You do a space search anymore and it is all churches and conspiracy tards and flat earth fuckery. These people must have tons of cash.

Who? How much do you think Russia is dumping into this sector? How about business's AGW disinformation campaign? Does it even require active funding anymore? Can the snowball of stupidity be set rolling with only a few bucks? I think it can, but it does also feel to me like there's still a false/troll/bought component pushing forward on the perceived-as-grassroots "campain 4 stoopiditie" thread woven into the last couple of decades. I'm only correcting for the effects of living in my little bubble as best I can, mind you, but there does seem to be a disconnect from people on the streets vs. people on the internet. Folks I meet, elders included, are generally polite and trusting when they listen to me discuss anything technical that they're unfamiliar with. I'm hoping that the effects of the security accompanying anonymity on the internet (and two incomparably different age groups) aren't wholly accountable for this. If even half of these people on some of the internet forums and comments sections I've seen are real, we're fucked. No, really. If those are the actual ideas and thoughts of people on the other side of town or somewhere out in the countryside, we better make sure some serious legal penalties and mental treatments are an option (and do we have decent mental healthcare? nope). At least a few members of hubski don't go to (m)any of those realms of the internet, I think. I don't blame you.

If this disconnect is real, that is to say, if the distrust of mainstream science truly is at the highest level in decades (and if the lower rungs of society are only going to get even angrier within the next few years), I think differences between the higher and lower tiers of education will not be sustainable in the near future, if they are right now. Then I arrive at a familiar question: "How do you fix a culture?". We can try, I guess. Cultural fitness selection will "fix" things, eventually, especially in this geopolitical climate, but the selection process doesn't give a shit about human life. Donald Trump might be a chemotherapy that some of our institutions end up benefiting from, in the long run, but I'm not sure that what's going on now isn't the new normal, or quickly on the way to becoming such. If this isn't a one-and-done type of political phenomenon, I might look at going global. But hell, Donny might save us all, somehow, in the long run. The "problem" may have compounded further under Hillary (or even Bernie). "Problem" being whichever one of the myriad things plaguing our society fails first. To me, student loan debt looks like it's first up to bat, but my view is obscured by all of the fake Monopoly money raining down from the upper deck. And all of this (frankly, bullshit) analysis is just as good as what's in the papers! Nobody seems to know hardly anything anymore, but that doesn't stop people from taking an absolutist stance, and I myself have been guilty of this inclination more than a few times. A calm, calculated approach doesn't sell. The sky is falling if we say it is, I guess.

I agree with you though, francopoli, I think some very nasty disinformation designed to further U.S. anti-intellectualism isn't a conspiratorial notion, it's something we probably should've taken seriously before Putin figured out how to weaponize the internet. Speaking of which, I'll be looking for boots-on-the-ground, little-guy style reporting about the climate of French social media leading up to their election. This is a reminder to myself to post in that thread.

Tell me what you see out there. My perspective is but one, and it's quite limited for the time being.