Blurts & Spasms

First, what are some of the chief symptoms and causes of our totally fucked future…?  Let’s begin with the U.S. specifically:

1. According to the most recent Presidential approval polls, some 40% of the U.S. voting population appears to be hopelessly stupefied by either blind loyalty or willfully ignorant and delusional thinking – as evidenced by an unshakeable devotion to bloviating con-artists in government and media, and to policies that directly amplify their own suffering, destroy democracy by promoting an increasingly totalitarian flavor of fascism, and endanger the human species and indeed most life on Earth.
   
    
2. A majority of Americans also seem deeply committed – if not behaviorally addicted – to a form of commercialistic crony capitalism that concentrates wealth and power in the upper 1-10%, and impoverishes, oppresses, and even threatens the lives of everyone else. In support of this addiction, a particularly pathological, toxic, and cruel style of business leadership has continued to dominate several American industries, leaders who harmonize overwhelming largesse for shareholders with callous disregard for workers and customers. Just take a look at corporate profits vs. nominal wages in the adjacent chart as proof (from Trickle Down Economics).
    
3. As a consequence of these first two conditions, the most ruthless forms of profit-seeking have created a runaway train of economic exploitation, instability, and risk in the U.S. The results are unsustainable, caustic, often inflationary balloons across multiple sectors, including:
   1. Soaring healthcare costs with poor patient outcomes relative to other peer economies;
   2. A social media ecosystem that addicts its users, isolates them from real relationship and community, ideologically radicalizes and polarizes them, and undermines their mental health and self-esteem;
   3. Overinvestments in harmful AI technology that is replacing jobs across many industries, supercharging military conflicts, amplifying the agency and reach of criminals, terrorist groups, and hostile state actors, and undermining human agency, relationships, and well-being;
   4. Energy policies that are amplifying the climate crisis beyond recoverable tipping points through increasing overall demand and reliance on fossil fuels; and
   5. A financialized economy built on leveraged speculation that will, of necessity, crash and burn to the detriment of everyone in society.
4. As everything in our globally interdependent world becomes more and more complex, U.S. citizens, consumers, and political leaders have become less and less informed, less thoughtful in their deliberations, and more and more entitled in their attitudes and expectations at the same time. The consequence of this self-magnifying trend is an overconfident but perpetually angry and dissatisfied idiocracy that executes increasingly reckless, counterfactual, and counterproductive decisions – while ignoring or dismissing negative outcomes. There could be no better examples of this than the woefully incompetent clown car leadership in the second Trump administration on the one hand, and the increasing abandonment of proven science (efficacy of childhood vaccinations and face masks, legitimacy of climate science and evidence-based solutions, rejection of factual current and historical data, skepticism of subject matter experts, etc.) across the political spectrum’s grass roots on the other.
5. Increasingly extreme ideological polarization and motivation have infected modern beliefs, discourse, media, and politics with excessive hate and rage, disallowing meaningful dialogue and solution synthesis, and exacerbating political violence.

Expanding to a global focus, we also have these well-established trends:

1. Increasing risk of nuclear catastrophe. In January, 2025, the atomic scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” was set to 89 seconds to midnight – the highest risk ever estimated. With Iran’s fissile refinement still underway and the government destabilized by internal and external pressures, Russia’s suffering catastrophic casualties and oil revenue losses in its war with Ukraine, and North Korea and China receiving a green light from the Trump administration that invading other countries for natural resources is completely acceptable, I suspect we’re now even closer to midnight.
2. Erosion or elimination of liberal democracy around the world, often by nationalist, xenophobic autocracies, resulting in the destabilization of political economies and impoverishment and oppression of local populations.
3. A feverish, caution-to-the-wind race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), without any substantive safety guardrails, that will not only rapidly replace all human cognitive labor, but presents the real possibility of catastrophic outcomes – including existential threats to humanity itself.
4. A steady march past multiple planetary boundaries into conditions of highest risk (see adjacent 2025 chart), resulting in irreversible ecological damage, public health crises, resource scarcity and conflicts, ballooning socio-economic inequality, and erosion of human welfare on a global scale.

