I really don't think it's about social media. Conspiracy theories were a big deal on the leadup to the French revolution (look up the Famine Pact and the Great Fear), and there was no social media back then.
The conversation that no one wants to have is that American society is in a similar process of collapse, and conspiratorial thinking is only gaining traction because no one trusts that the state holds the general interest anymore. The real social challenge to overcome is government legitimacy.
If in our time conspiracies are perpetuated because of for-profit incentives, it is only because profit is what our society is structured around at a fundamental level. When the time for collapse has come, it brings itself into being by means of any and all existing institutions.
EDIT: and for the record, it's not about cognitive biases either. No one here has a real historical perspective.
It's hilarious to see people talking about rule of law when the President of the United States himself is not bound by it. The President! You can see it very clearly why interwar liberalism failed. As Schmitt points out, they were too caught up in constitutional handwringing to comprehend that they had entered a state of exception, and that normal laws and procedures were not to be followed.
To be honest, if he didn't pay a cut of his earnings while living off government allocated funds, wouldn't that put him in a better position than those who haven't been found guilty and sentenced for breaking the laws of the land in which they reside? I can't see a much resistance to the argument that they one really ought to pay the full cost back to the state, as with community service... no?
No, for the simple fact that he'd still be stuck in an American prison where people are brutalized, sexually assaulted, denied access to medical care, abused by guards, etc. regularly. He deserves everything he is able to earn under those conditions, and truthfully it's a miracle he can work at all.
Americans have become too comfortable with their everyday sadism.
Given enough time one human can learn to do anything any other human can do. There is a general capacity for learning, even if someone will only ever transform a specific portion of that capacity into actual activity in their lifetime.
The real question is, what is it that you're so afraid of with gender/sexuality that you think it makes sense to show some expressions of it but not others? Sexual norms change regardless of what is officially considered normative and regardless of what is repressed, so you must know you're fighting a losing battle. So who or what is it exactly that you're fighting for? I think it has more to do with yourself than with children.
I am currently coasting through a mathematics undergraduate degree after having taught myself how to do proofs using a proof assistant. The last barrier to autodidacticism in mathematics is overcome with them, because one no longer needs direct contact with the mathematical community via academia to learn the techniques used (at the undergraduate level.)
I don't think the math libraries for proof assistants are good enough to support undergrad math very well, but they may be occasionally useful in specific places. I still think you will dominantly be doing informal proofs to make progress with any velocity.
Much sillier to think "reindustrialization" is possible. It is a problem of social metabolism, not a policy issue. Industrialization was a particular historical phenomenon that has now fully passed in the West.
China "won" before the game even began for the simple fact of them being a very late developer. Development is not even guaranteed as a consequence of industrialization anymore; see premature deindustrialization. No misinformation needed, just cold hard historical laws.
The conversation that no one wants to have is that American society is in a similar process of collapse, and conspiratorial thinking is only gaining traction because no one trusts that the state holds the general interest anymore. The real social challenge to overcome is government legitimacy.
If in our time conspiracies are perpetuated because of for-profit incentives, it is only because profit is what our society is structured around at a fundamental level. When the time for collapse has come, it brings itself into being by means of any and all existing institutions.
EDIT: and for the record, it's not about cognitive biases either. No one here has a real historical perspective.