If it wasn't for the American addiction to disinformation, Vice President Kamala Harris would have won the 2024 election. There's a lot of tap-dancing around this reality — pundits and politicians don't like suggesting that large numbers of voters are irrational — but it's true. People turned out by the millions to vote for a lying conspiracy theorist in Donald Trump because they are drowning in social media-driven nonsense and struggle to tell fact from fiction. Belief in conspiracy theories has risen dramatically, while consumption of reality-based news has plummeted. There's a high correlation between ignorance and voting for Republicans, so of course the GOP benefits as more Americans replace real news with a steady flow of baseless speculation spewed on popular podcasts and social media.
-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com
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