 

An argument can certainly be made that humans have navigated both natural calamities and crises of their own making in the past. So…what’s different now?

Mainly we’ve exceeded the tipping point in too many areas at once, inviting a cascading polycrisis that amplifies adverse effects. In other words, we’re coming up against the outward-most boundaries that human civilization and Earth’s current ecosystems can survive. And those boundaries are becoming increasingly thin, fragile, and brittle. Allow me to illustrate….

Imagine for a moment if just one or two of the following factors manifest over the course of the next two years. For the purposes of this discussion, the likelihood of each of these events has a widely varying probability, but they are all conceivable, plausible, and increasingly predictable within a near-future timeframe.

1. Stagflation. The U.S. economy enters a full-blown stagflation recession concurrent with a collapsing dollar, resulting in an enduring period of extreme economic uncertainty and hardship in the U.S., and major political and economic realignments around the globe.
2. Slowing AMOC. The Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which has been weakening since at least 2015 as a consequence of human-driven climate change, exhibits accelerating slowing. This disrupts the availability of fish stocks around the globe, and triggers more extreme and destructive weather patterns in the Northern hemisphere. A slowing AMOC's disruption of economic, social, political, and existential security around the globe is inestimable, but almost certainly severe. 
3. Narrow AI risks. Bad actors successfully utilize narrow AI agents perfected for cyberattacks to take down supply chains, banking systems, energy grids, transportation systems, communication networks, and the Internet itself. Alternatively, bad actors use narrow AI to engineer another pandemic virus, this time much worse than COVID, and release it into the wild. Either of these scenarios results in widespread panic, civil unrest, government destabilization, violent conflicts over remaining resources, and potential collapse of civil societies and economies around the globe.
4. AGI risks. The race to Artificial General Intelligence is won, but only temporarily. Shortly thereafter, AGI proliferates the globe in competing camps, with some projects successfully aligned with human objectives and safety, and others not. The resulting multi-agent failures completely reshape the world economy and centers of power, with devastating short-term consequences for a majority of the world’s population as all fundamental technologies, systems, and structures are reconfigured, replaced, or realigned.
5. Russia. A deranged and desperate Vladimir Putin increasingly finds himself in an economic, military, and political corner. After four years of massive causalities and economic losses due to his war on Ukraine, he is running out of willing soldiers – along with the money to pay them – and his weapons and oil production capacity is likewise crippled. And yet he still tests Ukrainian and European resolve with past antics like incursions into NATO airspace, deployment of more hypersonic Oreshnik missiles in Belarus which are capable of targeting European cities, and nonstop attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian populations. In the face of humiliating losses and ceding more occupied territory in Ukraine, a panicking and delusional Putin then escalates his lust for destruction and power on multiple fronts at home and abroad.
6. Trump. The Trump administration continues to implement disastrously reckless and ill-informed (as well as notably fascist and racist) economic, international, and domestic policies, which in turn lead to economic hardship and civil unrest across the country and instability around the globe, thereby introducing political peril for Republicans at every level of government. Then, in anticipation of losing the U.S. Congress to Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, Trump invents a reason to implement martial law against “the enemy within” in all democratically run regions, specifically to disrupt elections and prevent yet another impeachment – this time one more likely to result in a Senate conviction. This destabilizes the entire country and its relationships with the rest of the world, amplifying chaos, suffering, and uncertainty at every level of society in the U.S. and abroad.

Okay. So if we’re really and truly fucked, what can we do about it…?

Historically, there have been a few different options that have succeeded for civilian populations in such dire situations. Here’s a quick rundown of some proven choices, together with some more experimental ideas:

1. Nonviolent resistance. This actually works surprisingly well, even when dealing with oppressive, authoritarian regimes. Here is a link to an excellent list of 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.

