Jonathan Haidt: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

By Dilip -

NB: Yes, however the stupidity is not confined to the USA... DS

The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.  It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history.

But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.

Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future - and to us as a people. How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life?...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/


Robert Reich - Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist, nationalist populism


America isn't breaking. It was already broken. By Andrew Gawthorpe // Why This Time Is Different. By Dahlia Lithwick


TOM ENGELHARDT: A World at the Edge


Alfred McCoy: The crumbling delusion of Washington's endless world dominion


In 1953, the Republican Party overthrew the Iranian Government; in 2021 it used the same techniques against the elected US President


Mohammed Hanif: The rest of the world has had it with US presidents, Trump or otherwise


Donald Trump's gift to America: Realizing we've never been a liberal democracy. By PAUL ROSENBERG


The Break-Up of Britain / The US today resembles the Soviet Union just before it fell


Jonathan Freedland: This scandal reveals a Conservative party corrupted by Boris Johnson – and by Brexit / Rory Stewart: Britain needs a new era of serious leaders


Special Double number - Mainstream, February 2022 / Om Thanvi: Photos of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara's visit to India


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