Ben Carson’s rise to the top of the Republican presidential field shows that many Republicans, especially Christian fundamentalists, have decoupled from the real world — and are proud of it. The more that GOP candidates embrace “anti-knowledge” the more popular they become, as Mike Lofgren explains.
Ben Carson, the humblebragging instrument of God
In his various books, the GOP presidential candidate combines two deep faiths -- in his own skills, and in God's frequent intervention in his life.
Opinion | The Rotting of the Republican Mind (Published 2020)
When one party becomes detached from reality.
Anti-AI Populism is Reshaping American Politics
Democrats are winning on data center opposition. So are Republicans.
Isaac Asimov Laments the “Cult of Ignorance” in the United States (1980)
Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons In 1980, scientist and writer Isaac Asimov argued in an essay that 'there is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.' That year, the Republican Party stood at the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, which initiated a decades-long conservative groundswell.
The phony comforts of useful idiots
On Casey Newton and the shallowness of anti-skepticism.
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), is a right-wing populist and neo-nationalist political party in the United States, sitting on the right-wing to far-right of the political spectrum. Founded in 1854, it emerged as the main rival of the Democratic Party in the 1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since then.
The Constitution of Knowledge
America has faced many challenges to its political culture, but this is the first time we have seen a national-level epistemic assault: a systematic attack, emanating from the very highest reaches of power, on our collective ability to distinguish tr...
Theda Skocpol’s new work on anti-Trump activists
New findings from a far-sighted political scientist
Republican Victory and the Ambience of Information
For years, Democrats have sought to win elections by micro-targeting communities with detailed facts. What if the secret is big, sloppy notions seeded nationwide?
Anti-Intellectualism | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
The New Libertarian Elitists
What’s behind the dangerous new notion that democracy should be left to the well-educated.
Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield@mastodon.social)
🧵 As a former Republican consultant who left in 2015, I'm often asked why Trump and his minions are willingly destroying science, K12 education, universities, international organizations, public broadcasting, and social welfare institutions. There are many reasons, but the main ones are psychological rather than ideological. They struggle with abstract thinking and are afraid of the world...
How Bronze Age Pervert Built an Online Following and Injected Anti-Democracy, Pro-Men Ideas Into the GOP
A modern story of shitposting, self-publishing and how an anonymous persona can help your ideas take off — and take root at the highest levels.
Opinion | Evangelical conservatives are proving their harshest critics right
They don't understand the United States' founding principles.
As an AI-adjacent network neuroscience person who has also studied bits of media structure and political economy, I strongly agree with @karlbode.com: The biggest threat, by far, isn’t “superintelligence will soon kill us all!” but instead “information control by oligarchs will crush our society”
Karl Bode
one recurring theme in the coverage of this AI Anthropic doomsday newscycle is nobody actually has any REAL ideas of what to do just a lot of ambiguous hand-waving in a country that's too corrupt to have working regulators, by a press that doesn't realize that's a central pillar of the conversation
