6 ms·

I'd say the first 10 years of the 21st century were a hell of a lot stupider. We blew a budget surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy. We started two wars that las

by tharne 5y ago

I'd say the first 10 years of the 21st century were a hell of a lot stupider. We blew a budget surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy. We started two wars that lasted the better part of 20 years, one of which was waged against a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Oh, and we didn't win either of them. We completely ignored the rise of China and any threat it posed, assuming all the while they'd become good capitalists and fall in love with Democracy. Bankers tanked our economy so we bailed out them (bipartisan no less!), but not the average Americans they screwed. We turned our intelligence agencies against our own people. Heck, compared to the first 10 years of the 21st century, the previous 10 years have been a relative period of enlightenment. In fact most of the problems over the last 10 years stem from the stupendously dumb decisions we made from 2000 to 2009.

throwntoday 5y ago
>We completely ignored the rise of China and any threat it posed Buddy we financed that shit
Apocryphon 5y ago
You're not wrong. If anything, much of the most glaring political and cultural fiascos of the past decade were just exaggerated echoes of the previous decade.
whatshisface 5y ago
Many of the things you list were not fully and uncontroversially understood to be bad decisions until the end of the 2010s, so by analogy let's wait and see what we're saying in 2030 before we declare the 2010s to be an improvement over the 2000s.
spupe 5y ago
That's not an appropriate comparison. You are talking about bad policies and political decisions, while Haidt is focusing on internal division and institutional erosion. The issue here is whether you will be free to see and declare the next war as a mistake, or whether the public space and political arena will be dominated by authoritarianism, fueled by the processes described in the article.
- grumple 5y ago
  I think OP does bring up an important subject. The 00's set the stage for the 10's. The events they mentioned caused a huge lack of trust in our institutions - government, private, and media. The average American was a loser in the wars and in the economic crisis of 2008. The patriot act and related 9/11 fallout also set Americans up to accept authoritarianism in the name of security. We could not have been more ripe for the disruptive forces of the past decade.
  - spupe 5y ago
    But what about the rest of the world? Brazil was growing economically and lowering poverty in that decade, and still saw a far right wing government emerge through social media. France opposed the wars, didn't bailout anyone, and now there's almost a 50% chance they will vote for an extremist. I also grew up with this fact-based way of analyzing politics, but we ought to start thinking of it as a less rational and more emotional phenomenon if we want to stop it. Most of these movements, like Qanon or whatever, are completely delusional, like a cult. Whether the US had made good or bad decisions 15 years before it is irrelevant.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Bolsonaro's rise was partly due to the popularity of populist fellow-travelers like Trump, whose own rise (as per this thread) goes beyond social media. And surely the fall of Lula da Silva's government had something to do with the popularity of the right wing. Not to mention, their economic rise has since stalled. As for France, the current Le Pen's own father made it to the second round of presidential elections as early as 2002, theirs is a family that has been around for decades. And surely the War on Terror, the rise of the American intelligence surveillance apparatus, reaction to that apparatus via Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, the Libyan Civil War (which Sarkozy's government was very much in favor of intervening in), the Syrian Civil War, and the ensuing refugee crises also have something to do with the increasing popularity of European nativist sentiment. Finally, how quickly we forget the popular conspiratorial fringes of yesteryear. Before MAGA there was the Tea Party, before Qanon there was 9/11 Truthers, then anti-NWO Clinton-era militia movement, then so on back to the Birchers. The 2000s were no less a highly charged polarized environment as full of emotional phenomena, it had just as much fanaticism and tempers running hot, it just wasn't in realtime yet. There were plenty of message boards and blogs filled with vitriol back then. You want something more mainstream? The 2000s was the birth of FOX News as a conservative trumpet, and right-wing talk radio was huge as Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, and the late Rush Limbaugh were around to rile things up. It's highly reductive to boil down the causes of discontent to social media, i.e. "people being crazy on the internet".

by tharne 5y ago

throwntoday 5y ago

>We completely ignored the rise of China and any threat it posed Buddy we financed that shit

Apocryphon 5y ago

You're not wrong. If anything, much of the most glaring political and cultural fiascos of the past decade were just exaggerated echoes of the previous decade.

whatshisface 5y ago

Many of the things you list were not fully and uncontroversially understood to be bad decisions until the end of the 2010s, so by analogy let's wait and see what we're saying in 2030 before we declare the 2010s to be an improvement over the 2000s.

spupe 5y ago

That's not an appropriate comparison. You are talking about bad policies and political decisions, while Haidt is focusing on internal division and institutional erosion. The issue here is whether you will be free to see and declare the next war as a mistake, or whether the public space and political arena will be dominated by authoritarianism, fueled by the processes described in the article.

grumple 5y ago
I think OP does bring up an important subject. The 00's set the stage for the 10's. The events they mentioned caused a huge lack of trust in our institutions - government, private, and media. The average American was a loser in the wars and in the economic crisis of 2008. The patriot act and related 9/11 fallout also set Americans up to accept authoritarianism in the name of security. We could not have been more ripe for the disruptive forces of the past decade.
- spupe 5y ago
  But what about the rest of the world? Brazil was growing economically and lowering poverty in that decade, and still saw a far right wing government emerge through social media. France opposed the wars, didn't bailout anyone, and now there's almost a 50% chance they will vote for an extremist. I also grew up with this fact-based way of analyzing politics, but we ought to start thinking of it as a less rational and more emotional phenomenon if we want to stop it. Most of these movements, like Qanon or whatever, are completely delusional, like a cult. Whether the US had made good or bad decisions 15 years before it is irrelevant.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Bolsonaro's rise was partly due to the popularity of populist fellow-travelers like Trump, whose own rise (as per this thread) goes beyond social media. And surely the fall of Lula da Silva's government had something to do with the popularity of the right wing. Not to mention, their economic rise has since stalled. As for France, the current Le Pen's own father made it to the second round of presidential elections as early as 2002, theirs is a family that has been around for decades. And surely the War on Terror, the rise of the American intelligence surveillance apparatus, reaction to that apparatus via Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, the Libyan Civil War (which Sarkozy's government was very much in favor of intervening in), the Syrian Civil War, and the ensuing refugee crises also have something to do with the increasing popularity of European nativist sentiment. Finally, how quickly we forget the popular conspiratorial fringes of yesteryear. Before MAGA there was the Tea Party, before Qanon there was 9/11 Truthers, then anti-NWO Clinton-era militia movement, then so on back to the Birchers. The 2000s were no less a highly charged polarized environment as full of emotional phenomena, it had just as much fanaticism and tempers running hot, it just wasn't in realtime yet. There were plenty of message boards and blogs filled with vitriol back then. You want something more mainstream? The 2000s was the birth of FOX News as a conservative trumpet, and right-wing talk radio was huge as Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, and the late Rush Limbaugh were around to rile things up. It's highly reductive to boil down the causes of discontent to social media, i.e. "people being crazy on the internet".