Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls The case for making journalism free--at least during the 2024 election -- Richard Stengel

[ancianita]

18. Interesting line of thought. Thanks.

I tend to think that people who are intellectually lazy inevitably acquire fears and prejudices that keep them that way.

As for anti-intellectual undercurrents, I also think that the era of those currents is behind us now, as youth reject it out of hand, and are trying to 'future proof' their lives.

Since the 90's when I was on the nets, I've generally seen that the internet has made people more of what they'd already been inclined or groomed toward, anyway. So, they either use news to learn new information and kept their maps of reality progressively up-to-date, or used "news" to validate whatever level of learning they've stopped at, and their maps of reality stagnated. They used to approach print media the same way, when they even bothered to read, and not just get it all through second- or thirdhand reports of their social/political circles.

Overall, I've seen how Democrats have been dragging the underinformed cult kicking and screaming into the 21st Century; their rw billionaire oligarchs trying to structurally block us from doing that, but the majority of Americans already have seen and felt the harm caused by the cult's insistence on their "freedumbs," and withdrawal from the rest of the world with their cynical "amerikkka first" stupidity.

It's why, according to Simon Rosenberg, Democrats have been kicking ass in elections since 2018. We'll do it again in 2024, whether corporate media helps or not.