Conservatives throughout history adore the dark ages of Europe. That was the peak of their power; the population was uneducated, worshiped the wealthy as kings and queens, and the people were too poor and stupid to do anything about it.

Because the rabid right has been on a campaign for the last 50+ years to regain control and regress the country to a time before the civil rights era and before Roe v Wade. They've followed a multi-pronged attack strategy. They spread propaganda via right wing AM talk radio and then Fox News, and so on. They sidled up to the Christian right wing. They have fought against school funding and fought against teaching science and have dictated a conservative biased curriculum (TX). They have groomed judges and justices and influenced their appointment. They attacked the middle class and funneled that wealth to the ultra rich. They instituted voter suppression and outrageous gerrymandering. And on and on.

Half a century of that and the rest of us are fighting for our democracy and our lives against the rise of the extremist right wing (aka fascism).

Religion and religion mixed with politics, mostly.

It's weird because conservative christians are some of the most evil people I know. It doesn't make sense.

The supreme Court was quoting 12th century English common law in support for the abolition of roe versus Wade, if that tells you anything.

Also they want to "increase the supply of ~~toddlers~~ infants" for the domestic US adoption industry, which was also in Alitos opinion.

And, you know what they say about opinions...

Because otherwise people might get silly ideas about equality and the state owing then a decent standard of living.

Cheap soldiers and workstaff coming from the poor and uneducated communities.

Think of education. Back before the Internet and smartphones took off, education was distributed. The most centralization we had was curriculums per state. TV was the closest thing to the Internet, and because it was all we had, it was a huge money maker. There was lots of quality content on there, including educational stuff like Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, Bill Nye the Science Guy... I could go in for a long time.

Once the Internet took over our lives, TV went to hell, and YouTube and social media took over. These were no longer curated or created with the same goals as the TV shows of the 90s. They are random people seeking attention, sucking in people so well that it pulled everyone down into a kind of sludge of stupidity. Instead of attracting people with dinosaurs, exploration to outer space, imagination, etc. they have Mr. Beast and others with their mouths wide open and spending a million dollars at a grocery store.

These are all English videos, so the barrier to entry for the US is very low compared to the rest of the world. They're also American culture, so it resonates with Americans more.

Europe also has far better education systems than the US, so that goes a long way in resisting this kind of stuff.

America is self imploding because of its own narcissism, and the Internet is feeding into that and having a snowball effect. There is no regulation of ideas there.

It's very similar to the dark ages because of someone just makes shit up, like "cure this disease by letting a leech suck some blood out of you" and enough people repeat it without being put in check by a higher authority, then it's adopted as a common belief.

That's the other part of this: politics is usually taboo to discuss with people here, at least many polite people think so. It's a touchy subject, so you're taught to not being up these things with friends or coworkers, which just creates even more of a vacuum.

Reading things like Democracy in Chains shed a lot of light.