2. Multipronged sociopolitical activism. I've assembled my favorite accumulation of techniques to achieve political and economic evolution. They range from grass-roots populism to exposing misinformation to promoting legislation to disrupting the status quo…a total of eleven prongs of revolutionary activism. You can read the list at https://level-7.org/Action/.
3. Replacing the Trump administration via joint impeachment prior to 2028. If a sufficient majority of progressive Democrats and Independents are elected to both houses of Congress in the 2026 midterms, and enough sufficiently brave Republicans in Congress fulfill their oath to the U.S. Constitution, we can initiate a trial and convict Donald Trump and J.D. Vance under joint impeachment proceedings. Then a new, more progressive Democratic majority House Speaker can become acting POTUS until the 2028 Presidential election.
4. Republican lobbying of Congress. There is a large constituency of responsible, thoughtful, and patriotic conservatives in the U.S. who could, if they chose to break with their MAGA brothers and sisters, place significant pressure on their representatives in Washington D.C. to change the fascist course of our country and rein in the Trump administration. There is also some percentage of MAGA who, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are feeling increasingly unconformable with Trump’s policies, and could also contribute to Congress recovering the oversight responsibilities it has advocated. The most recent bipartisan efforts to push back on Trump’s tyranny indicate this trend has begun – but is there courage and determination of more Republicans to follow through?
5. Violent protest and revolution. This is an unfortunate default throughout human history, but it can often result in the installation of just another violent and oppressive government to replace the old one. Also, it’s now pretty clear that the Trump administration routinely invents civilian violence, and would benefit from more of it – likely to justify an expansion of militarized crackdown as we approach the 2026 midterms. Just look at how ICE agents are being deployed if you have any doubts. So violent protest and revolution is not an ideal option in the short or long run. It is better to exemplify the outcome we want to see in the world as an inherent part of our activism (see options #1, #2, #3, and #4).
6. Thoughtful media consumption. To participate effectively in politics and socio-economic activism, we must be well-informed. This can be a challenge in an algorithm-driven world of media that aims to enrage and addict us even as it extracts profit from that compulsive engagement. But it is possible to be more thoughtful. First, it is helpful to cultivate a starting point of credible news and information sources, and to appreciate the agendas and techniques at work in modern disinformation campaigns. I have assembled resources specific to Russian and far-right propaganda – and our means of inoculation against it – in this link:  https://level-7.org/Challenges/Opposition/. And here is another helpful cheat sheet for examining sources of information more critically: https://www.wikihow.life/Consume-Media-Critically. I recently also had a friend advise me on the best way to avoid algorithmic distractions on YouTube. His advice was to actively “subscribe” to credible, vetted sources for podcasts and informational videos beyond the mainstream, and primarily follow and watch those subscriptions, rather than watching what the YouTube algorithm or corporate mainstream media feeds.
7. Prayer and meditation. Personally, I am heartily committed to prayer and meditation, though not as standalone options. As with many spiritual traditions, my belief is that action – or “praxis” – is an inherent component of faith. For me, this means I will employ skillful compassion, or what Christianity calls agape, in all of my choices to promote positive change, which are in turn supported by prayer and meditation. As for some recommendations on specific meditation and prayerful practices, here is a free online book for you to peruse: Essential Mysticism.
8. Promoting an alternative vision. This is big-picture stuff, but it is probably essential to humanity’s thriving, so that we can depart from the status quo on multiple fronts. We need to have a plan. In fact, I think one of the reasons we are increasingly mired in a crony capitalist dystopia is because movements like Occupy Wall Street did not offer any clear alternatives for us to embrace. Here is website I’ve dedicated to an alternative vision, assembled in largest part from real-world successes around the globe: https://level-7.org/. You can also read an introduction of the central ideas of Level 7 in this AI-assisted overview.  
9. Other ideas. Although I believe that we must remedy the underlying issue of our commitment to a toxic profit motive in virtually every arena, there are nevertheless some helpful half-measures that may be able to mitigate capitalism’s harshest (but inevitable) consequences – at least for a little while. One set of such thoughtful half-measures for the U.S.A. can be found here: UNFTR’s 5 Non-Negotiables. But again…these efforts will not stave off the worst outcomes of those six disruptive factors we just outlined above. I believe we need to be a lot more radical in both our aspirational vision and our real-world activism.

