I've been wondering for a little over 10 years now what it is that gives me this feeling of unease. There's been something going on (several somethings is more probable), but I can't quite get my arms around it.
Today, there's a post by DougJ at Balloon Juice that gives me a real starting point. He links to a piece in The Atlantic by Chris Good, who writes that Repubs will run on the meme that everything Obama and the Dems are trying to do will end in disaster. There's nothing new in that of course; the wingnuts on both ends have been screaming about that kinda thing for years. What struck me is the phrase "untethered to verifiable fact".
Over the last 20 years or so, we've moved from a fairly well centralized info system (network TV and hometown newspapers) to a system that's fragmented down to a point where I can customize my "news" so that everythng I hear fits my own preconceptions. If I get a story that challenges my worldview, it's easy for me to find someone to rebut that story and help me pretend nothing's changed. I need that pacifier so I can spend as little time and effort as possible sorting thru the data and processing the information so I can get back to being stressed out over my job or my kids or my house or my car or my breakfast cereal or whatever else the marketing department is pushing on me this season.
I'd really like to find a way to wrap this up neatly, but I'm stumped again. I guess all I can say is that I think we get closer to the Big-T Truth by gathering the smaller bits of little-t truth as we go.
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