The Cynical Historian

Technology Democratized Media | US Political Polarization (2021x37)

Air date: Sep 07, 2021

Technology is playing a key role in the US political system. We’ve opened a pandora’s box with technological politics. Unlike the utopian visions we once had for tech like the internet, the reality was that we let loose the worst of our inhibitions and enshrined a system that prioritized extremism. Tech has democratized our media, removing the gatekeepers who’ve kept American civility since the liberal consensus after WWII - and that’s a recipe for disaster. We created this system, and we chose to polarize. Political polarization playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjnwpaclU4wXxGRwtV4EGk_vuAH2VkODS ------------------------------------------------------------ See pinned comment and its replies for notes, responses, and errata Bibliography: Kathleen Belew, _Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018), ebook. https://amzn.to/2XsIyXg Bill Bishop, _The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), ebook, scribd. https://amzn.to/3qb0Hs3 Gabriella Coleman, _Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous_ (London: Verso, 2014), audiobook. https://amzn.to/3cTFPjE Megan Condis, _Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture_ (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018). https://amzn.to/3gCCSpO Jeffrey Hart, _The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times_ (Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014), ebook. https://amzn.to/3wGtJ5i Nicole Hemmer, _Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), audible. https://amzn.to/2SIJSZ2 Ezra Klein, _Why We’re So Polarized_ (London: Profile Books, 2020), audiobook. https://amzn.to/31sqFLB Daniel Lucks, _Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republi