How misinformation can make horrible persons win presidency

Post Reply New Topic

It is 2 years old video, but it is a very important case study; I am sure many can relate.

You should really watch the entire video; it was an early warning of what the future of elections in other countries would be like

Yeah, I can relate. I think along with widespread disinformation and misinformation people don’t know how to critically analyze information or verify it. It’s like education hasn’t kept up with our needs. Well, it hasn’t in the US. Of course, many don’t even want to analyze it. They prefer labeling stuff they don’t want to hear - that conflicts with their magical solution to problems as “fake news.”

It's frustrating to realize you live in a post-truth world where flooding the zone with disinformation isn't just done to push a specific counter-narrative as the truth, but instead to just make people give up at being able to identify genuine facts entirely.

It’s very far from the direction I thought we’d be heading in by this point when I left a religion that purported to be THE Truth many years ago and learned how to think. They were pushing the concept of “fake news” for decades.

I can't believe they would vote for the son of Marcos after they literally ran Marcos out of the country.

In the case of Trump, it's a combination of the following:

1. False narratives about crime. MAGAs are only focused on crimes in which (a) the victim is a young white girl/woman, (b) sexual assault is involved, (c) the perpetrator is an immigrant/person of color. Examples: Laken Riley, Kate Steinle, Central Park Five. If the victim is older, male, or a person of color, or if the suspect is white, there is silence from the right. This didn't start with Trump, right-wingers have always been obsessed with people of color having sex with white women (forcibly or consensually), it's their biggest fear.

2. The "war on Christianity" trope. And, no, I'm not talking about those who freak out when someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". I'm talking about those who opposed same-sex marriage because they thought it would mean they would go to jail for saying homosexuality is a sin. When California banned conversion therapy, righties were tweeting (x-ting?) "OHMIGOD, CALIFORNIA BANNED THE BIBLE!! !!" To them, being kicked off or denied a platform for purposely inflammatory rhetoric is considered "persecution". They'll accuse UC Berkeley of "silencing Christians" when the college doesn't allow a fundamentalist street preacher to speak, but are perfectly fine with Liberty or Bob Jones denying Richard Dawkins a platform.

3. Obsession with pedophilia/human trafficking. This is not to say that they aren't serious issues, which they certainly are. But people on the right focus on stoking paranoia about it, from the "Boys Beware" PSA of the 50s, the Satanic Panics of the 80s, to Pizzagate and Q-Anon today. Other examples involve the debate over trans people and bathrooms, the hysteria over drag queens, and Facebook scarelore ("people selling perfume out of their vans", "zip ties on windshield wipers", "teams of people following a mother and her small child at Wal-Mart", etc). The scarelore has been debunked time and time again, and statistics indicate that in cases of child sexual abuse, the overwhelming majority of cases are perpetrated by someone the child already knows, or even a relative. Yet when someone mentions Catholic priests or Matt Gaetz, nothing but silence from the right.

4. The belief that the 1950s was a magical, idyllic wonderland where nothing bad ever happened. While there were some positives about the decade (for example, the notion that one could live a good life on one income), it's still a time that very few people today want to relive or emulate, because of Jim Crow and things that women weren't allowed to do without her husband's approval. The "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" lifestyle didn't exist outside of those shows, and the average American's life wasn't like that. But people on the right still cling to that TV fantasy version of the 50s, and attribute every societal ill today to Americans having deviated from social norms that never existed.

^^^ Yes the missing ingredient is that many people are also selectively ignorant. Opportunistic politicians know voters want to hear promises that make them feel good. I know many people who vote for Marcos or trump are capable of critical thinking but why bother if they like what they are hearing.

A lot of people look after themselves.

I think from a strategic perspective, the democrats horribly underestimated conservative values (which I think crosses political/party lines) with regard to DEI, immigration, gun control, welfare, public spending and the impact of social activist popularism propagated by Obama which was being presented as a threat to Christianity (protections for LGBTQI + rights). Americans (even some Democrat voters and probably swinging voters) have a different vision of what America should be. In 2015 that aspiration was ripe for exploitation and MAGA weaponised the strong undercurrents which people wanted to say but didn't feel safe saying.

America remains a "package deal" which you can't separate patriotism from some basic needs. Foremost is living in a neighbourhood that is safe and homogenous, where schools and colleges remain basically a time capsule from the 1950s and where jobs are plentiful and safe for "real Americans" not immigrants. Starting with the tea party, fuelled by Qanon and MAGA, trump offered a fantasy of returning to core American values and a way of life. the republicans crafted a caricature of Hillary and Kamala being obstacles, the harbingers of wokeness, DEI and immigration which was making America weak and unsafe for their children.