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Lawrence William Baum's avatar

For the question as to why, after 2012, there was an outpouring of wokeness and identity politics, I think decline of religion might be a factor, but that's been happening gradually over a long time, so the timing doesn't quite fit for it to be the key reason. I think the timing supports the rise of smart phones, which became widespread just about at that time. Smart phones gave us constant access to social media, which let us indulge our human nature to form groups.

Before, at least from the rise of radio (and maybe newspapers before that) and then TV, media was most profitable as broadcasting from a few networks, which tended to homogenize and average our views. I remember that decades ago, when there were only a few TV networks, the networks aimed not only news but also entertainment to appeal to the average tastes of the bulk of the audience to keep advertisers happy, even if that meant showing similar shows at similar times on all the networks. As communication technology changed to allow us to choose which entertainment, news, and even individuals to watch, we diverged, with resultant good effects (freedom to enjoy what suits us and learn whatever we want) and bad effects (social fragmentation and tribalism).

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Trevor Ridgway's avatar

MATT JOHNSON SAYS : "And it’s a well-established psychological principle that people are less concerned about their absolute level of well-being than their well-being relative to their neighbors. If you see your neighbor has a bigger house or bigger boat, you feel like you’ve been cheated. And this is also the language that Donald Trump uses. It’s very zero-sum, and he traffics in this idea that everything is horrible."

I AGREE WITH WHAT POTUS TRUMP SAYS............AND WITH THE REASON HE SAYS IT IS HORRIBLE HE IS SHEETING-HOME THE BLAME FOR IT TO THE "DEMOCRATS" [ Who are actually FASCISTS] !

HE IS TRUTHFULLY STATING THE SITUATION AS HE SEES IT , AND HE WANTS TO CORRECT IT !

NOW in a politician THAT IS A RARE TRAIT and it's great thing that he is open and honest !

.....................NOW THAT'S POLITICAL PROGRESS !

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