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Uniform Beliefs
How the US Republican Party will continue to evolve over the coming months
The USA is a land of near-instant amnesia. The media generates an ocean of mindless noise and the population bobs up and down on top like corks riding on endless waves. People gawp empty-headed at the flickering spectacles of realty TV, sports, and repetitive sitcoms. The average person knows nearly nothing about anything and understands even less. And as we’re evolved to conform to group norms, it’s easy for us to accept whatever we’re told by our purported authority figures even when those things contradict what we used to think was true. In short, most people believe whatever they’re told and have no capacity for independent thought.
This is what makes representative democracy such a success — for would-be tyrants.
Although the credulity of ordinary people is seemingly without limit, until quite recently Western politicians believed there was a point beyond which simple-minded lies would become a liability. Those in power in authoritarian regimes were more clear-sighted: the Russian ambassador to the UK was perfectly happy to tell the BBC in 2016 that “the truth is whatever we want it to be.” In that same year, the West discovered the road to electoral success was to tell the most infantile and simple-minded lies possible. Brexit and Trump…
