected. Dissidents documented abuse. Artists found audiences. Marginalized people found one another. Independent writers built readerships. Citizens recorded violence, corruption, neglect, and hypocrisy. Archives opened. Expertise traveled. Subcultures flourished. Institutions that had once depended on silence or scarcity became easier to challenge.
But the public square was not rebuilt.
It was privatized.
The oligarchs who bought it wired explosive incentives into it.
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It is a problem that anyone can express their opinion in any number of Internet forums as if it carries more weight than just some random uninformed opinion. I recently witnessed a discussion about solar farms being an unsightly usage of farmland, where a poster presented AI photos of a cityscape where the buildings all had solar fields on top of them and the parking lots all had structures covering them topped with fields of solar panels, as if this is a logical alternative. When confronted about how this would make solar power prohibitively expensive to build and maintain, the automatic response is that eventually it will recoup that expense. This is an unbelievably stupid armchair opinion parading around as a logical argument to require farmland to be used for crops only. It holds as much weight as an opinion that crops are unsightly and should be put on top of buildings and parking lots so we don’t have to look at them. It’s the Internet, where anyone can pretend to be an expert about anything just to protect their feelings.
Once upon a time we used to have people that went around door to door selling Encyclopedia Britannica's. That was the place most people went to look for truth about a subject as it was a peer reviewed compilation of what experts, educators and scientists understood to be true. Was it perfect? No. And those tiny cracks in the armor, those little holes where experts had to admit they didn't know everything, allowed the masses of idiots to decide "Well if something is debatable, I can make up my own truth!". And with the internet being invented it became just a rapid vehicle to dispense the bullshit of the masses so it can masquerade as truth because lying and deceiving people can be very profitable.
Even Wiki used to be thought of as a place you could find basic truths like the Encyclopedia, and it still is for the most part, but because partisans can manipulate the information available it can't even be used to support basic reality anymore. If you link a Wiki page about how water is wet, rightwing conservatives here will poo poo it for being a likely lie from the deep state and that you can't trust anything on Wiki. Of course, the vast majority of information is accurate but that doesn't matter to those invested in believing things that aren't true.
But they can no longer coordinate. Their shared project collapses because shared language collapses
who could ever foresee that happening when you flood country with immigrants push them not to assimilate and treat people differently on the basis of race.
treat people differently on the basis of race.
Hilarious coming from the defenders of ICE policies that allow them detain people on the basis of their race alone.
No they don’t.
But thanks for the ""my embrace of systematic racism and discrimination is fine because I invented a policy that doesn't exist so I can deflect from it " defense.
Um, yes, they do.
In July, a federal judge issued an order that stopped ICE from targeting people based on race, language, and work. However, this week the Supreme Court temporarily lifted the order while the case continues. As a result, ICE agents can resume making indiscriminate stops for the time being, underscoring the need for immediate answers and accountability from DHS on the use of racial profiling in immigration enforcement.
But you already knew this.
Um.. No. Even your own partisan link proves you wrong.
Ask Chat GPT:
However, this week the Supreme Court temporarily lifted the order while the case continues. As a result, ICE agents can resume making indiscriminate stops for the time being, underscoring the need for immediate answers and accountability from DHS on the use of racial profiling in immigration enforcement.
What part of this is not true? It shouldn’t have even been in front of the SC, but the three currently Republican controlled branches of government have enabled ICE to build a history of doing literally this.
Don't try to tell anyone here how racist trmp's and ICE's policies are. They can see the truth with their own eyes but refuse to believe it
Do you really not understand what you claimed and how even your excerpt proves you wrong?
Words matter. This isn't hand grenades where just coming relatively close to the target and worrying about definitions is okay. Merely finding A link that contains similar words does not prove your point.
Just answer the question, if you can. Enough with your bullshit, it’s right there in black and white. Republicans are obviously not the party that is against racial profiling.
Could you break it down by race or country the millions of Biden allowed illegals that came into this country during his autopen reign. Then, when you get your answer, explain how deporting these same people is "race profiling".
Can you mind your own fucking business? Why would you jump into a very specific dialogue and pollute it with questions that have nothing to do with said dialogue? Sean is a big boy and he can defend his own attempts to rewrite history all by himself.
Correct. And as Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated apparent ethnicity can be considered a "relevant factor" in the totality of circumstances for immigration stops.
So it can be considered as a factor. Seems to make common sense. If you are looking into illegals, percentages would overwhelmingly favor some characteristics over others.
So yes, the Republican led branches of the federal government have enabled racial profiling as a legal tactic for ICE detainments. What a strange thing to do for a party that is so adamantly opposed to race factoring in to any decision.
