by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I really struggle with what, exactly, is the cause of the clusterfuck that is currently American politics. What is the exact source of how fucked up everything is? One of my more conservative relatives, whenever politics comes up, wants to talk about the influence of social media instead of the fact that the MAGA New Right is so extreme that we’re on the cusp of either a civil war or the establishment of an autocracy.
And, yet, the idea that social media — in essence, technology — is why the two sides alternately don’t understand or want to destroy each other has some merit. Is it possible that the rise of social media is, unto itself, going to be the ultimate demise of the United States?
Twitter and Facebook so allow extreme minority views on either side the ability to set the agenda at any particular moment that when we either fall to autocracy or have a civil war that our current “soft singularity” might be the reason?
This is a really difficult thing to parse. If you try to figure out what, specifically, has us in this horrific political situation, it seems as though there are some serious macro trends that are all coming a head at the same time. Social media has nothing to do with it, it just establishes the context, the parameters of our ultimate downfall.
Because one thing is clear — the United States is extremely unstable and the moment the Republicans take Congress in January 2023, an already bad situation is going to grow far, far worse. The reason why I say this is, barring something no one can expect or predict, Donald Trump is going to run and win in 2024. He could even run and win outright in 2024 without the need to cheat, even though he obviously will do so anyway.
And I freely admit that something could happen and we punt the problems I keep harping about down the road another election cycle. But we’re not going to fix them without Something Bad happening. Something really bad. You can’t have the Republican Party be as hysterical and bad faith as it currently is without something fucked up happening sooner rather than later.
So, the origins of America’s impeding downfall (or Third Republic if all goes well) has nothing to do with social media. All social media does is made a bad situation worse and maybe move faster than it might otherwise.
In a sense, America’s Second Civil War has already begun, at least in the minds of fucking the MAGA New Right. That’s all a lot of them fucking talk about! But I’m not prepared to lay our current crisis at the feat social media. Too many other things are going on at the same time for that to happen.
Anyway. Like I keep saying — we’re fucked. Enjoy this moment of living in a stable Western democracy as long as you can. It’s not going to last much longer.
God speed.
