Let's have a conversation if possible. I'm thinking, having just read your post, that behind the words are feelings, feelings that motivate you to want to express what you have said. I don't know if you would want to accommodate me in that thought, actually also a kind of feeling hunch, and ask yourself and reply with what you see or not. Personally, what I hear looks to me like sadness on the surface but beneath it deep anger. Typically people call such an experience as frustration, dissatisfaction with what appear to be facts one can't change. What do you think?
Sadness was the 2020 election. I expected a resounding push back against Trumpism, but our country delivered a meek blow, one that completely undermined future prospects by giving us almost zero power in Congress and a Presidential figurehead to blame. The election results meant I had been far too optimistic in our people, that I still did not understand my fellow Americans. Worse, they called the election fake and attempted an insurrection. Even though they had gutted us, that wasn't good enough. I think I saw Democracy die that day, the time between that day and our future destination are merely the death throes.
But I digress, this is more about how we all behave... and why. To detail a modus operandi that will help me not underestimate the depths to which people will go. Which is to say... I do not believe we have a limit. That we are still cavemen, thoroughly, and the evil acts throughout history are just samples of what our future holds in store. For though the actual people committing them have changed, our behaviors are still derived from the same human condition. The same tribal, zealous, and fantastical make believe we used 4,000 years ago.
And though people think institutions will save them....
January 6th, I think, proves that there are no sacred cows. That perhaps those institutions already fell and can no longer serve their function. That any remaining pretense of their existence is just the calm before the storm. As the consequences of claiming "Democracy is dead" catches up to us. I did not see it at the time, but 2016 was far more dangerous than I feel has been expressed. As "fake news" will inevitability connect the dots straight through to fake elections, and no more consent of the people to be governed. To lawlessness, anarchy... to death and destruction. Our people are primed for this, they hunger for it like I never imagined. Mad crusaders fighting for their sky fairy.
I thought they would act with reason.... I was wrong. I can no longer assume that is what drives people. I think it is something else entirely, as explained in the OP.
Anger, perhaps, in knowing how even the "good guys" will behave. How tribal, how petty. How they will act blindly towards their own demise. Anyone who does not think exactly like them is an other to be discarded, if not assaulted. I feel treated that way, anger for the results of a recent topic. Does understanding why they do it help make it any less of a problem? Not really. What use is a good guy, if... at the end of the day... they have come for your head?
Hold a mirror to someone, and they'll claim you're Trump incarnate. A Nazi, and you know what we do to Nazis. Eastern Europe knows all too well.
In fact, Russia is a great modern day example of irrational actors. Of lies and make believe and propaganda. To the depths it will take humans when they believe in something, whether it is real or not. At heart, we are all crusaders and we are all good guys. It's just the bad guys that need killing. On and on it goes. I do not think, not for one second, that we are removed from the same behaviors. From the same tribal, zealous, and make believe that leads to these evil behaviors.
I think the AP has done a rather timely article to help me express the purpose of this topic.
An insight, I think, into how and why we are acting right now.
Choose your reality: Trust wanes, conspiracy theories rise
“Trust is absolutely essential to everything in society working well,” Reis said. “It’s one of those things that, like air, people don’t think about it until they realize they don’t have it, or they’ve lost it or damaged it. And then it can be too late.”
For experts who study misinformation and human cognition, the fraying of trust is tied to the rise of the internet and the way it can be exploited on contentious issues of social and economic change.
Distrust and suspicion offered obvious advantages to small bands of early humans trying to survive in a dangerous world, and those emotions continue to help people gauge personal risk today. But distrust is not always well suited to the modern world, which requires people to trust the strangers who inspect their food, police their streets and write their news. Democratic institutions, with their regulations and checks and balances, are one way of adding accountability to that trust.
When that trust breaks down, polarization and anxiety increases, creating opportunities for people pushing their own “ alternative facts.”
“People can’t fact check the world,” said Dr. Richard Friedman, a New York City psychiatrist and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College who has written about the psychology of trust and belief. “They’re awash in competing streams of information, both good and bad. They’re anxious about the future, and there are a lot of bad actors with the ability to weaponize that fear and anxiety.”
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