Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Atlantic | Haidt
In this buzz-generating piece, Haidt explains “The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.” Haidt’s primary focus is the polarizing and fragmenting impact of social media. He also discusses the “structural stupidity” of the Right and the Left, and the hope for change from, as Tocqueville observed, the “American habit of forming voluntary associations to fix local problems.”
