The essential problem is that there’s been a multi generational war on information, culminating in Fix News and other right wing media creating an alternate reality where culture wars are are the only thing roughly half the population think about.

You’re existing the in the real reality, so you see corruption. But half the people have need fed so many lies the corruption hidden by a layer of bullshit so thick they actually do think Trump was sent by God to stop trans people from going into women’s bathrooms.

They legitimately live on a different planet, and have made it clear they will literally riot if you contradict them. They fantasize about a civil war where they can kill you in your sleep. They can’t be fixed without being deprogrammed. But they don’t want to be deprogrammed. They want to be where they are. They are home.

[–] eightpix@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

You cam read more about this, and very accessibly, in Naomi Klein's Doppelganger. The shape of "the upside-down" world of "alternative facts" and "post-truth" advocates goes a long way toward explaining why people on opposite sides of this divide have literally different realities.

I also recommend The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. Though dated, it was published in 2007, its merits outweigh its quaint picture of the scale of corruption, ignorance, and deception we now experience.