If The Russians Engineered a Trump Victory

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-01-2017, 09:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Don't fool yourself. White racism is real. I hear it often enough because many white people feel free to express it so long as there are no blacks around. It's ugly. It's much the same stuff as people said a century ago everywhere in America or fifty years ago in the South.

So why does it return from the dead? Because people stupefy themselves on brain-rot and soul-rot that emanates from the television, whether broadcast or from video devices. Human nature does not change. The Greek philosophers and the Hebrew prophets remain relevant because we have the same potential for crass stupidity and selfishness as ever. We transcend our worst lest we fall for the worst.

For the most part, I'm with you.

Humans don't change.  Human cultures do.  Some changes are linear and have long term trends.  There are fewer slaves and nobles now than there were in the Agricultural Age.  Some changes, perhaps, are cyclical

Obama made some progress.  We had eight years of a black first family that quietly lived above the vile stereotypes.  There has been some of that long term progress, as the flags cartoon indicates.  But I think we're seeing some cyclical kickback.  The deplorables have been forced to hide much of their hate since the awakening, and were given an excuse to flaunt it again.

And perhaps the new media has been part of it as well.  If you have a belief or world view, one is likely to be able to go out on the web and find sites that will reinforce and enable it.  No matter what extreme partisan world view one wants to indulge in, there is a ready built alternate reality bubble ready to radicalize, or to turn one into a reactionary.  (Reactionaryize?)

The former trend seems like it may be cyclical.  The deplorables are having their time.  It may be that said time is limited, that the long term trend towards equality and decency might resume.

But the alternate reality bubbles, the ability of extreme partisans to be made more extreme, that may be new with the web, or made worse by the web.  Violent extreme partisans aren't new, but there are more tools available now to spread nonsense.

I don't know...