That’s a start. Whatever we decide to do, let’s not wait too long to begin our critical next steps. Perhaps you can pick just one of the areas above and try it on for size. Commit right now to exploring your chosen role over the next month or two, and see how it feels. If it's not your thing, then try another approach. Personally, I'm in favor of all of these activities except violent revolution, so I put some thought, planning, self-education, promotion, financial support, creativity, political action, or other supportive effort into many of them nearly every week. I mean...what have we got to lose? If we do nothing, then we could lose everything.

We live in a world where lies run rampant, where public figures consistently misrepresent the truth, and where once trusted news sources are no longer viewed as reliable. More than ever before, it is now our individual responsibility to discern what is true and what is not, and to recognize when we become the target of deliberate hoodwinking. It is no exaggeration to claim that the durability of our political systems, the stability of our society, and the health of our planet increasingly depend on our vigilance in this arena. What follows is a brief but detailed overview of how to identify bad information, how we can protect ourselves from it, and how we can best respond to its increasingly loud and invasive presence in our lives.


First, what constitutes “bad information?”

Here are some of the hallmarks that help us quickly and reliably identify misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and manipulative deception:

1. Partial truths that rush to a sweeping conclusion. One of the most common techniques of communicating bad information is to offer only a small portion of cherry-picked facts for a given situation, deliberately omitting additional information that could provide a more balanced or measured perspective, and then quickly rushing into what is usually an extreme and unreasonable conclusion fueled solely on that partial information.

2. Fear or hate mongering – often involving conspiracy thinking and demonizing particular individuals or groups – followed by urgent and imperative calls to action. Negative emotion can be profoundly persuasive, even when the accusations being made have no evidence to support them. And once we have been caught up in strong feelings of foreboding or dislike, our rational faculties tend to shut down, and we may make decisions or take action based on strong emotions alone. And propagators of bad information know this, deliberately using it to their advantage to persuade us to conclude or do things we normally wouldn’t.

3. Visceral and vehement rejection of any reliable sources of information. Those who perpetuate bad information cannot tolerate or allow sources of more accurate information to be consulted by anyone, so they will attack them endlessly – though here again often without evidence to support their accusations.

4. The illusory truth effect. The illusory truth effect is when everyone begins to believe falsehoods are true simply because they get repeated by lots of people – because we are hearing them from multiple sources, the untruths begins to feel familiar and acceptable. Mainly as a consequence of the Internet, enduring falsehoods can now be spread very quickly all around the globe and become accepted into the mainstream as widely believed “truth” in this way.

5. Tribal conformance and groupthink. This technique relies on peer pressure and perceived threats to identity and belonging within a given group to generate lockstep conformance – often within a rigid set of values, priorities, and beliefs. Members of that tribe must, of necessity, conform to a given conclusion or course of action, and endlessly parrot particular talking points, to avoid being kicked out of their tribe. As inherently social creatures who crave acceptance and belonging, these are powerful pressures to keep us in line and make us feel we must propagate bad information…or else.

6. Reliance on a cult of personality or an idealized self-image. In an age of media celebrities who boisterously portray themselves as champions and heroes without any real evidence or history of their actually being that, adoring followers are lured into accepting falsehoods without question and then vehemently defending those falsehoods. They are, after all, defending a champion and hero that has inspired their adoration and made them feel important and “part of something,” perhaps even making them feel better about themselves and closer to an idealized version of who they want to be.

7. Projection, false equivalence, and whataboutism. These techniques attempt to paint the opposition with the flaws, faults, mistakes, and failings of the person trying to defend themselves or make their case. For example, someone who is profoundly corrupt or immoral asserting that their opponent is actually the one who is corrupt or immoral; this is projection. Or a politician claiming that an opposing party’s policies or practices have been just as flawed and destructive as their own, when this is only partially true; this is false equivalence. And, finally, when cornered with undeniable evidence of their own misdoings or malfeasance, someone may counter that their accusers have done something similar, when once again this may be only partially true or even false; this is whataboutism.

