Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?

Media Ecosystem and “Dumber” Politics

• Several comments blame talk radio, cable news, and ad-tech–driven online platforms for incentivizing provocative, partisan “political entertainment” over accuracy or nuance.
• Others argue the underlying ratio of nonsense to truth hasn’t changed; what’s changed is amplification and visibility.
• Some point to Iraq, Vietnam, and earlier wars as evidence that large-scale propaganda and deception predate today’s media.

Reading, Cognition, and Attention

• One side strongly links reduced book reading and simpler texts to declining cognitive capacity and political understanding, likening reading’s benefits to exercise.
• Others say people may read more overall now (screens, short-form content), and mere length or sentence complexity doesn’t prove better thinking.
• A recurring theme: phones and fast-response social apps promote shallow, reactive “ping-pong” communication instead of slow, reflective thought.

Parenting, Education, and Literacy

• Multiple anecdotes describe kids heavily influenced by TikTok or friends’ claims, and parents trying to teach research skills and cultivate book habits.
• Suggested strategies: read aloud from birth, model reading as parents, liberal access to libraries and comics, audiobooks, and even allowing late bedtimes for reading.
• Debate over “censoring” or staging mature themes in books: some favor parental gating and discussion; others stress letting kids self-pace exposure.

Complexity vs Clarity in Texts

• Skepticism toward equating long sentences or Victorian prose with superior politics; some readers dislike padded, 200+ page books written for commercial reasons.
• Counterpoint: depth, repetition, and narrative richness often require space; reading isn’t (and shouldn’t be) optimized for information throughput.

Democracy, Incentives, and Systems

• Comments highlight gerrymandering, strong party identity, and winner-takes-all visibility contests as drivers of shallow politics regardless of literacy.
• Some argue mass democracies naturally push messaging to a lowest-common-denominator reading level; others note earlier political rhetoric could be equally crude.

Critiques of the Article’s Evidence

• Several commenters find the article’s claims under-argued, especially reliance on Flesch–Kincaid scores and cherry-picked historical examples (e.g., Washington vs Trump, Athenian ostracism).
• Others see readability declines as at least a plausible proxy for “dumbing down,” while agreeing that correlation and causation remain unclear.