Thread by @drvolts

So @ezraklein & @PeteButtigieg are two of the smartest dudes around, and I love listening to them talk, but this pod illustrates, yet again, a baffling blind spot among Dem elites. (You can probably guess what I'm gonna say, cause I'm always saying it.)
nytimes.com/2024/09/24/opi…

There are several points in the interview where the absence is glaring, but maybe the most glaring is when Klein asks Buttegieg about the precipitous loss of trust, especially among rural Americans, over the last several decades. There are many causes, fine, but SURELY ...

... you have to cite, among them, the fact that a giant right-wing propaganda apparatus has grown to the point where it has completely captured these areas of the country, to the point that huge swathes of Americans are sealed in a bubble of RW agitprop.

The core message of that RW agitprop, from the beginning, is that you can't trust any institutions (politics, academia, science). You can't trust US elites. You can't trust *anyone* except the RW propagandists. Just that message, over & over & over & over & over for decades.

I can understand maybe rating the importance of that phenomenon differently than I do, or having a different take on it, but in so many elite Dem discussions it's just *ignored*. Invisible. Unmentioned. An elephant in the room that they are just determined not to acknowledge.

The information environment has changed on a fundamental level in recent decades, unmistakably for the worse. The biggest platforms where info is disseminated are owned by RWers & dominated by RW messages. You can't just pretend it doesn't matter!

I don't know why figures like Klein & Buttigieg seem so hell bent on ignoring this huge, fundamental change. I mean, I have my theories. But mostly it's just baffling & endlessly frustrating. You can't understand US politics without at least taking this change into account!

Anyway I have no pithy conclusion, I'll just shout at the clouds, yet again: the main reason a large swathe of Americans have turned to conspiracy theories & endless resentment is they are trapped in an insular media environment that feeds them toxic shit 24/7. It f'ing matters.