8. The constant promotion of other logical fallacies – such as ad hominem attacks, straw man arguments, the bandwagon effect, slippery slope fallacies, appeals to authority, appeals to emotion, false dilemmas, appeals to ignorance, false cause, manufacturing a “big lie,” and many others. Getting to know what these logical fallacies look and sound like can be very eye-opening – but they do take a bit of time and effort to fully appreciate (see References and Resources section below for more). In brief: ad hominem is simply attacking the character of a person rather than responding to their actual arguments; straw man is misrepresenting the opposing viewpoint so that refuting it doesn’t address the actual argument; bandwagon is claiming that because “everyone already knows” something to be true, is common knowledge, or will succeed, then it must be so; slippery slope is claiming that even a small admission, concession, or seemingly insignificant course of action will inevitably lead to much broader and disastrous results; appeal to authority asserts that because a trusted person or source claims something is true, it must be true; appeal to emotion is just that – there is no rational reasoning or factual evidence involved; false dilemma is insisting the only available choices are between two black-and-white extremes, when in reality there are more nuanced alternatives; appeal to ignorance takes advantage of our not having contrary, factual information to contradict the appeal; false cause links an incorrect cause to a given outcome; a “big lie” is a distortion of factual reality that is so grandiose and extreme – and repeated so often – that uncritical hearers begin to believe it.

9. The appearance of reasonableness. This is, for me at least, one of the more insidious techniques used in bad information. The objective here is to make an argument – usually one based on partial information, logical fallacies, or distortions of fact – in a reasonable, logical, and confident way that makes a given opponent or their viewpoint seem extreme, irrational, or hyperbolic. This technique is often combined with other methods meant to provoke the opposition into emotional reactions or overstatement of their position, and thereby undermining the credibility of their viewpoint.


How can we best respond to and mitigate these influences?

As you can see, there are a lot of tools in the bad information toolkit. And, unfortunately, once we become conditioned to respond to these tools, it is very difficult to free ourselves from their influence and not react impulsively or reflexively when they are used. In fact, one of the most effective ways to manage our immersion in bad information is simply to delay our response. To create a healthy space – in terms of time, emotions, and reflexive thinking – between the initial information we are receiving and how we choose to react to it. It’s a lot like creating space between other kinds of reflexive reaction. For example, if someone aggressively shoves me out of their way to cut past me in line, I might feel a reflexive urge to shove them back, or grab hold of them, or yell out “Hey, you can’t do that!” But if I instead insert a pause in my reaction, take a calming breath, and reflect for a moment about how best to respond, I can short-circuit my own visceral reactivity. Dealing with bad information can benefit from the same kind of patience and self-discipline.

Of course, being well-informed is also highly advantageous, so that when we are presented with partial truths, logical fallacies, or deceptive arguments we can more easily dismiss them because we know what the actual truth is. Amid today’s 24/7 fire hose of mass media – and with digital devices as our constant companions, delivering this firehouse with algorithmic amplification designed to keep our interest – the deluging clamor for our attention can be very challenging to manage.

So here are some helpful ways to buffer ourselves from the onslaught of such unfiltered, often questionable information:

1. Be proactive in how information is consumed. For example, avoid remaining logged into social media or receiving social media notifications on your digital devices. If we allow algorithms to decide what information we should receive, then most research indicates (see References and Resources) that we will receive what provokes our emotional engagement with that social media platform. Why? Simply because more engagement from us results in more ad revenue for those companies. This, in turn, results in what researchers call “computational propaganda.” So instead, if we deliberately choose to seek out specific information more proactively, we can protect ourselves from these profit-driven algorithms.

2. Be proactive in our selection of information sources – and even then, check the facts. This can take some effort to figure out, but eventually we can gather together a number of sources that provide high quality, factual information about our areas of interest. One way to vet the bias and factuality of potential news sources is https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/. And for reliable, in-depth research on many cultural and political issues, we can consult https://www.pewresearch.org/. To verify questionable information, I recommend consulting http://snopes.com/, https://www.politifact.com/, or https://www.factcheck.org/. And to appreciate how money intersects with politics in the U.S., https://www.opensecrets.org/ is an excellent resource.

