The Good Ol' Days

Researchers did not predict that social media would create vast fake social networks, fuel false peer pressure and emotionally manipulate unsuspecting voters. Now we are like cats following hot button laser beams, ignoring the dull reality of politics. https://t.co/y6tc3UHFrp

— Robert Young Pelton (@RYP__) February 9, 2020

Ah, yes, the good ol' pre-internet days, when we paid attention to the 'dull reality of politics.'  I remember it well.  It was when we remembered every quadrennial what a disaster Iowa caucuses were, and didn't wake up like a goose in a new world every time they came around, and didn't declare doom and disaster when they inevitably turned toes up and failed to do anything for the Democratic selection system but start things off with a stumble.

And people spoke wisely over back fences of politics and issues and candidates, and debated in a high-minded fashion without resort to false information and "false" peer pressure (what is that, again?) and no voters were "unsuspecting' or open to emotional manipulation, and campaigns were high minded discussions of issues facing the populace and the vox populi spoke with wisdom and clarity and insight.  And Mr. Smith went to Washington and fixed everything, and Mr. Deeds taught us all what true Americans were and there was never "A Face In the Crowd" or a Willie Stark to demagogue us into foolishness and following false prophets.

How we have fallen since this younger generation invented this thing called the "intertoobs."  It's the fault of that, alone.  Well, and narratives about despair that have Trump living rent-free in the heads of every concerned Democrat in the country.  It's a newspaper story; but I found it on the intertoobs!

O, the humanities!