we can not look at Trump as a single element, its part of a larger ecosystem, across the globe, propelled by heavy polarization, digital illiteracy and echo chambers.
Here's an ignorant statement I truly believe in: social networks have ruined the world. They will be our downfall in fact. What we're seeing now is just the beginning.
They're by far the scariest product of the wonderful, world-changing invention called the Internet.
I am in agreement. The web was envisioned as a utopian place where information could flow freely, watering humanity to grow enlightened.
But it turned out that on the web, misinformation is cheaper to produce than true information, individuals—no matter how independently-minded—are no match for corporate and state actors that have vastly more resources and motivation to manipulate, and tribal identity is more powerful than abstract ideals.
I don't think social networks are "evil" because of malice. They're evil because of our flaws as human beings. Of our biases. Social networks just amplify and exploit the way we think so mostly negative thoughts and emotions get amplified in an ever-expanding echo chamber [1] We get angrier, more polarised, more isolated in our tribe and cliques. If there has ever been an instrument of the Devil himself to sow discord on this planet, this is it.
Meh, there are definitely problems that exist in 50+% of the population. To claim otherwise is either to ignore history or to claim that we in the modern day have broken free of the trend. Either is more stupid and unhelpful than recognizing that the trend existed and continued to exist. Was it not a problem when the majority of the population was illiterate, or in the 1920’s when the majority of the population got their information from news sources that were wholesale fabrications?
Besides, Trump voters appear to constitute something like 22% of the US population. That’s less than half of 50%.
And the "right" calls everyone a socialist. In particular, the Trump campaign on Latinos in Florida almost universally echoed the message of "Biden == Socialism" for the past few weeks.
