We've always been this dumb in general, but we've never before provided such enormous reach to our dumbest voices, nor enabled our weirdest to "find community" (eg. flat-earthers). This in combination with the fact that we've consistently failed to upgrade our education methods and syllabi during a time when culture and society have been undergoing massive changes and it's clear that we've set ourselves up to fail in a big way.

There's also the exposure of ugly elements of governance and society that have always been present to take into consideration.

The only solace I take is from the fact that our brightest are also finding community and we're slowly but surely finding technological solutions to these problems. For years I've been maintaining that we're not actually in the information age yet, just the beginning of the transition period from the industrial.