| I think one of the fundamental challenges is that a lot (maybe even most) of people do not genuinely want to be informed. For various reasons. A practical one is that it costs time and effort. In the age of information overload, a divisive issue is one of many seen on a given day. People just want to slap a binary conclusion on it, good or bad, and move on. If you do inform yourself, there's little to no reward for it. Online reasonable debate is impossible in particular in the places where divisive issues are discussed the most: Twitter. It's ultra fast, outrage-driven, which means extremists always win, and any effort put in by reasonable people is in vain. I think that kind of gets to the heart of the matter: there's no incentive or reward for being well informed in the aspects of society where it counts: media and culture, and political representation. Even if you inform yourself better on a divisive issue, and rationally change your mind, you're unlikely to switch camps, politically speaking. You may be a moderate progressive and are just going to have to accept that you share the room with the far-left, same for the right wing. In reality, time and time again surveys show that Americans are far more reasonable and united than the cultural landscape suggests. Not only are far-left and far-right gross misrepresentations of political support, the very idea of sorting people into left, right, good, bad is a crime against humanity. I don't know why or how the hijacking of media can be reversed, but ultimately it likely is a case of "follow the money". Who benefits? In any case, any progress is good progress and you're asking the correct (hard) questions. |