282
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
282 points (94.3% liked)
politics
19118 readers
2804 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lizardman's constant is 4%
I think the results here can be explained by Lizardman's constant and an additional few respondents who interpreted the question to mean "Do you support Trump?" and then gave the answer that corresponded to supporting Trump.
Regardless of the nuance, when 20% of people - let's be conservative and say 10% even - translates into tens of millions of people, it normalizes very odd, if somewhat tamer, theories and ideas.
This is a cornerstone of rightwing thinking and spreading conspiracies. Qanon says "there is a secret democrat soros-clinton pedo ring and they all talk about it in code via emails. That's why the Clinton emails/server are so important." Then Breitbart says "liberals protect pedophiles and are corrupt with their emails and servers." Then Fox News says "Are liberals protecting pedophiles? Who can say. But this Clinton lady and her emails/servers are very corrupt and that's bad for America. We're just here asking questions and protecting the country."
Each version is more diluted so as to be more palatable to less and less extreme audiences. But it's a foot in the door. Because now someone has an opinion about pedophiles that is clearly laid out as one party's issue, so they are now receptive to things like "Biden is inappropriate with children." While further up the extremism ladder (or down the spiral, depending on your preferred analogy) they're already saying he's single-handedly running pedo camps or whatever insane idea they have that week.
It's just the same crap over and over again.
Big problem is that these fucking idiots who come up with these theories used to not have this practically unlimited reach the internet and particularly viral social media gives them.
And these stupid fucking ideas are really contagious among stupid people who have a chip on their shoulder and wanna have some sorta inside information that makes them feel in some way superior to others. That's QAnon in a nutshell as well.
Prior to all this social media bullshit there'd be enclaves of these dummies spotted around but they couldn't organize and breed like this.
I think for a lot of folks it's also the idea that there is a neat, identifiable cause of all their problems that falls under easy to tap in to prejudices. They don't want to accept that sometimes bad things just happen or maybe the people they vote for/believe in aren't doing everything they can to help them. It has to be someone putting their thumb on the scale. And dammit, Trump is going to stop that person!
I like how he didn’t stop shit (drain the swamp) whatsoever and that’s not a topic of discussion with those people.
So crazy that anybody could revere that guy. He’s all the worst aspects of humanity wrapped into a single person.