In terms of the current political landscape in the U.S.A., it can quickly and easily be confirmed (see References and Resources) that the most prolific perpetrators of bad information practices are conservative pundits; the Republican Party and its political candidates; right-leaning U.S. media, bloggers, think tanks, and talk-show hosts; the official state-run media of Russia and China; and the efforts of social media troll farms and other “active measures” maintained by those same countries. Of course, you will want to evaluate and verify these claims yourself, but I think it is important to call out the most nefarious and destructive influences in U.S. politics right now.

Has this always been the case? With respect to Russia, this has definitely been the case since the Soviet era, but China seems to be a relative newcomer to the media-shaping game. Regarding the GOP in the U.S., it hasn’t always been this bad. In my opinion there have previously been reputable and responsible conservative-leaning media and pundits in the U.S. that would have called into question many of the claims being made by Republicans today. At the same time, conservatives have also executed long-term, well-funded efforts to discredit inconvenient facts that threated corporate profits – often through relentless “science skepticism” attacks (e.g. regarding tobacco risks, climate change, acid rain, pesticides, etc.). With equal fervor, conservatives have assaulted government programs and policies that protect consumers, workers, and the poor, usually with some flavor of fear mongering. These efforts include “red scare” anti-socialist propaganda techniques, as well as amping up rhetoric over “culture war” hot button issues (gay marriage and transgender rights; abortion rights; family values; parents’ rights; etc.) to agitate and motivate the Republican rank-and-file.

Do Democrats and those on the political left use similar tactics to persuade and manipulate people? And are left-leaning media, think tanks, and pundits as prolific in their propaganda, misinformation, or disinformation? Again, you will want to research and confirm the realities for yourself. But currently, although the left-leaning side of the political spectrum has sometimes been guilty of using similar tactics, it would be a grossly exaggerated false equivalence to say that Democratic politicians fabricate lies at the same rate as Republicans – or that Democrats rely on misinformation, disinformation, and logical fallacies to the same degree as the GOP. Left-leaning think tanks also tend to approach issues in a more even-handed, evidence-based, and scientific way than conservative ones. And in this moment of history, mainly driven by the extraordinary antics of Donald Trump and his “MAGA” followers, the GOP has gone down a rabbit hole of creating its own alternative realities. We could even say that, to exemplify the most potent examples of every “bad information” technique outlined here, we need only observe the copious pedantic claims uttered by Mr. Trump and his political supporters and media pundits.

As just a handful of examples of what right-leaning America has consistently gotten wrong, yet promoted as “truth” in order to win elections, sell ads, and raise donations:

• Joe Biden really did win the 2020 election, and zero evidence has been presented to the contrary despite repeated lawsuits.

• Donald Trump really did break the law in the willful hoarding of classified documents after he left office – and no, his evasive and obstructive behavior regarding those documents goes far beyond anything Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Mike Pence did by comparison.

• Climate change is a real, scientifically validated event, and not a liberal conspiracy.

• Immigrants had nothing to do with the decline in jobs or wages in the U.S.A. over the last few decades. Instead, it was mainly corporate greed and the natural consequence of those corporations seeking cheaper labor and resources abroad and automating production and services.

• Tax cuts have never “paid for themselves;” that is, conservative trickle-down economics has never helped the poor or working class, but only enriched the owner-shareholders of big business and other wealthy folks.

• Vladimir Putin is not an underdog victimize by “western aggression” who nobly aims to preserve Russia’s status in the world – he is a brutal, murderous, megalomaniacal dictator hell-bent on expanding his own political power and the economic and political influence of Russia so that he can increase his own personal wealth and that of the oligarchs who enable him.

• Obamacare has actually helped millions of people obtain health insurance who couldn’t do so previously, and has helped reduce health care costs overall. And there were never any government “death panels” triaging patient healthcare.

