"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken
Not just the government, but collusion with institutional and social media creates a profit incentive to sow discord, divisiveness. I was alive in the eighties and remember the religious right - the attitudinal support from mainstream media, etc. Today's politics look like a secular religious left. Not much different in the dynamic of the followers/leaders, the social glare they cast, the censorship. We really do learn nothing from the past - we all think we're living in 'unprecedented times' but I see more of the same, every year.
Not just the government, but collusion with institutional and social media creates a profit incentive to sow discord, divisiveness. I was alive in the eighties and remember the religious right - the attitudinal support from mainstream media, etc. Today's politics look like a secular religious left. Not much different in the dynamic of the followers/leaders, the social glare they cast, the censorship. We really do learn nothing from the past - we all think we're living in 'unprecedented times' but I see more of the same, every year.