And some, or at least one, of them is a member of Congress.

That's a human nature thing. We are really much happier as people when there's a "logical" course of real events that lead to any disaster. We can understand "evil group did evil thing" better than "the collective actions of humanity over the last 200 years caused a fundamental change to our world that we cannot reverse in our lifetime."

We aren't good at nuance.

Some random wacko deciding to kill Kennedy because of mental illness and a general hostility towards his world view is harder for us to accept than a secret plot to seal power. Bad guys make sense to us. Chaotic elements just don't.

He needs money to live now that the courts have started selling his business to pay off the last people he hurt by spreading insane conspiracy theories.

He’s a one trick pony, only thing he knows how to do is lie and sell snake oil pills that turn you red.

Because stupidity, hatred and lies are acceptable platforms for political discussion in a world where humans profit from harming others.

There can't be snake-oil salesmen without customers willing to buy snake-oil.

We harshly punish those who purchase drugs and treat snake oil purchaser as victims but the outcome is the same; they are purchasing a high that is incredibly addictive.

Ah, but your entire brand image probably isn't agressively lying.

You'd probably need the bold headlines to understand what he means. I wonder if he's posted them on twitter yet. 🤔

Systemic regression of education priority + non-stop conspiratorial propaganda. I was born and grew up in the US and have seen the shift first-hand.

At least what you're seeing here is still just a very loud minority.

It’s just statistics, honestly. Greater population means greater number of dumb people. FYI, you can be rich and dumb, or college educated and dumb, too.

America also doesn’t implement strict control over information or discourse like other countries with greater populations, like China. The problem is that outside of gerrymandering America does have free and fair elections, which is why the greater swaths of “dumb” people can present an actual danger.

20 years ago my country used to look up to the US educational system and tried to adopt their methodologies, I'm glad we didn't

I've usually pointed towards our education system but I'm not so sure anymore. I think there's more at play.

I think it's more about the inherit individualism in America, "the American dream", capitalism, and the definition of The United States. There's a strong rejection of community support and social services. There's a desire to have more than we need. There's a fear of "others" who threaten your domicile and prosperity. The country was founded on a distrust of government with the formation of semi-sovereign states and multiple forms of checks and balances.

I think there's an argument that to "be American" means to be in opposition to and skeptical of government. At first, in wake of the revolutionary war, this seemed reasonable. With slow moving news and a journalistic industry maintaining the fourth pillar of democracy, without the temptation of ad revenue or competition with social media, Americans were, frankly, sheep to a small group of organizations. As a 21st century first first world country, we really need to get together and reassess what the role of government should be and how to draft a constitution that meets the needs of a nation in an increasingly connected (and shrinking) planet.

We are not afforded the tools to be competitive with the future of humanity.

I actually believe our lack of faith in religion has had a negative impact. We used to be more connected with our community. We largely trusted one another. It was not that long ago that hitch hiking across the country was a normal practice for teens. I don't believe in gods but I have respect for some aspects of some religious organizations. What seems to have replaced this is social media bubbles or tribes. Or internet forums like this.

We're an increasingly fractured nation that holds distrust of all things in high regard.

Also, we're a nation that defines wealth as the ability to acquire rather than the ability to give.

Decades undermining and underfunding education. They want dumb consumers just informed enough to work a shit job and earn enough to survive but not thrive.

One of our political parties discovered they can reliably achieve short term goals by politicizing facts and science. The success of this strategy points out that it's available to anyone who wants to use it, which over time has meant that group of voters just got continually flooded with nonsense, until we got here.

There's (almost) no one pushing back from that side - the strategy is too successful, the margins of victory for the party are too small, and most politicians in general want what's best for them and would put the long term health of the group they're representing as a distant priority, if at all.

Doesn't even really require coordination/cooperation. With enough people willing to employ this strategy for enough time, by now the distrust of science and official communications is extremely entrenched.

If you're looking for the "why" we're susceptible to it, it's the same old story - people angry at how things are going can often be manipulated into blaming people and things other than the true causes, with obvious advantages / incentives for those doing the manipulation.

Rupert Murdoch.

I don't think anyone's said it better than that.

Billion and a half.

It's truly unbelievable, isn't it. It illustrates the degree to which people are truly a slave to their impulses and delusions. No external factors will ever reform this guy, and it's really a sad thing to watch a person trapped in their own kind of hell.

Perhaps the strongest argument that it is God punishing sinful states. The old switcheroo right there.