TECHNOLOGY
How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth (NYTIMES)
“A wider variety of news sources was supposed to be the bulwark of a rational age — “the marketplace of ideas,” the boosters called it. But that’s not how any of this works. Psychologists and other social scientists have repeatedly shown that when confronted with diverse information choices, people rarely act like rational, civic-minded automatons. Instead, we are roiled by preconceptions and biases, and we usually do what feels easiest — we gorge on information that confirms our ideas, and we shun what does not.”
POPULISM AND POLARIZATION
A Warning from Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come
Anne Applebaum notes:
“Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.”
What Populists Do to Democracies
Roger Cohen on Crowd Psychology:
“People are weak. They are susceptible. They are easily manipulated through their fears. They long to prostrate themselves. They can be led by the nose into the gutter. The angels of their better natures, if they’ve ever given a moment’s thought to them, are a lot less powerful than the devils of their diabolical urges.
They lie, they exploit, they seek distraction at any price from the monotony of existence. The life of humankind, as Hobbes famously put it, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Especially short: You no sooner begin to get the hang of it, learn a few useful tricks like lowered expectations, than it’s over. Poof!
This is the basic setup. Society is an exercise in trying to offset horrors through law and convention.”
DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS AND POLARIZATION
Monica Duffy Toft - Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University:
What happens to a country when its core national identity – its preferred image of itself in terms of race or religion – doesn’t match its demographic reality?
Related:
Why Ethnic Majorities Lash Out Over False Fears