The country is increasingly divided, and it reverberates onto this message board. It manifests politically, but the root issue is decency and truth.
While Donald Trump was the catalyst for this environment, it truly is an issue with information technology, social media, and regulation. Donald Trump broke the foundations of truth. He lies with every breath, and by electing him to Team B, anything he says, including every lie, is supported and promulgated as truth by Team B, and not just be online weirdos anymore during birtherism. Legacy media, particularly Fox New, but also CNN and other legitimatized his lies.
The same can be said for the entire Republican Party. When you listen to an audio recording of Donald Trump asking a foreign leader to investigate his own political rival, and there are no consequences. It hurts democracy. II hurts truth. When you listen to an audio recording of Donald Trump asking a Secretary of State to find votes for him, and there are no consequences. It hurts democracy. It hurts truth.
There is no longer a shared reality. Nothing anyone says is true anymore. No one believes anyone anymore about anything. Add in the same destruction of truth with people like Joe Rogan and the Pandemic, and it adds fuel to the fire. If a racist comedian is given the same deference to information as a medical doctor that spent their life studying disease. There is no shared reality. The loudest voice wins.
We used to laugh at conspiracy theorists and anti-vax weirdos. Now they are prominent. Legitimized.
For example, it would be like a person on this board stating sovereign citizen insane shit in the football forum. And if anyone said they were crazy, someone saying "take it to the CR" or believing the world is flat is normal and can't be ridiculed outside politics. That is what Trump/Rogan/Republicans have done to America. They have legitimized insanity. They have legitimized Nazism, fascism, racism. It's a legitimate pollical believe that only white males should have the right to vote, that vaccines cause autism, that immigrants have dirty blood, or that Epstein was a Mossad operative.
It's only going to get worse.