[Deckard]

The number of times I read comments below articles and just get floored by the sheer amount of stupidity. And I don't just mean people being in the unfortunate position of being uneducated, or lacking time to get up to speed on the intricacies of healthcare systems or international development. For the most part that ignorance is entirely understandable. No, what I mean is that very unique mix of unforgivable stupidity, combined with selfishness and topped off with spite and occasional thuggishness.

Really, it depresses me nowadays. After all, we're not talking YouTube comments here. Reading comments on mainstream platforms, more and more, genuinely depresses me. I think to myself, are people actually getting dumber? Or has the internet - and the explosion of opinion platforms - merely drawn back the curtain on stupidity that was always lying there, unnoticed?

Sometimes I feel optimistic that the internet is making people more informed, dispersing information, supplying examples of reasoning all of which represents the most wonderful intellectual revolution in centuries, and that slowly, ignorance is being countered. I tell myself that what seems to be the moronic 60% of public opinion is probably only 10% or less, and I'm being fooled into registering those particular neanderthal views more strongly than they warrant, which is throwing my perception of how proportionate they are.

Other times, I think - no, it really is as bad as I fear. And I fear that the internet - and digital communication platforms generally - are increasing the tribal mindset, reducing the amount of open-mindedness so crucial to any kind of intellectual growth. That people have gotten much more ideologically divided since the communications revolution (for want of a better phrase), and not in a healthy way.

One thing I can say is that it's not just the US. Or at least, if the US is going down, then the UK is going down with it. I think what we're all hearing said about Obama is coming from the same 'place' as what I read on British mainstream opinion platforms like the BBC and Sky News and even supposedly liberal blogs. A kind of mean-spirited anti-intellectualism.

In America's case, this is possibly made worse by latent racism, and by a deep culture of machismo that, it strikes me, has long run through US political debate and was always going to pounce on the skinny, cerebral liberal who showed the remotest sign of asking people to think.

What do you think? Is there a 90% silent majority of people who have reasonable views and just choose not to comment? (Btw, 'reasonable' doesn't have to equate to the same political position as yours or mine - it just has to be of a fairly decent quality.)

God I hope so. I hope these dickwads aren't indicative of our populations as a whole.

If they are, where is it all going wrong? And why does there appear to be no reverse gear?