Would you go to a hardware store when looking for ice cream?
Did they specify any decision. What types of decisions are they denying that is causing you angst?
Don't have to. Public forum
"Why would you jump into a very specific dialogue and pollute it with questions that have nothing to do with said dialogue?"
Your claim is that ICE has a race based policy for deportation. I called you out on your bs. Not liking it is not my problem.
"Sean is a big boy and he can defend his own attempts to rewrite history all by himself."
He can if he was, but he's not, and you can't prove he is.
I know you won't or can't answer my request because it would blow your narrative about ICE agents, who many of them are black and hispanic, of picking up illegals based on their race.
RDTC answered for both of you. Under Democrat administrations ICE needed a warrant, under Republican administration you just need to look or sound like an immigrant. It is the very definition of racial profiling, yet you all keep pretending there’s no elephant in the room.
Yes and he is correct. Most of those that were picked up by ICE had removal orders already. There is no reason for yet another warrant when they were already told to leave the country.
Can you post by country where the vast majority of illegals came in during auto pen's free reign?
And there is no reason to doubt that someone is here illegally as long as they are brown or speak with an accent. You’re not even trying to deny this.
Where did I say this? Just making up shit again.
My wife's whole family is....wait for it....brown and speaks with an accent.
There is no reason for them to be included in any immigration raids.
Why is that, you did not ask?
Because they are all here legally.
Most, if not all, "brown" people detained by ICE were interfering in an ICE raid and got arrested for THAT..nothing else, unless they were found to also be here illegally.
Now, can you post the countries of origin the illegals that autopen let in willy nilly with NO vetting
This is such a facepalm moment. There are people like your wife who have been detained without any reason other than their accent or skin color. Until that reality sinks in, stop inserting yourself into this conversation, because you are clearly incapable of participating.
The facepalm moment is watching you do everything you can to avoid answering the question I posed to you several times.
[deleted][✘]
I accept your surrender
Have a good night
Lol. I did. I pointed out your own link proves your claim wrong. It's literally right in front of you. How much more plainly do you need it speled out. Do this:
1. Read your claim.
2. Read your link. Read what I wrote. Pay attention to the words and their context.
The right threw gasoline on the fire of intolerance when they questioned the right of Barack Obama to become president. Spare us the bs.
It is rather funny that they believe that as long as they don't say the quiet part out loud, as long as they don't admit why they really had a problem with Obama as President, that the rest of the world is required to believe that their objections were not racist.
By accepting a claim Barack Obama's publisher made and Obama went along with to sell books as truthful?
That, to you, justifies destroying the cohesion of America?
Ah, yes. "The Barack Obama was so perfect that any objection to him can only be explained by racism" his mindless cult hinds behind.
Obama came into office with higher levels of public support than any President in generations. "Racism" isn't' why he failed.
obama is the only person that can stop trump from going for a third term, since obama would also become eligible and then humiliate trump in that election. which is why trump is now continuously calling for obama's arrest and prosecution for treason, etc, etc, etc ...
No. It's the "While Obama may have done some things right and is beloved by millions and got a lot of Americans who couldn't even get health insurance covered, I'm ONLY going to bitch about the things I think he did wrong, scream to the heavens that he might not be American because I didn't personally see his long form birth certificate and never give him an ounce of credit because I don't think black men should be in such positions of power over white men!" mindless cult. I have never heard a single positive thing about Obama come from those who spend their time Obama bashing which proves to me how utterly bigoted they really are no matter how much they are carefully trying to hide it.
Race obsession has truly broken the left. This country will not be healed until racist progressives realize black people are something besides racial avatars. You'd think progressives who do nothing but insult Trump could manage to put together a reason besides racism why conservatives don't praise Obama. Unless, of course, their racism is so pervasive that it's pure racism driving their obsessive hatred and constant denigration of the man.
Imagine having lived though 4 years of conservatives treating Biden like Obama and publicly claiming the only reason conservatives didn't like Obama is race. It takes a complete lack of critical thinking skills to believe "race" is why conservatives didn't like Obama.
... it was/is the primary reason, as revealed by popular maga memes promoted by their party leader for over 2 decades.
So the white religious conservative bigots tell us who were found by the courts to be targeting black Americans with almost "surgical precision" when crafting voting laws intended to disenfranchise eligible American voters simply because they tended to vote for Democrats.
