That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this is much starker.
You're in a war, even here.
It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.
That being said, the writing was on the wall in 2016, the first time Trump ran, HN (and the anglosphere internet in general) took a sharp dive down in quality, and Covid made it all worse.
I just try to remember that the printing press caused a lot of wars, but over the longer term it lead to a better world.
What they did was see the way 9/11 reset what was allowed in mainstream American discourse, and that as conservatives moved into a tightly-managed bubble they were also willing to give up the idea of verifiable facts in favor of what felt right. That created a big weakness for a patient adversary as they didn’t need to try to get people to trust, say, RT but rather pick which existing voices to quietly support or try seeding ideas to.
I think it’s better to treat them like a catalyst or the accelerant on a fire where they didn’t start it but they both made it worse and might not have much control over it at this point.
Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatsoever, they are just the distractions being fed to gather support, there's something else much deeper and darker broken in American society that became so obfuscated by these distractions to the point where I have absolutely no fucking idea why half of the country seems to hate everything that brought the USA to the position it had on the global stage.
Perhaps it's just hubris after a very long period of quasi-absolute power, seems like power corrupts not only individuals but whole nations.