Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
Driving in a car/metal box instead of sharing the space or walking/cycling and connecting to others is another one.
Othering of others is super easy in a car. There are studies about how much more violent and vitriolic people are when driving.
Yeah lack of third spaces and class mixing is big. Everyone is segregated into their own existing (shrinking) in groups, that then get concentrated by the webiverse.
The 70s oil crisis was an inflection point for Europe and a lot of cities/countries started moving back away from cars as the sole transportation option but the US didn’t have the same reaction.
Not to mention the rise of vehicle violence, running over protesters and such.