Post

Trump should have been in jail decades ago but Dem and GOP administrations turned a blind eye to white collar crime or just had them pay a token fine. See Jamie Dimon. The voters didn't get Trump where he is today - political leaders did and the press obfuscated and/or ignored it all.

Like, it’s no wonder they believe things like this when they have no frame of reference

I had similar discussions during W. She seemed to believe in a magical "they" who would stop them from terrible things. I said YOU ARE THE THEY. We stopped speaking, for the last time, shortly before Trump 1.0.

A lot of times ‘or’ is used when ‘and’ is actually a better fit.

A big part of the issue appears to be the lack of actual news. Everyone is a pundit for their respective party, and people are unwilling to hear the other side and also unable to understand complex matters.

This is my disconnect. As bad as the media environment is, every voter had a lived experience of Trump as President. They knew. They lived it! His lies are obvious. They think it's funny that he lies and hurts others - until it affects them. Once might've been a mistake. Twice was inexcusable.

Repubs ran a genius campaign psyche ops algorithms media social media. DEMS : NOTHING. They have to spend big money they are so far behind and pay some surrogates that can do more than barely stammer out a sentence. Dems arrogantly willfully ignored American pleas to change immigration

But this never was any different. The left too failed to provide afforbable/free and quality education to the people, which would have been really smart and possible if some things that don't generate a billion dollars in profit were allowed to exist.

Or they just need to listen, see and trust that if it sounds crazy, it is.

the way it went last time was that he kept giving orders for insane/illegal stuff, and his subordinates kept disobeying him. That's not happening this time.

A compulsory voting law (with a federal holiday, etc.) was once seen as a surefire way to entrench Democrat control. I now think it would benefit the GOP much more, perhaps to the point of stranglehold.

While the transition was probably coming anyway, Craigslist and its free listing killed a lot of revenue newspapers, especially smaller ones, needed to survive

Media thrives on the excitement factor. Someone replied it is business. Hype has taken over media selling us what? Can we not tell the difference real and pretend, quality and faux? I do not believe that.

THIS ^^^^^ x1000

Seems like a few of them are going to have to fall off the cliff before any of them will believe the cliff is real.

This is very funny in the shadow of Biden's Presidency dedicating more than a quarter of its run time to funding and facilitating Israel's genocide in Palestine. Did Biden voters press that button? Were they idiots? Or were they misled?

I've always thought that, plus people are wedded to eroneous beliefs even when confronted with strong evidence of their error.

1 more point on literacy: it's a disaster that the inner workings of the US government are incredibly complicated and illogical (filibuster, reconciliation, Electoral College, etc). parliaments work better bc dipshits can pick a party that sounds good and see that legibly translated into outcomes

I genuinely believe some people need to have their smartphones taken away and replaced by phones without internet connections. Alot of people just can't handle beeing bombarded with shit and can't even quit it either. Someone like Musk may die from withdraw if he can't use SM for like a week.

Your empathy has to step in front of your self interest or you can't really be a human being.

The idea of voting for your self interest is so foreign to me. You get this opportunity to express, in a fairly meaningless symbolic way, what kind of world you want to live in. Why would you choose to be selfish? In a limited sense I understand Trump supporters who eschew their interests.

Yes. Like all GOP, she cares only about herself. Idiot,sheep,moron,deplorable,mentally stunted, these people are dumb. They don't possess critical thinking skills. Oh, their ignorance is intentional, by the way. A bunch of morons running around, shooting their selves in the feet.

Maybe she has learned a lesson. I read the whole article. She wanted something for free and made a terrible decision. She thought about it for 15 minutes at the ballot box. Voted for a rapist, believing a rapist. As an assault victim. Really. SMH.

Exactly. I know I'm butchering this quote in some way, but it all comes back to "I don't know how to convince you to care about other people."

My God she’s a victim of sexual assault and yet just because her family sided with the predator in chief she voted for him. Seriously messed up.

Yeah, the value judgment was that she was worth less. A social fabric of victim blaming and furious misogyny is itself a powerful bamboozle.

People are also being actively lied to, all the goddamned time

Exactly.

Damn you Holden Caulfield!

I will admit that is tough when the agenda setters and leaders in media are obviously Trump cheerleaders

Some wise old baseball manager (i forget who) once said a large part of his job was keeping the players who hated him away from those who haven't made up their mind yet

Yea, I mean grifters take in the desperate and the gullible and there were a lot of both last year. Difficult for me to put myself in the headspace of someone who groks Trump hates women but thinks he'll give them free IVF tho.

Yep! These are exactly the type of voters we need to welcome into the fold - along with non-voters- so we have a resounding victory in 26 & 28 that defeats trumpism once and for all.

It’s why I’m not sure we will ever get out of this cycle where the left only wins by picking up the ashes from the policies of the right-wing. And each time, the rebuilding is less and less of its former self.

That was launched / stolen some years later correct?

like, "woman sees TikTok claiming that Trump will do whatever, immediately believes it, doesn't bother to look for any other information"...what could CNN have done differently to address that?

They want perceived leadership and easy answers. Republicans have provided "leadership" in the form of easy answers and scapegoats. The massive disinformation network on the right does a great job of selling their lies and the MSM is dead. Until that dynamic is challenged we lose low info voters.

I’m writing about this in a couple of weeks, but what the big tech companies are really best at is the race to the bottom. They have completely devalued every market they’ve entered, from hardware to advertising to news and entertainment media. Sometimes it’s good for us, but usually it’s ruinous.

i can add a bit more in this case! There was actually a push within NPR itself to go more "centrist", and this wasn't new either. Hell, it might've been 10 years ago at this point when i read an article that had one of the higher-ups there saying "we need to make NPR safe for capitalism"

Worse, rather than lean into the advantage of trad media as a differentiator, they tried to make it *more* like the new meme-driven social media, and compete on disadvantageous turf.

Net Neutrality movement was a partial driver of this, insuring that consumers would continue kicking in ~$70/mo to subsidize the content/ad industry, driving marginal cost of audience size to near zero and creating attention economy with winner take all market dynamics

I mean, sure. and yes, mass media at all levels bears a large share of responsibility. but come on, voters also have agency. trump is a known quantity and has been for a decade—in politics specifically. unless you've been floating in a literal fucking void, you know who and what you were voting for.

i completely agree. but the question remains, where were they from 2017 - 2020? even if you're totally checked out and surviving on a diet of TikTok and facebook, do they not see the racism and misogyny, the punching down? the uncountable lies & sexual assaults? why does none of that matter to them?

Trump showed the world exactly who he is, repeatedly. He promised "a dictatorship from day one". Some chose to ignore that. Others actively voted for it because they *wanted* the cruel and punitive policies. They accepted it thinking they'd be exempt from the suffering. Some people are just shitty.

No, I blame the people caught in the con because they chose to. They could have listened to both messages and researched.

The only issue being... HE WAS PRESIDENT 5 YEARS AGO

rather ironic that the Washington Post runs this story, that communicates this lesson.

I learned about what makes Trumpism abhorrent on FB. The info is there for those who seek the truth. I don't even have an account anymore, but that's not a reason to let ignorant ppl off the hook. Figure out why human rights matter...it's that simple. No one gets a pass who can't deal w/ that.