[news] Outlets should routinely consult psychologists and historians to ask the vital questions: How do people abandon rationality? What drives their fury and anxiety? How does an authoritarian figure maintain his hold on followers? How do ideas of racial purity play into it?
I have agonized over these considerations, and find that Dostoevsky, amongst others, is a good starting place. Walker Percy pays a lot of attention to moral tepidity and slow rot, as well.
There is nothing new under the sun about moral corruption, willful ignorance, and cruelty.