I’ve been working on the problem since about ’92 and like many things, the curatorial function performed by the top handful of intellectuals alive at any given time is not able to keep pace with the volume of pseudoscience, sophistry, ideology, propaganda, and marketing over the past thirty or more years.
This is not the first time there has been a rebellion against science and reason. It happened in the ancient world and resulted in the medieval dark ages. That the rebellion against science and reason is nothing more than a reflection of a rebellion against western evolutionary pressure is less obvious.
If not for immigration it appears that we would have succeeded in falsifying the Jewish pseudoscientific counter-enlightenment just as we survived the German Rationalists (kant et all an the german secular theologists) and the French Moralists (Rousseau et al and the French Revolution). The difference being that the Jewish counter enlightenment (exemplified in Cantor-Bohr, Boas-Freud, Marx, Adorno-Fromm, Trotsky-Strauss-Kristol, Derrida, Friedan, and ongoing by Krugman-Stiglitz-DeLong et al ) is so broadly based, covers the entire scope of the disciplines, and is united in the past century, just as were Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the ancient world, to resist Evolution. Or stated more simply, the current debate remains the same, which is dysgenic female equalitarian strategies, vs the eugenic, male, hierarchical strategies. In other words, both the ancient world religions and the modern world ‘cults’ of pseudoscience, sophistry, and denial, are united in a single purpose, and that is the suppression of evolution by competitive, hierarchical, market meritocracies, of any kind, whether genetic (hindu), bureaucratic (chinese), or technical (european).
So in summary, (a) democracy combined with underclass or out-class immigration has created continued market demand for falsehoods. (b) resistance to the increase in market demand for falsehoods has created market demand for counter-arguments. (c) monopoly democracy (selection of priorities for the application of scarce resources) is incapable of suppression the increase in demand for falsehoods. (d) the Finance, State, Academy, Media, Entertainment, Advertising industries benefit from the the sale and distribution of these falsehoods.
So yes, market demand for falsehood is increasing market demand for conflict, which cannot be resolved due to the cheap cost and incentives for the distribution of falsehoods, and suppressed the production and distribution of truths. And that is why yes, intelligence, education, the quality of information, and the curatorial function of intellectuals have all declined.
Either you have a eugenic polity whose wealth is limited to productivity independent of increases in population, or you will have a dysgenic polity whose accumulated genetic, behavioral, cultural, institutional, territorial capital are consumed by a small number of generations.
This isn’t a novel theory. The cycles of rise and decline have been studied by multiple historians for thousands of years. The chinese found a method of persistence through vicious prosecution of criminals, intolerant colonization and forcible integration, and perhaps most importantly agrarian and financial eugenics that over three generations continuously cull family after family from the reproductive pool.
America was founded by eugenicists -they just didn’t use that terminology. They used ‘people of good character’. And we maintained the eugenic movement through the first world war. It was the intentional effort of the post war eastern european ashkenazi that worked full time every day to underming every single institution. Conspiracy? No It’s their way of life. Just like islam is the muslim way of life. Just like sovereignty and markets are the european way of life. Just like harmony, hierarchy and bureaucracy are the Chinese way of life.