| He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole I voted for Obama in previous elections. But I also remember how he'd said denigrating things about people who "cling to guns or religion." I suspect people voted for Trump because they thought he didn't put on one face for one public and put on another one for a different public. (Which I doubt is the reality.) Our media "elites" aren't elites anymore, and they're very out of touch with walk of life lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Denigration and painting with a broad brush are now accepted as the "reality" of politics, the news media, and social media. The "savvy" line to to accept and skirt such things. This is done by both the right and the left. I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte Fox News made various comparisons of Obama to Hitler. In a book from the 90's, Eric Drexler proposed that a networked world would save society and make it easier to disseminate the truth. In 2016, one finds that instead the internet has given the loudest voices to the coarsest, most hateful, and stupidest among us. (And by this, I don't mean Trump, but rather online activists on both the right and left.) |
But I'm a more of an optimist regarding the Internet and the availability of platforms to share information and express views.
While it is certainly true that some of the loudest voices are indeed the most hateful (Comments on HRC's and DJT's Twitter posts were unbelievable vicious) I also see that there is organically dissent organising on all kinds of issues which we didn't have to such a degree in the pre Internet era.
Of course dissenters also existed before the Internet, but it was much harder to reach an audience. And not all dissent is just hateful and stupid, a lot is legitimate.