Of course they're responsible too. But mass-scale movements come from somewhere. They have systematic causes. The tech industry, and the ideology driving it, is manifestly amongst those causes.
Why can't something as complex as a historical change have multiple causes? And when the rise of social/economic inequality is such a clearly-evidenced part of the mix, why should those who have reaped unsustainable benefits from an unfair system not share part of the responsibility?
I'm not exculpating the ethno-nationalist forces (leaders or followers). They are dangerous and wrong (and their more moderate fellow travellers have allowed, for ignoble motives, nasty stuff to fester now for decades).
But when you have a rising class allocating ever rising shares of the world's wealth to itself, resentments will build. The Gates & Thiels of this world are fairly invulnerable and can buy themselves more fiercely guarded and gilded palaces to hide in (ever higher as the oceans rise). But for the rest, you would think even self-interest (let alone ethics) would have encouraged them to use their wealth and power to argue for a fairer polity. They didn't, and it's too late now: here comes the backlash with dizzying speed. It looks to me like we're beyond reason and are headed for widening violence and wars. I hope I'm wrong.
That again ignores that these people are operating inside a system, not in a vacuum. If you want to assign blame, fine, but don't confuse that with problem-solving. The blame game will not make American democracy functional again, it'll make it even worse.
When you point at techies as the cause, are you problem-solving, or playing the blame game? Sure looks like the latter to me.
Edit: I get it. This doesn't help. The thing is, I don't know how to fix it. It looks like we're just fucked. I'm thinking and trying to come up with a fix but it's not working yet. And in the mean time, when someone tries to blame me for this mess I didn't cause and argued against, I'm going to push back.
For the record I never blamed "techies". It's simple: political discourse is dysfunctional (in the sense: conflict-laden, and the conflicts don't get resolved effectively; that's all dysfunctional means). The best way to improve democracy is for each to improve the way they communicate.
2 necessary skills, that everybody can improve, are:
- empathic listening (always using the most generous interpretation of the other person's argument, and then walking back from there to your own opinion, to find common ground)
- problem-solving (look at the big picture, find the problem, and think of a good solution)
> And in the mean time, when someone tries to blame me for this mess I didn't cause and argued against, I'm going to push back.
There's nothing to push back against. This is just political conflict, and it's resolved the same way as any other conflict. If someone calls you crazy, and you reply: "well clearly I'm not crazy!" you may feel right but it's not effective communication.
Hmm. There's enough despair around and if my sharp wording added to it in your case I apologise. We're all bleeding and I need a longer posting delay. The causes of this mess are so widely distributed, finger-pointing is pointless (except von Clownstick -- I will not use his brand name -- and his crazed apparachniks who need blame aplenty)
