It is common now to gather online with those who think as you do. Social media is said to be responsible for this extreme polarisation of views. Here, you can hang out with those who will reinforce your worldview by adding their own frisson of outrage, even if that view is that the world is flat. Don’t @ me, by the way, because I will block you. That is my prerogative. This mode of being has moved from online to the real world: many people behave as though they can block their fellow citizens.
Trump says racist things, yet parts of the media are too cowardly to call them racist. Johnson lies, yet his mendacity is compared to clowning. Liberals may despair – to each other – but these are the same liberals who discuss the “white working class” and won’t see the working class as multi-ethnic; they are the same liberals who didn’t see Brexit coming, the same liberals who promised to leave Westminster more but never do. So, forgive me if I don’t pay them much attention, for I know I am part of that bubble... the bubble machine creates a politics of purity...those who blather on about being “woke” do so in ever smaller circles. Echo chambers thrive on constant denunciation of those with impure thoughts...Political purity has lead to an unholy mess. One tiny prick – our soon-to-be prime minister – will burst the biggest bubble of all.
A hint of some social issues too:
[A report has found that] “white, highly educated people are relatively isolated from political diversity”. The most politically intolerant area in the US appeared to be Suffolk county in Massachusetts, which includes Boston: urban, educated, with few “cross-cutting relationships”.
Then a bit of backsliding as the Owl wanders off for a bit, and she rescues the piece for Guran readers:
This is the lesson of Brexit, which has brought about a maniacal state of affairs in which anecdotes have replaced data and dishonesty is not merely tolerated but applauded.Only the old paper quality press can be guranteed to offer data and honesty.
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