My opinion, to be taken with a grain of salt: Social fragmentation in the USA -along political lines, Trumpism, Qanon, Covid response, social media disinforma

My opinion, to be taken with a grain of salt: Social fragmentation in the USA -along political lines, Trumpism, Qanon, Covid response, social media disinformation campaigns - has reached a point where it is no longer only extremists that think a civil war is becoming possible.[1] There is always some percentage of the population that engages in conspiracism, but in 2020s the kinds of conspiracism we see are are spreading more rapidly and are nearly entirely politically charged- ie along partisan lines, and enough people are angry that it has already resulted in an actual attempted coup. If this conspiracism were to evolve more towards less partisan areas (UFOs/aliens/ghosts/near-death-experiences), then the risk of a coup goes down. Facilitating this transition in conspiracist focus could be one of the lowest cost & highest payoff "social programs" ever undertaken by the intelligence services. Attempts by intelligence services at intentionally steering the culture towards more acceptible, less politically charged subject matter are not new, and there have been accusations[2] that Abstract Expressionism was intentionally promoted by the CIA to undermine more leftist and political art movements. If the CIA nurtures propaganda campaigns in foreign countries, we can imagine them looking at the near-coup of January 6th and asking some hard questions about whether propaganda campaigns would be far more benefit if redirected to focus on the US domestic citizen. [1] A journalist who has spent the last few years researching this widening social fracturing is Jeff Sharlet, whose forthcoming book is called "The Undertow: Scenes from a slow civil war" [2] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...