From:
https://reknew.org/2018/08/part-8-of-15-race-and-social-hierarchies/
Well, “back in the day” we had three television Networks, and it was in the interest of all of them to report the News with as little bias as possible to attract the widest possible audience. With the advent of Cable News, however, people are able to watch the filtered version of the News that they agree with and that therefore activates the pleasure centers of their brain. And when liberal and conservative minded people no longer have to try to see the world through each other’s eyes, they get hardened in their perspectives. In time, they lose the willingness, and then the ability, to understand the perspectives of those who fundamentally disagree with their deeply held beliefs. Those who oppose them, therefore, can’t possibly be doing so on rational or moral grounds, which means they must either be stupid or immoral. They therefore cannot be reasoned with. They must simply be defeated.
If someone has a practical solution as to how western culture can reverse this dire trend, they are smarter than me and should quickly make their solution known. I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic, but I seriously think western civilization, and especially America, is in serious trouble. Democracy depends on people trusting the good intentions of those they disagree with and on the general public relying on shared sources of information. All indications are that both of these preconditions for Democracy have deteriorated significantly over the last thirty years.
If your hope is anchored in Jesus Christ alone, as it should be, this grim forecast won’t undermine the peace and optimism that is part of your inheritance as a citizen of God’s Kingdom. The rise and fall of empires founded on violence – and they are all founded on violence- is as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun. Despite many desperately insisting otherwise, America will not likely prove to be an exception to this uniform rule, assuming the Lord doesn’t return in the next hundred or so years to fully establish the Kingdom.
If there is a glimmer of hope for this country and for western civilization itself, it resides in young people waking up to the insanity of what is happening. If sufficient numbers begin to realize how thoroughly people’s minds are being manipulated by cable News and social media and to the desperate need for the members of any democracy to be able and willing to rationally and calmly discuss their differences rather than demonizing one another on the basis of these difference, the ever-widening chasms that separate us could possibly begin to be reversed. The question boils down to this: Will westerners prove themselves to be smarter than the seductive lure of propaganda and fear and the idolatrous need to always be right?
Only time will tell.