[danaris]

Yes: and in this case, one of the big underlying causes is one of our two political parties—in particular its presidential candidate—aggressively spreading disinformation specifically in order to win him the presidency. (Just as they did the last two times he was trying.)

Another is....a systemic lack of education in critical thinking and how to tell mis- and disinformation from truth.

There is a decrease in people's trust in institutions, but my read on it is that it is an effect of these other phenomena, rather than a cause.

I know that HN tends to frown on partisan politics, but it's really not possible (or at least, not intellectually honest) to talk about the rise in misinformation, distrust, and conspiracy theories without talking about Trump and his role in it.

[gjsman-1000]

Oh whatever; presidents have been lying for decades now.

I remember a president whose error on "weapons of mass destruction" left my uncle nearly suicidal and killed countless Americans for nothing.

I remember a president whose DOJ wiretapped the Associated Press in 2012.

I remember a president who allowed his own Director of National Intelligence to lie to Congress about the NSA's activities before Snowden.

I can go on.

[tzs]

Are you suggesting that quality and quantity of lies does not matter?

[danaris]

Sure, politicians lie. Presidents are definitionally politicians, so they lie sometimes too.

But Donald Trump's lies are orders of magnitude more frequent and worse than any previous president, and frankly anyone trying to dispute that at this point is clearly using motivated reasoning.

[mindcrime]

I know that HN tends to frown on partisan politics, but it's really not possible (or at least, not intellectually honest) to talk about the rise in misinformation, distrust, and conspiracy theories without talking about Trump and his role in it.

I don't know how to quantify the extent to which I despise Donald Trump. Suffice it to say that it's "off the scale". And yet, while I agree with you in general, to some extent I think Trumpism is the symptom and not the disease itself. I think there's something deeper and older at play, something that enables Trump and his brand of bullshit to prosper. I don't pretend to understand exactly what it is.. maybe it's as simple as saying "education". Maybe not.

What I have been saying, which is admittedly a bit hand-wavy at the moment, is that "our culture is sick". We don't cherish, promote, and prioritize the right things IMO. We reward the wrong behaviors and - I believe - are somehow incentivizing the whole "rejection of science/math/logic/reason and embrace of ignorance" thing.

[danaris]

I think you are right, but only to a certain extent.

Yes, Trump brought out something that was already there, lying dormant. But without Trump, it would mostly have stayed dormant.

Trump's primary victory in 2016 was a massive fluke, primarily (from what I saw) enabled by a combination of the horribly fractured GOP field, with the party establishment unable to rally behind a single candidate until it was already too late, a bunch of people who thought it was funny and voted for Trump for the lulz, and a large number of people who were frustrated by the past few years. That latter group I think came in two basic flavors: the ones who were frustrated because we had a black president, and the ones who were frustrated because the GOP Congress was stopping everything he tried to do (but who didn't fully grasp that this was entirely the GOP's fault). I genuinely believe that had the circumstances been just a little bit different in any number of ways, Trump would never even have made it past the first primary.

Once he was in the position of being a major party presidential candidate, it amplified his voice and that voice gave permission for all the bigots and fascists in America and abroad to show themselves and join their power together.

That said, I think there is a sickness in our culture, and I think its current prominence can largely be traced to Reagan, through several other intermediaries.

What we don't cherish, promote, and prioritize is kindness and compassion for our fellow human beings—all of them.

[mindcrime]

Yep. I think we are generally in agreement. I just wish I knew a simple answer - or any answer - for fixing the "whatever it is" that's infecting our culture/society these days.

[danaris]

Unfortunately, I'm very sure that there is no one simple answer—it's so many interlocking things: education spending, voting rights, voting reform (eg, ranked-choice), more spending on basic needs...

On the bright side, this also means that improvement in any of them also helps, even if only a little bit, to pull the whole tangle further up.