IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed.

Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc.

And this all creates a huge pressure for ordinary people, just housing alone has a huge impact now - stunting the formation of families, and effectively taxing productive people to fund those who were lucky enough to buy the assets in the past.

The boring but true answer is that the only thing people should be protesting for is a change of the electoral law. Everything else is downstream of that.

In the US, it's a de-facto duopoly on power, held up by a number of "winner-takes-all" rules. Politicians of either party will do everything in their power to keep "outsiders" (i.e. people/parties that are not entrenched in the two-party system and might actually drive positive change) from ever gaining a foothold.

In Germany it's the famous 5% rule that virtually ensures that every new party must maximize populism or perish.

I'm sure it's very similar in most other "democratic" countries.

Laws aren't perfect. In fact they often are buggy as hell. The electoral law is certainly no exception. However it is ultimately the law that matters most as it determines who can raise to power and who can't. Ensuring it fair and democratic should be the #1 civic duty.

> and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change

In case you didn't mean this, do you agree that the propaganda you're referencing above is the "you" in this sentence? eg the propaganda is the thing that is asking them to decide on covid or climate change.

I don't think anyone who is genuine expects the public to have expertise in these topics. The propaganda seems centred around a constant war against intellectualism and expertise, such that people think they should have an opinion on things they are woefully unqualified to have opinions on, and politicians just align themselves to what they think will get votes.

Even if everybody agreed on the basic facts (which is only possible if they're all drinking from the same well, eg impossible if the press is free) there would still be huge disagreement on what political course of action to take in response to those agreed upon facts, because different people have different values.

Take your global warming example, and suppose we have a magic wand to make everybody agree that it's happening, that humans were causing it, that its happening fast enough to cause massive extinctions, and that action now might still prevent this. With all of these given as universally held beliefs, it should be easy to resolve right? Well no, because in this scenario the magic wand aligned just about everything except values. Does somebody really care about the long term ecological impact of the thing more than they care about how environment austerity would impact them and their family personally? Some will, some won't, so the political debate remains standing. In fact, many of those selfish people will probably decide to stubbornly insist on a narrative that global warming isn't real, even though they know it is (thanks to the magic wand), so you'll be left wondering if your wand even worked at all.

In my opinion these types of problems always boil down to fear. When a person or people are afraid they act erratically. At a large scale it often leads to the wrong type of leader stepping up to use that fear for their own gain, in many cases they pull the majority together by pointing at a smaller group and claiming they're the cause of all the problems.

The only reliable solution I know to that is for people to be principled. People need to know what core fundamentals matter to them and they need to stick to those guns consistently.

Today it seems like we've lost that almost entirely. Most people hold strong views on certain topics or policies but they aren't driven by principles, that becomes clear when their strong opinions contradict themselves at a pretty fundamental level.

There are plenty of symptoms of the problem and I'm oversimplifying here, but if I could wave a magic wand and change one thing it would be to restore principles back in the average person. I honestly don't care what their principles are, I don't think that's the point, we simply can't move in a good direction without people knowing what matters to them.

Populism tends to emerge from real grievances. Economic hardship, job insecurity, rapid social change. We're definitely seeing it.

Simultaneously, propaganda is getting worse. If you read the NY Post/Facebook and watch Fox, you aren't just getting a different opinion from someone watching CNN and reading the NYT. You're getting different facts. I encourage people to do a comparison. Its wild.

> You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That by itself is a hard ask.

But it's more or less the premise of democracy.

A professor in our school jokingly said that the key of functional democracy is to distance average voters from decision making processes. Now I am not so sure whether he was joking at all.

> You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That by itself is a hard ask. [...]

Personally, I don't think it's that hard of an ask. The problem was allowing the platforming of disinformation sponsored by adversary nation states that led to the mental pollution and radicalization of so many individuals.

Also, not protecting the neutral institutions and allowing that distrust be sown was a big mistake.

Finally, not taking the reports of infiltration of police and security agencies by extreme right organizations seriously has been proving to be a nation-ending level of an error.

> Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy.

Genuine question: what exactly is a "crisis of democracy"?

I see this term thrown around all the time now, but all I can conclude is it's just part of the hyperbolic rhetoric that dominates mainstream and social media.

Sometimes it seems to me that the general population should forsake the illusion of privacy on the web, and that mass interactions (comment sections, social media etc.) should embrace and enforce verified identities online more to curb the amount of influence being exerted on the public opinion.

To much poison in the well without any (social) accountability

I think you've described the problem (or one of them) very well.

We've seen how misinformation -- including ideas that were once fringe, believed only by a minority of cranks -- spreads and becomes acceptable, becomes a "legitimate alternative opinion".

We've seen, too, how hostile states, populists within, spread falsehoods to sew havoc and division.

My only hope, really, is that I think some of the younger generation are slightly more alert than some Gen X and millennials (my own generation) as to the dangers of misinformation online.

I wish I knew the solution too. Like you, I feel quite helpless even in terms of what to WANT. Can the Twitters of the world be regulated? If so, are we as a society able to agree on how it should be regulated, or are we too divided to agree on anything?

It's a mess. I don't know how we get out of it.

I dunno monied interests leveraging newfound scale of propaganda through internet monopolies might also bear some of the blame.

Who is responsible for these sustained propaganda campaigns? Some of it is foreign interference looking to destabilize, but a lot of it is sponsored by wealthy individuals whose interests are a lot different than the average person, and whose opinions are sheltered from the realities of ordinary life.

It’s always been the case (people getting hi jacked with propaganda campaigns!)

The difference now is how targeted, specific, and external said campaigns can be - for cheap.

Previously, if you started to send the anti-every-other-group propaganda to each individual, you’d be clearly identifiable, it would be more visible (flyers, leaflets, etc.) and consequences could be aimed in your direction.

What is going on now appears to be more like most people have ‘your own little narcissist’ in their pocket, poking their buttons in a way designed to drive them and everyone else crazy while deflecting the blame on everyone else.

Also, as the peer comment noted - all of this distracts from people’s actual real needs being met, which makes them easier to manipulate. It’s a classic strategy for any Narcissist.

> Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy.

No America is pretty uniquely having one, but because of American exceptionalism instead it can never just be an American problem it simply must be a global one.

Then why are you propagating class divide in your very comment? Like what the actual fuck?