This stood out to me:
The poll comes also as Republicans hold a slight partisan edge over Democrats, which shows that 45% of Americans are Republican or lean-Republican, while 42% are Democrat or lean-Democratic, per Gallup.
That’s a change from previous years, including in 2022, when an equal number of Americans said they consider themself a Republican or a Democrat.
Democrats held a partisan edge over Republicans in 2020, 2018 and 2016, per the average of Gallup party affiliation polls from those years.
I’ve been feeling like I’ve been living in a different reality for almost a decade at this point. The world just doesn’t make fucking sense at all.
The internet and access to information immediately has really been a wild ride.
In the beginning it was amazing though…lol
Seems like the Information Age is Fermi’s Great Filter. Goodbye cruel world.
that seems rather unlikely, even if it should prove something humans are fatally unsuited to (which Im not really convinced of yet, because a lot of the problems of the information age are not really new, there is plenty of precedent for leaders that make foolish decisions to nevertheless inspire large followings and use that to break political norms in the system they exist in for example, or for harmful rumors and movements to spread false medical advice or hate towards particular groups of people, before the information age). In order for something to be the great filter, it implies that that thing has to be the death of (or at least permanently halt the advancement of) close to every species that reaches it. In other words, it isnt enough for humans to struggle with it, it has to be something for which a species evolving that can survive it is essentially inconceivable. Given how different the psychology among even different animals on earth can appear to be, and that the problems caused by the information age will be greatly impacted by the psychological quirks of the civilization experiencing it, that strikes me as unlikely. It also has to actually drive the species that reaches it to extinction, or at least completely stop their advancement. Given that new technology continues to be developed, some of it surprisingly quickly and a lot of it helped by the fruits of the information age, the latter seems unlikely, so for it to be the great filter, it would need to actually cause extinction basically 100% of the time, and even for humans, Im not sure how it would do that (while enabling things like climate change denial and anti-vaccine movements to spread causes us problems, that probably isnt enough per se, even a disaster that made three quarters of the planet literally deadly to exist in and a plague that wiped out half the population would be insufficient to make something a great filter, for example, if that species survives in what marginally livable area remains to rebuild their numbers and continue to advance their civilization. It has to kill everyone with no chance for any group to find any means to survive it)
What a crazy irony. Here we were thinking we had to survive the nuclear age and get to the point where we were all connected and well-informed. But it turns out the nukes led to an unprecedented period of peace and global information access and communication may destroy us all.
I think it’s pretty unreal that everything that has happened in the wake of the 2020 election and January 6th and Roe and so much more has apparently only cemented people in their partisanship. Absolutely wild.
My theory is that many westerners in our current era have effectively replaced traditional religion with shallow political ideology.
So instead of going to church so they can be surrounded by fellow believers and hear a sermon telling them that their faith is the one true way and that every evil is rightly blamed on the loathsome unbelievers and heretics, they go online so they can be surrounded by fellow believers and hear a sermon telling them that their faith is the one true way and that every evil is rightly blamed on the loathsome unbelievers and heretics.
Seriously.
My theory is that many westerners in our current era have effectively replaced traditional religion with shallow political ideology.
I don’t really think traditional religion has been replaced by political ideology per se. But I do think religion in the US has formed a symbiotic relationship with politics.
If you go to an evangelical church service in many areas, it is pretty much nothing but a Republican political meeting. In some churches, you’re not even welcome if you’re a Democrat.
I believe this too and I don’t even think it’s controversial, I think it’s fairly mainstream tbh.
Look at that stupid conservative congresswoman who got up in front of a bunch of conservatives at a “prayer breakfast” and said, totally casually, she only made it on time because she turned her boyfriend’s request for a quickie down.
These people aren’t religious, they don’t even know what it means to be religious.
Seems like past a certain point people will just keep doubling down because turning back would be admitting that you’ve been a fool.
What is crazy about American politics is that “one side” is not just wrong or misguided, but very wrong, demonstrably so. So very wrong that it is insane from an outsider pespective to try to imagine by what wild loops of logic you could end up so very wrong considering that we’re all supposed to be watching the same movie. You can point at basically anything, on any issue at random, and try to reverse engineer the Republican stance on an issue, and you will face absolutely paper thin, weak arguments, weak premises, unverifiable claims every time, about everything, and in a very unmistakable way that the line of reasoning is, again, not just a bit wrong, but very wrong.
I knew a lot of people weren’t very good at that abstract thinking stuff, making deliberate assumptions and at identifying signal from noise, but frankly, I did not expect almost half of the human race to be absolute morons when it comes to critical thinking. Good luck everyone.
Same, the world just seems to be getting more “confusing” and “hectic”, not sure if it’s just that as we get older and more “aware” we start to notice the things that don’t seem to make sense around us.
I try to think each generation before me had the same feeling, like the world is getting smaller and faster. And everyone is just trying to get by without regard for the people around them or future generations.
Yup. Before the Trump cult, I never truly understood how Hitler could have come to power. Now I totally get it.
Trump’s followers have stayed loyal to him through every deplorable moment: the pussy grabbing, mocking the disabled, the Muslim ban, kidnapping children at the border, collusion with Russia, extorting Ukraine, hush money to a porn star, stealing from charity, lying about an election, staging an insurrection, stealing classified documents, civil liability for rape … Not to mention lying about covid, and botching the covid response and killing hundreds of thousands who could have lived, all while utterly destroying the economy.
