Mob violence has been a thing for all of human history. Before humans, even: chimpanzee groups, if they get large, will split into two groups. After a few months apart, if the groups encounter each other, the stronger group will murder every individual in the weaker one.

I think we had settled on a regulated and normalized system in pre-internet media that moderated the mob violence tendencies. Our current polarization is not really that social media created this new thing in society, it’s that it removed the guardrails in traditional media that were suppressing natural human tendencies. I hope we can figure out and implement some new guardrails sooner rather than later.

Our brains are hard-wired to be susceptible to specific patterns. Ancestral humans who stayed in good graces with their social group, even when the leaders of that group were factually mistaken, survived at higher rates than humans whose respect for facts drove them to reject or be rejected by the group. The details of which and to what degree we have these triggers override our rationality varies by genetics and environment, but we are all susceptible.

That a very significant percent of humans respond to their system by adopting specific harmful behavior is not something we can fight by moral condemnation. Labeling them as bad people is unproductive. If the goal is to actually reduce the harmful behavior, addressing the system - not the individuals - is the only effective strategy.

Amid the racism and misogyny is published work that recessions are when the opposition party is in power. Presumably “economic boom” is when the “correct” party is in power, regardless of “traditional” economic data. Oh, and he’d like to see the US deploy nukes. Bolding is mine.

Antoni’s academic work is also sparse, causing concern from prominent economists. Last year, he co-published a report that purported “the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022,” which economists across the political spectrum have criticized.

Sometime in mid-2019… the account’s username changed to “phdofbombsaway” with the display name “Dr. Curtis LeMay.” The profile image also changed to what looks to be a nuclear explosion. The username and display name appear to be a reference to “Bombs Away LeMay,” a reference to the Cold War general and his controversial stance promoting the use of nuclear weapons. LeMay ran alongside segregationist George Wallace on his 1968 presidential ticket for the far-right American Independent Party.

The article is calling out the logo outrage as a distraction from the Epstein files.

The process of stoking outrage has another effect: It crowds out the news cycle. Most Democrats I know would be shocked at how little the average Republican knows about Trump’s actual conduct and his actual wrongdoing. Republicans can, however, cite chapter and verse about left-wing outrages and left-wing overreactions to Trump.

That creates a reality where they simply can’t conceive of how any reasonable, rational person would vote Democratic or oppose the president and his policies.