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- Location
- Dick’s Drive-In
“Flood the zone with shit”: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy
The impeachment trial didn’t change any minds. Here’s why.On Wednesday, the Senate voted to of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
Despite all the incontrovertible facts at the center of this story, it was always inevitable that this process would change very few minds. No matter how clear a case the Democrats made, it was always highly likely that no single version of the truth was ever going to be accepted.
This fact underscores a serious problem for our democratic culture. No amount of evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way or the other. We can attribute some of this to rank partisanship — some people simply refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts about their own side.
But there’s another, equally vexing problem. We live in a media ecosystem that overwhelms people with information. Some of that information is accurate, some of it is bogus, and much of it is intentionally misleading. The result is a polity that has increasingly given up on finding out the truth. As put it in a New York Times piece, “people are numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact.” This is partly why an earth-shattering historical event like a president’s impeachment did very little to move public opinion.
The core challenge we’re facing today is information saturation and a hackable media system. If you follow politics at all, you know how exhausting the environment is. The sheer volume of content, the dizzying number of narratives and counternarratives, and the pace of the news cycle are too much for anyone to process.
One response to this situation is to walk away and tune everything out. After all, it takes real effort to comb through the bullshit, and most people have busy lives and limited bandwidth. Another reaction is to retreat into tribal allegiances. There’s Team Liberal and Team Conservative, and pretty much everyone knows which side they’re on. So you stick to the places that feed you the information you most want to hear.
TLDR, The GOP is baffled by it's own bullshit.