• Deregulation has not helped American consumers or saved U.S. industries – with very few exceptions, it has consistently hurt both.

• There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein had zero ties to the terrorists responsible for 9/11.

• Neither the recent escalation of inflation, nor the ballooning federal deficit, can be laid at the feet of Democrats or Joe Biden. While the legislation and executive policies of both parties have certainly contributed, the lion’s share of irresponsible spending, overly aggressive tax cuts, and disastrous economic and public health policies contributing to both inflation and the federal deficit can be laid squarely at the feet of Republicans – and indeed Donald Trump.

It is therefore not surprising that the GOP is so profoundly committed to false narratives and misinformation – because the facts on the ground make them look really bad.

But 70+ million voters in the U.S. continue to be utterly conned and hoodwinked into believing these lies and many more – and into consistently voting against their own expressed values and best interests.

These are truly extraordinary times.


References and Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques
https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/logical-fallacies/1/
https://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/c.php?g=849536&p=6077643
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/logical-fallacies/
https://www.propwatch.org/propaganda.php
https://demtech.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2017/06/Casestudies-ExecutiveSummary.pdf
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/radical-ideas-social-media-algorithms/
https://level-7.org/Challenges/Opposition/conspiracy/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/big-lie
https://realmajority.us/files/stacks-image-d301f1f-1142x1600.jpg
https://level-7.org/Challenges/Opposition/
https://level-7.org/Challenges/Neoliberalism/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2009/apr/01/cato-institute/cato-institutes-claim-global-warming-disputed-most/
https://level-7.org/Challenges/Neoliberalism/Attacks_On_Science/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/11/conservative-nonsense-political-history
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/27/inflation-blame-game-sorting-out-the-culprits-00035712
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/10/03/republican-tax-cuts-fail-record-debt-and-inequality-gap-column/3833546002/
https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GOP%20Policies%20Caused%20the%20Deficit%20REPORT%2010-15-18.pdf
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-war-criminal-inhumanity-syria/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/24/republicans-parents-rights-education-culture-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

Here are the top five reasons why there is a wave of right-wing governments across the globe:

1. Global corporate capitalism, as coordinated and directed by the wealthiest owner-shareholders around the world, is creating huge wealth disparities, increasingly destructive negative externalities (climate change, unbreathable air, undrinkable water, rapid species extinction, etc.), and exaggerated economic instability (boom/bust cycles that are increasingly extreme). This trend understandably frightens people, and they want a scapegoat for their fears. The far-right rhetoric blames progressive social policies, recent waves of immigrants, and “government interference in free markets,” in simplistic, polemic rhetoric. None of these are the real causal factors behind what so frightens right-leaning folks…but they sure are easy targets for polarizing propaganda. It’s really easy to get scared people to vote against their own best interests, and ignore the real “man behind the curtain” (i.e. those wealthy owner-shareholders) who doesn’t want to be held accountable.

2. The actual solutions to many of these modern challenges are complex, nuanced, contingent, dynamic and abstract. To even fully comprehend some of the problems humanity faces requires an advanced understanding of specialized disciplines that take years to learn (i.e. economics, climate science, biology, medicine, genetics, etc.). Consequently, it’s difficult to explain how to move forward to “the average voter,” and much easier to hoodwink them. And the conservative, right-leaning voters around the world have often had an uneasy relationship with evidence-based, scientific approaches, often mistrusting experts and academia on a fundamental level. And yet, these same conservative “average voters” feel empowered by misinformation they find on social media, in sensationalist journalism, on conspiracy websites, and through other unreliable sources. This creates a false sense of confidence (see Illusory truth effect and Dunning–Kruger effect), which combines with tribalistic “Us vs. Them” emotional reactivism, and in turn leads to mass movements that are highly irrational and easily manipulated. Unfortunately for those who gravitate towards the far-right end of the political spectrum, nearly all of the most strident, deceptive and manipulative propaganda today is housed in their media. So instead of becoming educated with real evidence or persuaded by rational reasoning, the right-leaning person becomes increasingly deceived and deluded.

