Originally Posted by
Jake Norman
I had a very long workout today, about three hours, and I took the opportunity to catch up on some entertainment (US political podcasts). I listened to the latest Ben Shapiro, and then the latest Pod Save America.
It's really amazing how at odds the narratives describing ostensibly the same set of events have become. They both discussed the RNC, the Blake shooting, the protests and riots generally, COVID, the NBA/Le Bron thing and the upcoming election, but you'd think they were describing alternate realities. Do normal people really see things so radically differently? Are you having face to face discussions with people, on the ground, in your lives, that mirror this divide, or is it a product of the incentives and structures around broadcasting and news media, and the way that online opinion athletics tends to push towards entrenched extremes? You hear about the echo chamber phenomenon, but it's something else to hear it in practice in such a stark and up to the minute way.
It looks from the outside like the only thing 100% of Americans agree on is that half of the country is demented or evil.