President Biden will not take a cognitive test as part of his upcoming physical exam, the White House confirmed Monday. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that Biden's physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, does not believe a cognitive test is necessary.
Glad to help. I can very much relate to the frustration you’re feeling. I live in Canada, and a lot of the same dynamics are happening here as well. Each and every year things get worse, and there’s no clear path to change. What I’ve come to realize is that meaningful change takes time. It’s not something that will happen as a result of a one time action like winning an election and putting your guy in charge. It’s a long process that requires long term commitment. People in US are just entering the stage where they’re starting to become politically aware and to ask questions about why things are the way they are. It’s going to take time for people to develop solid understanding of the issues and to learn to work together towards solving them.
It’s a shame. I’ve always thought of canada as a sort-of bastion on this continent against america’s peculiar brand of bipolar insanity. To watch so many of your people fall into the throes of exported trumpism is truly saddening, though I guess the fact that it did take root means the ground was already prepared. You have my empathy.
Thanks, and you’re absolutely right that right wing populism is taking root because there is fertile ground for it. In my view, the question of why people are becoming increasingly enamoured with these ideas is the one that really needs to be asked more. People like Trump have always been around, so what factors are enabling these opportunists today that didn’t exist previously. The systemic pressures leading us where we are today are the real problem that needs to be addressed.
I have a strong intuition that the internet and its incentives and pervasiveness accounts for a large majority of these factors. I don’t know how to evaluate that intuition for truth value, to be honest. Part of the problem is for any given question you look for an answer on the internet, you can find a thousand different answers, and the one you’re most likely to find is the one you already believe (fuck you google). Part of it is regulatory capture- there are practically only restrictions on what the end user of internet services can do, but no real restrictions on ISPs and telecom and data services etc. Part of it is the NSA spying not just on its own sitizens which would be unconscionable by itself, but also the entire rest of the world’s citizens, which is abhorrent and terrifying. Part of it is self-styled “social” media, which is generally understood to mean “advertisment platforms with token incentives to drive users to view advertisements” leading to the mass adoption of lowest common denominator media, entertainment, news. Part of it is increasing incentives to ratchet up viewer engagement, and the easiest way to do that is to make them angry. Put it all together and you find people in echo chambers being fed unregulated corporate propaganda not in their interests, being spied on and potentially reported for non-conforming thought, arguing angrily with people they’ve never met about issues they don’t, couldn’t possibly, fully understand. On both sides. There’s no doubt in my mind that you and I both fall into this trap, but can’t see the forest for the trees.
I love the idea of the internet, and fediverse seems like the perfect incarnation of that ideal. In practice, the internet has mostly been a disaster in my opinion, and given enough time I suspect it will be competing with the industrial revolution for “the worst thing humanity ever achieved.”
I’d actually argue the internet has been a net positive overall because it counters a lot of the control the oligarchs have over the media. For example, if Israel was conducting the genocide before the days of the internet we simply wouldn’t know about it. And we’ve had the internet for a long time now, so access to things like social media and different views doesn’t really explain why particular views become more popular than others.
In my opinion, the main driver of discontent is the deteriorating economic situation. We have major crashes roughly once a decade, and each time a crash happens we see a massive wealth transfer to the top occur. This happened during dot-com bubble, then in 2008, and now with the pandemic. Each time the rich got bailed out while the public was left out to dry. People end up being pushed further and further to the margins, and they have less and less of ability to absorb the next crash that comes. Many people are losing whatever savings they had, and have no hope of retirement. Younger people see little opportunity for themselves, while becoming increasingly pessimistic about the future and problems like the environment.
All of this is pushing people out of the mainstream because they see that the system is not working in their interest. Once people leave the liberal mainstream they become open to different ideas. These come either from the right or the left, and because the left has been effectively gutted in the west, the right is the main source of alternative ideas.
Though I would definitely argue that the internet contributed to, eg, amazon and dotcom bubble, and that it has tended to solidify oligarchic control of information rather than the reverse, I think I have to concede that overall independent economic factors play a larger role.
Right, consolidation of the internet under a handful of large companies has been a big concern. Notably, that’s precisely why stuff like the fediverse is so important. Decentralized social media that’s run by regular people is precisely how the internet was meant to function. I’m optimistic that things are looking up in that regard. Platforms like Mastodon and Lemmy are still niche, but they’re starting to gain momentum and they show a path forward. It’s encouraging to see that people are actively tackling the problem and we have tangible results to show now. The fact that we’re having this discussion here as opposed to a closed platforms like Reddit is a huge success.
I could imagine trying to have this conversation on reddit- but I’d prefer not to. I’d be whacking down a hundred trolls and a dozen bots for each genuine reply.
Lemmy is starting to feel like reddit back before it was evil. I’m already anxious for its enshittification.
That’s the beauty of open source platforms, the dynamics are very different. With a commercial company you’re stuck with whatever the company decides, and that’s what drives enshittification. Companies ultimately exist to make money for the owners and the shareholders. The users aren’t actual stakeholders on these platforms in any meaningful sense.
On the other hand, open platforms are developed by regular people because they want to have publicly owned social spaces. Even when a project starts going in a bad direction then anybody can fork the code and take the project in a different direction, and anybody can run a server the way they like.
I wrote an article on the subject a little while back, talking about these dynamics in more detail https://justiceinternationale.com/articles/2020-12-02-we-must-own-our-tools/