3. Some rather unsavory folks with self-serving agendas have decided to double down on this ongoing deception. Whether it’s the fake science and science skepticism (such as climate denial) funded by the Koch brothers and neoliberal think tanks; or the “active measures” of Vladimir Putin aimed at dividing, angering and confusing folks all around the globe; or the strategic social media influence campaigns from Cambridge Analytica; or the lies and exaggerations of a mentally unstable President Trump — all of these sources are just engineering and promoting their own accumulation of wealth and power. It’s a pretty simple and transparent strategy…just “follow the money.” And social media platforms have now provided a powerful, dopamine-addiction-driven tool to entrain mindless conformance among targeted groups of users. For more discussion of this pernicious pattern, see The Opposition.

4. Progressives and technocrats are generally TERRIBLE at explaining their positions and the rationale for approaching complex problems a certain way. To them, the situation and its solutions are painfully obvious…but very few have the gift of translating that “obviousness” into clear, easily shared memes on social media, or humorous quips on talk shows, or simplistic black-and-white tropes that uneducated folks can latch onto. This is one reason I have proposed creating a Public Information Clearinghouse to help the “average voter” understand complex issues and appreciate evidence-based solutions.

5. I think…and this is perhaps the hardest thing to accept, let alone articulate…that humanity is getting dumber. Perhaps as a consequence of a combination of things — stress, pollutants, reliance on technology, poor diets, fast-paced lifestyles, etc. — or epigenetic changes that have been amplified by this same combination of factors, human beings aren’t thinking very clearly or cleverly. And there is also an increase — especially among conservatives and the far-right — to actively suppress their own intelligence. It’s quite disturbing to witness the extraordinary levels of cognitive dissonance conservatives must sustain to hold onto their most cherished but misguided beliefs. And this “cultivated stupidity” has a collective snowball effect, which again is just amplified into lockstep in-group conformance by the mass media that crafts these deceptive narratives and perpetuates them.

So don’t allow yourself to be hoodwinked by the right-wing propaganda about why there is a wave of right-wing movements. Over many decades, socially conservative, market fundamentalist, greed-centric crony capitalists have created the conditions that now make them so fearful and unhappy. But they are not willing to take responsibility for what they have done, and instead seek to blame others. It's a very human failing, but promises to be particularly disastrous in this situation — because it avoids engaging the actual causes for impending calamity.

My 2 cents.

Historically, “strongman” governments like Putin’s routinely make temporary economic improvements that bolster popularity and offer an illusion of ongoing wealth production (while skimming as much off the top as possible, of course). Putin seems to have done the same. Further, his tight control over politics, media, other elected officials, major industries, the judiciary, banking and so forth make it fairly easy to perpetuate that illusion for the Russian people. It’s kind of like when dictators win “elections” for decades by 99%. Eventually, however, the “get rich quick” schemes that inherently avoid developing a robust, sustainable and competitive economy, and instead focus on raping, pillaging and hoarding of local resources (or neoliberal exploitation and monopolization by another name), will eventually hit a wall. In developing countries this is called “the resource curse.” What Putin seems to be banking on is expanding his economic and political footprint by military force, which is a very old method of sustaining economic expansion - and in a strongman’s case, prestige as well. Study any megalomaniacal dictator in history, and you’ll find they all did pretty much the same thing that Putin is doing. Until someone stood up to them, or their resources were ultimately depleted. It’s unclear what will arrive first to end Putin’s popularity, but once the Russian economy begins to stutter (and I do believe it eventually will) - perhaps as a result of increased sanctions and containment strategies, or because of a countering military action that frustrates expansion - it will become harder and harder for Putin to sustain the illusion of prosperity and maintain popular support. Perhaps that is why he has worked so hard to get a friendlier…asset into the White House?

My 2 cents.

From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/Why-havent-Russians-awakened-to-the-fact-that-Putin-is-leading-Russia-to-economic-destruction-or-can-Putin-prevent-it-from-becoming-publicly-known/answer/T-Collins-Logan