I am now 50

I am now 50.

AS you can see, I have changed the name of my blog. It will no longer be the ramblings of a naive rustic looking at a too too complex world.
I am, after all, one of the most educated and informed individuals that has ever lived.
As you are, of course. We have all received educations far better than that of Egyptian scribe or Greek philosopher, and an order of magnitude better than any farmer, slave, or warrior prior to the last 100 years.
We are also, however, at the same time the least knowledgable group in generations. There doesn't seem to be a single fact, from the teachings of Jesus to the nutritional value of wheat, that has not been challenged outright.
Worse still, the idea of the evidence-based fact has fallen out of favour. Counter-arguments for ideas like global warming, antidepressant overuse, and rule of law have devolved down to little more than "Oh, yeah? Well I say you're wrong! So there!"
No one offers any evidence. No one CARES about evidence! The Da Vinci Code sold a million copies after it was proved - actually proved - that much of the basic arguments were based on a half-century old fraud.
Today, instead of fact, we have credibility. Perceived credibility, I should say. Someone is telling the truth if you believe that someone is telling the truth. Evidence and proof be damned - if Rush says it, it must be true, and all the evidence against him have been fabricated by a conspiracy of anti-Rush lunatics.
Our own technology has turned against us. We now believe that all pictorial evidence that doesn't agree with our worldview comes out of George Lucas's special effects lab, and that all documents we hate were created by some nerd on his laptop.

In such a world like this, we are left with "truthiness" - the truth as confirmation of existing beliefs. And as we sort ourselves into small microcultures of like-minded internet chatterers, we isolate ourselves from our neighbours, our culture, and our national ideals.

The end of that path is balkanization - the breaking up of a nation into a thousand mini-nations.
I wonder which group will get the nukes?

I wonder if that group will believe that they can survive a nuclear war?

I wonder if that group will believe that God wants a nuclear war?