Do Republicans actually think no one notices? Have conservatives really convinced themselves that the reason the majority of black Americans don't vote for them is because they're somehow 'too stupid' to know what's best for them? Are they really so nose blind as to think the racist shit they keep doing doesn't stink? They're literally currently carving out voting districts by race to prevent black Americans from being able to elect a representative to represent them just as they did before the voting rights act was signed.
So you can spare me the theatrics, nobodies buying the "Oh, but we non-racist white religious conservatives who wave around confederate flags and protect monuments that celebrate confederates who fought to keep owning black people and author voting laws meant to disenfranchise eligible black voters and went crazy over wild conspiracy theory bullshit about Obama's birth certificate claiming he wasn't an American, we ONLY disagreed with and resisted the Obama Presidency on policy! Yes! It was policy alone that led us to hate Obama!".
I do accept that not all anti-Obama conservatives are total racists, there were many I talked to that dismissed the birth certificate bullshit and all the garbage rhetoric and stuck solely to criticisms of how he handled the draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan or had policy issues with the ACA, but every one of them were able to admit where Obama got things right which he did more often than not.
What court found that? Or is that just you projecting your issues?
g laws intended to disenfranchise eligible American voters simply because they tended to vote for Democrats.
So you believe Democrats in California disenfranchised American voters because they tend to vote for for Republicans. Good to know.
d as to think the racist shit they keep doing doesn't stink? They're literally currently carving out voting districts by race to prevent black Americans from being able to elect a representative to represent them
You call other people racist while claiming white progressives can't represent black Democrats.. Sad.
Lucky for us, the real word is not so racially obsessed as the fringe left. In the last Virginia election (one of those evil confederate states whose voters are the same as those who for segregation, you believe) white voters voted for the black candidate and black voters voted for the white. Not everyone is as racist as Blueanon progressives.
Court: North Carolina Voter ID Law Targeted Black Voters | FRONTLINE | PBS | Official Site | Documentary Series
They've been doing it for decades and continue to restrict polling places they know are in minority districts and voting days they know many black Americans tend to vote along with restricting ID's to those least likely to be had by minority voters.
Clearly you either don't understand what I wrote or misunderstand the issue. If California's were creating laws that specifically made it harder for certain groups to vote, such as knowing that greasy conservatives like to vote at polling locations close to strip clubs, so they wrote laws to ban any polling places near where conservatives tended to vote, then you might have a point. But they don't, so you don't. Republicans, however, do exactly that when it comes to black voters that they studied the voting habits of and then crafted laws to intentionally disenfranchise them. It's an open and shut case, it's an irrefutable fact with evidence proved in court.
When did I say that? I said Republicans are " currently carving out voting districts by race to prevent black Americans from being able to elect a representative to represent them". I made no mention of the race of the person they want to represent them. Republicans are trying desperately to take away their right to choose.
Oh. You were talking about the case where the democratic expert claimed voter id laws hurt blacks because blacks are less sophisticated, less educated, and are lower information voters who can't figure out how to obtain free IDs. Of course progressive judges bought that. It's the whole paternalistic progressive view in a nutshell.
Perfect example of the white savior complex. I'm actually surprised progressives still want to be associated with such a racist worldview.
I made no mention of the race of the person they want to represent them.
publicans are " currently carving out voting districts by race to prevent black Americans from being able to elect a representative to represent them". I made no mention of the race of the person they want to represent them
Then you aren't paying attention to your own party because they are absolutely claiming they need black voters need black representatives. If you actually aren't aware of that you really have no credibility on the topic. Further, it makes no sense that you would only claim this about black Americans and not all the other people and races who are equally effected by partisan gerrymanders. But somehow you only seem to care that explicitly race based gerrymanders aren't allowed
Republicans are trying desperately to take away their right to choose.
Lol. You are right back to whining that blacks have some "right to choose" that entitles them to racist gerrymanders . Perfect.
Before Donald Trump became the king birther at the start of 2011 the state of hawaii had already officially announced , twice, that Obamas birth certificate was in the states archives and had been personally inspected by state officials. Why wasnt that the complete end of the story? Trump was supposed to be this commanding business executive but he didnt have the common sense or common decency to contact the Hawaii state government and ask them if they had a birth certificate for Barack Obama? The state was almost begging people to contact them so they could put an end to this racist nonsense. But Trump lied and said his "investigators" were finding unbelievable things in Hawaii pertaining to Obamas birth. Unsurprisingly Trump was lying.
Trumps birtherism should have been the absolute end of his political career, instead it propelled him 4 years later . Hail MAGA !
By the way, in case you think I am wrong -
Microsoft Copilot: Your AI companion
Well before Donald Trump began publicly promoting birther claims in early 2011 , the State of Hawaii had already issued multiple official confirmations that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was on file, valid, and personally verified by state officials.
