Daily US Times: Former President Barack Obama says the United States faces a huge task in reversing a culture of “crazy conspiracy theories” that have exacerbated divides in the country.
In an interview with BBC, he says the US is more sharply split than even four years ago, when Donald Trump won the presidency while suggesting that Joe Biden’s victory in the recent election is just the start of repairing those divisions.
Mr Obama thinks it will take more than one election to reverse those trends.
He urges that tackling a polarised nation cannot be left only to the decisions of politicians, but also requires people listening to one another and both structural change – agreeing on a “common set of facts” before arguing what to do about them.
However he says he sees “great hope” in the “sophisticated” attitudes of the next generation of Americans, urging young people to “cultivate that cautious optimism that the world can change” and “to be a part of that change”.
Resentment and anger between urban and rural America, injustices like inequality, immigration and “the kinds of crazy conspiracy theories – what some have called truth decay” have been amplified by some media outlets in the US and “turbocharged by social media”, the former president tells historian David Olusoga, in an interview for BBC Arts to promote his new memoir.
“We are very divided right now,” Barack Obama says, adding that, ”certainly more than we were when I first ran for office in 2007 and won the presidency in 2008.”
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