How do we stop this without making matters even worse? I want to say “educate people” yet that’s a pat response. Some people won’t be educated, it takes a lot of time, and how do we even agree on what a good education is? To me it’s critical thinking, STEM, and meeting other people. To others it’s teaching their kids that people like me are the agents of the devil, that fossils are a test from god or a plot by the CIA. How can that gap be bridged without someone trampling all over the rights of the other? How can people in such separate relaities not undermine each other or seek to use the system against each other, only to see it turned back on themselves?
How many times have you read a comment on a board and your first thought was, “That has to be a troll/shill/bot”? How often have you just given up on a discussion because the signal:noise ratio was intolerable? I know my answer is “too many times to count.” I worry that it means bad actors are winning, that I’ve fallen under the spell of Oh Dearism.