Here is what the record shows, based on authoritative, contemporaneous statements from Hawaii officials:
✅ Hawaii had already publicly verified Obama’s birth records — twice — before Trump entered the birther scene
1. June 2008 — Hawaii confirms Obama’s birth certificate is authentic and on file
When Obama’s campaign released his Certification of Live Birth (the “short form”) in 2008, the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed that it matched the original record in their archives and was legally sufficient proof of birth in the state.
2. Additional confirmations before 2011
Hawaii officials reiterated again — prior to Trump’s 2011 media push — that:
Obama’s original birth record was in the state archives
State officials had personally inspected the original document
The Certification of Live Birth released publicly in 2008 was authentic and accurate
These confirmations were made publicly because conspiracy theories had already been circulating since 2008, long before Trump amplified them.
✅ By early 2011, Hawaii had already said all of this — twice — on the record
So your statement is correct: Before Trump became the “king birther,” Hawaii had already officially announced — more than once — that Obama’s birth certificate was real, on file, and personally verified.
Trump did not uncover anything new; he simply revived a conspiracy that Hawaii officials had already addressed repeatedly.
I'm not saying that they should get to gerrymander the other way, I supported measures in the past that required bipartisan unelected panels of judges or others to draw the maps. What I don't think is right is to cut up majority black areas and neighborhoods so much with complex sliver cutouts made to intentionally keep black Americans from ever being able to elect someone to represent their interests.
If a large number of women lived in a majority female neighborhood, possibly due to financial segregation, perhaps they're single moms struggling to make ends meet, and the men in the legislator demanded the right to snip and cut their town to shreds so they would never have enough votes in any one area to elect a female to represent them, would you not see that as blatant misogyny? Maybe I shouldn't have used that example because rightwing conservatives seem to feel the same way about women's rights as they do minority rights.
The Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of Color | Brennan Center for Justice
The Racial Implications of Voter Identification Laws in America - Matt A. Barreto, Stephen Nuño, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Hannah L. Walker, 2019
Legacies of Segregation and Disenfranchisement: The Road from Plessy to Frank and Voter ID Laws in the United States | RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
The issues are real, deeply rooted and in some cases cultural.
Ignore the partisan dog whistle racism insults from the pretenders.
They're not really even dog whistles anymore when everyone can hear them. They don't even bother hiding it anymore, but they still look you right in the face and say, "I'm not racist, you're the racist". Whenever I see such blatant denial in the face of facts I think of the old movie "A Guide for the Married Man" with Joey Bishop and Walter Matthau.
Deny, Deny, Deny: Joey Bishop/Imagene Coca
Many voices inside a shared civic frame is the Tower of Babel. That 'Tower of Babel' model allows controlling and censoring the public square for consumption by a passive audience. Social media decentralized and democratized communication. What is being described as a impediment to a shared civic frame actually allows democracy to flourish.
X(Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. allow access to a diverse public square. And people are allowed to exercise their 1st amendment rights in that public square.
Democracy requires a competition of ideas to thrive. The 'Tower of Babel' model of elitist civic frame would impose conformity onto society and stifle dissent. That would limit the human potential and trample on human rights to obtain a monolithic good for questionable social benefit. Imposing a shared truth onto society is necessary to build a Tower of Babel.
Modern social media is democracy in action. Democracy can be messy, at times divisive, often confusing, and maddeningly irritating. But keep in mind the civic frame for democracy is consensus rather than imposed conformity. The democratic civic frame requires building a common truth that can result in a common good.
Are we thriving right now ?
Democracy is thriving outside of institutions. That doesn't mean people understand how democracy works. Such ignorance suggests there may be flaws in our institutions of education.
The story of the Tower of Babel represents one mind, one voice, imposed upon a society. And that one mind, one voice, assumed authority over society. The Tower of Babel was not a common good; it was a monolithic good imposed upon society. That may have looked like a flourishing, successful society but that 'thriving' hides stunted growth and development. The Tower of Babel was the objective and goal of society; the people became slaves to the Tower of Babel.
Essentially the Tower of Babel frames 'thriving' as equitable outcomes. But messy democracy frames 'thriving' as equal opportunities. Which do you believe fosters growth, development, and progress?
obviously there are if those institutions are teaching religious stories to explain american political science ...
What does that have to do with the the Tower of Babel story found in the Biblical book of Genesis? The topic of the seeded article is an important Jewish religious story.
You've actually proved my point about gaps in education. You failed to recognize that the Torah is being deliberately used to explain American political science.