Political Memes

While not wrong, I don't think this is necessarily the whole story.

It's more that our collective narrative has been atomized, and people have been given their permission slips to stay comfortable, to only consume the news and stories and narratives that preserves their comfort. (Note that comfort is not the same as happiness, this conflation is absolutely wrecking our entire society, learn they are different things and you will make great progress in your life.)

Our addiction to comfort comes from survival impulses, and capital has learned how to exploit this, to give us food and drugs and products to buy and shows to watch and video games to escape into and podcasters and streamers who take care of the mental work for us. None of which makes us feel satisfied or complete, but placates our survival urges and makes us not seek change or new ideas.

The internet and related algorithms has shoved a wedge deeply between our shared realities. We are no longer forced to listen to the uncomfortable perspectives of others. We are no longer required to adjust, to compromise, to adjust our views. As individuals you may think you're very self-reliant and self-actualized, but we're talking populations. Populations are like liquids, they seek certain lowest levels. Our levels are now manufactured. This means you can live in willful obliviousness to uncomfortable truths without ANY consequence.

So even if someone "knows" that there is something like a concentration camp being built, there is no chance in their world for it to intrude on their comfort so the incentive to DO SOMETHING about it is not there, so it just becomes an uncomfortable presence which we tend to unconsciously avoid. We then create stories in our heads to rationalize and validate these feelings. Cognitive dissonance is not some mental fallacy that only "stupid" people fall into, it's hard-wired into each of us as a survival tool to avoid creating problems in our predictable lives.

edit: reminder people, there was massive pushback about the US getting involved with Europe and Germany before and during WW2 even as evidence of genocide was coming to light. This isn't new. What is new is that we don't have social pressure anymore to do the right thing. There is absolutely no incentivization to change stances.