Hey Future Lovers,

My previous question here was about the future in a post-capitalist world. It became a blog entry with lots of sources to facts for further reading.

This topic is deeper. It's about a future where facts themselves come second to ideologies, and where ideologies include large-scale war as a viable option.

We have two widely accepted versions of reality on offer now, bolstered by social networks and mass media.

1. Mainstream mass media, which adheres to a journalistic standard while reporting some facts and under-reporting or ignoring others.

2. Non-mainstream mass media across the political spectrum. The non-mainstream media is based on pushing a polarized, identity-based set of talking points that require the audience to pick a "team". Once you support one ideology, the other becomes the "enemy". Ideas become personal possessions and are instantly accepted or rejected based on ideology.

The tribalistic "non-mainstream" media is, at core, based on the principle of solipsism -- that if you can't physically verify a fact, it could be false and is therefore suspect. Ideology then defines what is and is not a fact. And ideologies are, at core, tools to inform (and manipulate) large numbers of people. Religions offer metaphysical ideologies. Economic theories become religion-like dogma (capitalism vs. Marxism, for example).

In a functioning society, citizens first accept that facts exist independently from ideology. If citizens prioritize ideology over acceptance of facts, facts become tools for ideological manipulation. This is true regardless of your particular ideological preferences.

We now have regressive tendencies on display across the planet, for example in France, Germany, the U.K. and the United States.

Third War

Nativism, protectionism, xenophobia, isolationism, racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia are all rising. Even Naziism -- an ideology blatantly based on calls for genocide -- is being normalized as "free speech". These are the same dynamics that gave rise to the second world war.

Dictatorship

In the United States, the president's administration -- based on constant, blatant lies -- is now gutting institutions like health care and environmental protection. Tapping into citizens' mistrust of globalisation, the American president champions a "strongman" approach that promises to crush dissent in the press and across society. These are the first steps toward dictatorship, and they are accelerating by the day.

Assumptions and Guarantees

The American president has literally voted Wall Street into the White House, under the proven false assumption that rich people will help common citizens become rich, too. Gullible working-class Americans immersed in an alternative media bubble have apparently forgotten what happened to them as recently as 2008 (i.e. the Great Recession). Revocation of trade deals with China and support of the fossil fuel industry virtually guarantee that the United States will fall far behind in four years.

Overall, it seems like the world is headed for pre-World War II conditions. Now, though, several nations have nuclear capabilities. The world's largest economies seem to have forgotten what made them great -- cooperation rather than antagonism. And billionaires seem to be trying to take what they can before global corporate capitalism based on oil and American Empire finally destroys itself.

What's next?

• Will people keep pretending that dismantlement of social services, glorification of militarism, and destruction of the environment will somehow yield social mobility and opportunity instead of terrorism, poverty, war and chaos?

• Will people wake up in sufficient numbers before it's too late?

And if they do wake up, what kind of government will take the place of the current corrupt and dysfunctional one? Clinton was an opportunistic politician who took money from Wall Street. Trump is an egomaniacal billionaire who embodies the concept of vulture capitalism.

It all begins from how we define and accept the meaning of a fact.

Apocalyptic visions aside -- if this isn't the end of democracy in the U.S. and across the world, how does global civilization repair itself?