In the Information Age, the poor and uneducated rapidly gained access to the rest of the world and its knowledge, yet couldn’t tell what was true.

Those in power regarded these new cohorts opportunistically, as fertile soil and pliable tools, but the most cynical considered them weapons and cultivated their fear.

In the chaos that ensued, we sought to curtail their influence by censure, but the cynical were happy to amplify their voice. We attempted remediation with facts, but the cynical knew they preferred lies. So the conflict was recast as a war over culture and values, a profitable diversion for many.

We always dismissed the most obvious solution, addressing their fears, because these mostly boiled down to simple economic insecurity, and solving that has little short-term profit potential for those who have the most.