4 ms·

It's interesting that democracy is so incredibly fragile. All it takes is for a minor portion of the voters to be given a bunch of lies that increase their own

It's interesting that democracy is so incredibly fragile. All it takes is for a minor portion of the voters to be given a bunch of lies that increase their own feelings of superiority and boom, there goes your decades long work. Frightening too.

verdverm 6mo ago
I think the fragility is more with the people in charge, who have long abided by norms and reasonable interpretations. The current Trump admin uses every lever and argument to abuse the laws, flat out making things up so they can create a court case so they can do the thing until it is over turned.
- jacquesm 6mo ago
  That's another attack vector to them: the latency of the courts is such that you can essentially stall and get away with something for years. Companies do the same thing.
jfengel 6mo ago
It took a long, concerted campaign to build up to this. This is a project that began in the late 80s, with roots even further back than that. It was more than just "a bunch of lies", but an entire parallel media ecosystem. Fox News is the most visible part of it, but there are also newspapers, local TV channels, radio, and eventually their own social network. They spent the 60s and 70s building up the network of evangelical preachers. In addition, they've been systematically destroying other sources: the Washington Post, Twitter, NPR. When they cannot destroy it, they devote a constant barrage of pressure on their other media to discredit it. Plus guest appearances from a shadowy network of Russian trolls. I think it's a relatively small influence, but it has been a persistent goad in that direction. There was a careful political plan to take over the majority of state governments and the Supreme Court. Each of those led to more ability to control the narrative and the outcome of elections. This wasn't minor and it wasn't an accident. It wasn't exactly centrally planned, but a lot of very rich people put a lot of money in the same direction, and this is the result.

verdverm 6mo ago

I think the fragility is more with the people in charge, who have long abided by norms and reasonable interpretations. The current Trump admin uses every lever and argument to abuse the laws, flat out making things up so they can create a court case so they can do the thing until it is over turned.

jacquesm 6mo ago
That's another attack vector to them: the latency of the courts is such that you can essentially stall and get away with something for years. Companies do the same thing.

jfengel 6mo ago

It took a long, concerted campaign to build up to this. This is a project that began in the late 80s, with roots even further back than that. It was more than just "a bunch of lies", but an entire parallel media ecosystem. Fox News is the most visible part of it, but there are also newspapers, local TV channels, radio, and eventually their own social network. They spent the 60s and 70s building up the network of evangelical preachers. In addition, they've been systematically destroying other sources: the Washington Post, Twitter, NPR. When they cannot destroy it, they devote a constant barrage of pressure on their other media to discredit it. Plus guest appearances from a shadowy network of Russian trolls. I think it's a relatively small influence, but it has been a persistent goad in that direction. There was a careful political plan to take over the majority of state governments and the Supreme Court. Each of those led to more ability to control the narrative and the outcome of elections. This wasn't minor and it wasn't an accident. It wasn't exactly centrally planned, but a lot of very rich people put a lot of money in the same direction, and this is the result.