"Meanwhile, I can’t help feel the world has missed a golden opportunity. Both Brexit and Trump should have been a wake-up call and an invitation to self-examination- as well as an examination of indiscriminate immigration systems which fail to protect the jobs of those who are incapable of performing the types of highly skilled or cognitively challenging roles, which no advanced economy produces in sufficient numbers to fill their existing needs. Other than Australia, most Western countries have singularly failed to secure the interests of their most economically precarious citizens.

In this scenario, the Biden decision to raise minimum wages paired with pro-immigration reform, can surely be seen as tantamount to inviting more people to a game of musical chairs and removing at least a tenth of the chairs. Of course, Andrew Yang was half-right- in all likelihood perhaps half of the decimation of jobs for working age males was automation, but the other half was low-skilled migration with a sprinkling of bad trade deals.

The correct response to Trump and Brexit was to think more, to learn more, to examine our sacred cows, and if necessary, slaughter them. Above all, we should have tried our hardest to walk a mile in the other guys shoes and poke holes in the imaginary bogeymen and cardboard cutouts, with which we stereotype each other.

I could point out that the ADL estimates their are only 11,000 active white supremacists, with large portions forming within prisons. I could make the Steven Pinker claim that only 5% to 10% of Americans are still racist, adding the qualifier that two-thirds are over 65.

But instead lets look at progressives- and perhaps Steelman just a tad. Many are primarily focused on the issue along class lines and through the lens of economic fairness. Of those who do look at cultural issues from the perspective of CRT or intersectional oppression, most are simply well-intentioned followers who simply can’t bare to look deeper to the real root causes.

Some honestly believe that money is the only issue required to fix public education- not realising that structurally it’s no longer fit for purpose. Or might be willing to concede the need to reread Jude the Obscure, to realise that some progress can only be made from the secure base of strong communities, largely consisting of two-parent families, and achieved over more than one generation.

We need to start to examine just how susceptible various political systems are susceptible to bad actors, and just how much clickbait legacy media and technological changes, have made our once stable democracies just as prone to manipulation by the worst of us as the twin threats posed during the Twentieth century."

Comment from Geary_Johansen2020 on https://quillette.com/2021/01/20/big-tech-and-regulation-a-response-to-the-quillette-editors/