That is largely the media's fault. They covered Trump 24/7 during his entire presidency like it was some sort of addiction. They could have covered anything they wanted (and they ignored numerous newsworthy stories). Perhaps we need a media with the self-discipline to look away from a car crash for 5 minutes.
I'm referring to grassroots discourse and good faith debate. It's awfully hard to discuss approaches to problems and weigh blue-paradigm approaches with red-paradigm approaches when you've got a sizeable contingent who's position is that the whole problem is "fake news" and by the way everyone who thinks it might be real is stupid.
And sure, the same effect caused the media to go crazy. That doesn't mean the entire effect can be lumped onto "the media". Destruction of the memetic environment via disinformation is real in and of itself.
