General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYears ago I made a prediction. No one has ever been more wrong than I was.
I predicted the invention of the internet, along with the invention of search engines like google, would lead to the 2nd Age of Enlightenment. Instead it led to the 2nd Age of Superstition.
Walleye
(31,022 posts)fightforfreedom
(4,913 posts)PatSeg
(47,430 posts)the past few years. I'm having serious doubts about the future of humanity.
DENVERPOPS
(8,820 posts)PatSeg
(47,430 posts)to the possibility that things could get better, but my confidence in humankind overall is seriously diminished.
Kaleva
(36,298 posts)The internet makes it easier for people to find info that supports their world view.
"Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.[1] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias cannot be eliminated entirely, but it can be managed, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
fightforfreedom
(4,913 posts)Kaleva
(36,298 posts)Despite the advances in technology, the printing press for example, humans haven't changed much since the beginning of recorded history.
COL Mustard
(5,897 posts)To publish cat porn in the old days...or whatever they looked at!
Buckeyeblue
(5,499 posts)I'm not sure he imagined it playing out like this. One would think humans would move away, not toward tyranny. But I think some people are ok with tyranny, as long as they think they will be at the top of the pecking order.
The entire MAGA movement hinges on white, uneducated, Christianish males rising up to claim what is rightfully theirs.
It turns out this is not just a political movement but also a business strategy. Look at the money mega churches and the gun industry has made off the backs of these people.
Sur Zobra
(3,428 posts)I predicted that there was no way that Trump would win in 2016, and when he was elected, that the Republicans would rein him in and would never let him do anything crazy
You can give me the wrongest 🏆
dalton99a
(81,485 posts)moondust
(19,981 posts)that the GOP would try to clean up their act after Nixon had to resign. Instead they immediately got worse with Reagan and eventually much worse with TFG.
Tommymac
(7,263 posts)Racists, angry white men, grifters, misogynists, and liars.
The End of a Political Era: Movement Conservatism Gets Real
BY HEATHER COX RICHARDSON | AUGUST 16, 2017
And yet, a political circus daily assaults Americans. We have a demonstrably unfit Republican president, a Republican Congress unable to pass the measure on which its members campaigned for eight years, a revolt from military leaders against a presidential policy conveyed by tweet, and now an admission by Republican stalwarts former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake that Republican rhetoric was never more than a means to gain power. These things are not unrelated. We are witnessing the end of a political era, the era in which movement conservatism dominated America. We are seeing the nasty, snarling death of a political movement hatched in the 1950s to overturn the New Deal, fed on racism and sexism, fattened on hatred and lies, and now torn apart by its own acolytes. [My Bold]
Movement conservatism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movement conservatism is an inside term describing conservatism in the United States and New Right. According to George H. Nash (2009) the movement comprises a coalition of five distinct impulses. From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists made up this coalition, with the goal of fighting the liberals' New Deal. In the 1970s, two more impulses were added with the addition of neoconservatives and the religious right.
Popular base
Robert W. Welch Jr. founded the John Birch Society in 1958 as a secret grass-roots group to fight Communists, who Welch said controlled much of the American establishment, and whose agents included even Eisenhower himself. Welch used the dues to build an elaborate organizational infrastructure that enabled him to keep a very tight rein on the chapters.[11] Its main activity in the 1960s, says Rick Perlstein, "comprised monthly meetings to watch a film by Welch, followed by writing postcards or letters to government officials linking specific policies to the Communist menace".[12] After its quick rise in membership William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review mobilized movement conservatives, including Goldwater himself, to denounce the John Birch Society as an extremist fringe element of the conservative movement.[13][14]
Ronald Reagan was a key figure in expanding the popularity of movement conservatism from intellectual circles into the popular mainstream, by emphasizing the dangers of an excessively large federal government. In October 1964, Reagan delivered a speech as part of his support for candidate Goldwater titled "A Time for Choosing". The speech represented the ideology of movement conservatism, arguing against big government bureaucracy and welfare while also denouncing foreign aid. The speech was widely applauded and gave Reagan a national audience. He was elected Governor of California in 1966 and 1970.[15][16]
In the wake of civil rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1968, many white southern Democrats began shifting to the Republican Party. This ended the exceptionalism of the "one-party South" in presidential elections and brought significant additional political power to the Republican Party, although these voters were not necessarily movement conservatives.[17] In 1994, for the first time the Republicans controlled the majority of the house seats from the South, and by 2014 had gained a virtual monopoly of state and national offices throughout most of the South.
liberalla
(9,247 posts)getagrip_already
(14,750 posts)A winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman wrote in 1998, The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in Metcalfes lawwhich states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participantsbecomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internets impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machines.
Well, now that this is cleared up....
tiredtoo
(2,949 posts)Would end or greatly reduce racism in America. The people would see a person's skin color has no bearing on his/her abilities. Couldn't have been more wrong.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)and underestimated what would happen if all the crazy people could.
"The Internet is like a giant room where all the crazy people meet." - Irene, caller on The Rush Limbaugh program.
niyad
(113,302 posts)murdering orange TRAITOR** a joke before the election, that that was a lot of the reaction to hitler in the 1930's, and look how that turned out.
KS Toronado
(17,235 posts)It has sure helped divide this country.
Lettuce Be
(2,336 posts)Who wants to buy $4 coffee? Everyone apparently, LOL
lpbk2713
(42,757 posts)That's where it took a turn.
canetoad
(17,157 posts)After my first few month experiencing the early cyberspace, I knew that 'truth' would become a popular vote.