We need to boost Anne and Peter's voices as much as possible. I've shown their Autocracy in America stuff to several people and it always seems eye opening to them!
Every day I see reporting that the polls are even I get more stressed, more afraid. This is unlike anything that has ever happened in my long life....and everyone else seems to be just going with it. It is the most bizarre and profoundly disturbing time I have ever experienced. I realize how incredibly fortunate I have been to have been born in America during the peak of our success and freedom that this is looking like the end of that and the beginning of something....terrible.
Because, during civil rights we shuttered the park pools than share with ... them. Now, we shutter Democracy than share with ... them. It's racism. That simple. That simple.
We wouldn’t wouldn’t feel at this dangerous tipping point if we hadn’t been able to experience the period of the hope of the civil rights rise for much of our lives.
I'm 73 and feel just like you do. I told my sister I was glad I grew up in America when it really was great. I'm afraid the damage has already been done, and it's too late for us. This country will never be the same and it's frightening and sad. Very sad.
Same. I am waking up nervous every day. I don't even understand how Trump can be walking free. He has incited violence in the past and is doing it again. A second term will be his term for life, he will never leave. I am going to switch parties from Dem to Republican this week just to keep safe. I'll vote Harris.
Trump thrives on two things that usually go in tandem: lack of education and conspiracy. And I don’t mean college education, I mean the deficiency of American public school system to equip Americans with logical and critical thinking skills. Rote learning vs meaningful learning. People who don’t think logically fall easily to conspiracy because they don’t have the tools to draw logical conclusions between cause and effect, between point A and point B. Trump stands as mediator between points for his supporters. Trump is able to package all of the insecurities, stereotypes, prejudices, fears, ignorances, stand between the real causes of these problems, and give them an outcome and an answer that satisfies what they want to be a reality instead of what is. Why? Because he’s an old rich white man and he has the audacity to say it is so. Where Obama boasted his audacity to hope as his book title suggested, Trump elucidates the audacity to lie. In fact, he has been the most audacious old rich white man since Jim Crow era.
I agree with your argument, but would add another layered component to conspiracy: the feeling of powerlessness. I’ve personally witnessed, and I’m sure others can also attest to, individuals who under normal circumstances exhibit critical thinking and logical reasoning. The through line is when they lose their job, their spouse, their kids, or even their sense of purpose. That aimlessness will haunt them and make them question their past decisions. “Was I *really* being logical or using my critical thinking skills? I did everything “right” and still ended up HERE”
@@zakmendoza8817 I think this is more relevant than OPs comment personally. I know a lot of extremely intelligent Trump voters, they don't always buy or don't care about the stupid shit he says or how he lies. They're afraid of the left or they're watching their culture die slowly so they're putting their stock where they feel like they'll have some power to change that. It's not at all a lie that Christians are losing what they see as their country. My parents are highly educated and they've spent their entire lives helping almost entirely poor brown people for very little income. Incredible people. They're also fundementalist Christians, with 4 kids, only 1 of whom is a devoted Christian and 3 of whom live 500 miles away or more. They're constantly comparing us and themselves to one of our closest family friends because their 3 kids all live within 5 miles of their parents and they're all Christian. They just see those two situations and see that their only Christian daughter was in Christian private school the longest out of us and the rest of us spent most of our educations in very liberal high-schools and became liberals. They want public funds for Christian schools, 10 commandments in government buildings but all other religions curtailed, they don't want more immigration and they only see woke culture for the most extreme versions of it just like the left sees of the right. They don't see obliterating the checks and balances, Schedule F-ucking the government to people with no government experience, making our allies simply pay us to be allies and have their economies threatened if they leave the reserve currency, see allies abandoned to invaders if they don't sell their country to us and empowering autocratic leaning corporate executives and ending support for democracies abroad for principles sake as a serious threat. They just want Reagan to 2001 back when the news didn't show that crime was nearing active combat levels and accepted culture was practically monolithic.
There is some truth in what you say. Yet, studies show that some intelligent people are prone to conspiracy thinking. One reason is that constructing and defending an elaborate conspiracy theory can take a lot of mental energy and creativity. A second reason is that it probably strokes the ego of someone like Elon Musk to think that he's so much brighter than the "herd."
@@zakmendoza8817people fail to understand that you can do everything “right” and still not win. Seems like a lot of them believe in just world theory. The world is not and has never been fair. We can always lose, there are no guarantees.
Like in nature always forces at play, heat, sun, wind, water causing change on earth it’s weathering. In society it’s the forces of power that shapes it, public basic and deep government, commercial, corporate, democratic versus autocratic powers. Modern day normalization that comes with controlling the message. Marshall Macluhan saw the importance of the media snd the message
The state always supports autocrats abroad at the expense of egalitarians because we have two authoritarian parties beholden to the same donor class which is interested in extraction and exploitation. The parties break coarsely along the lines of population density and sex. Next month we have the opportunity to exercise our consumer level autonomy making the stylistic choice between a landlord and a prosecutor.
We need to break the cycles of dysfunction and celebrate those of function. Break the cycles of intergenerational dysfunctions like racism, racial healing starts with breaking the cycles that hurt US. Encourage positive growth by providing the crucibles for character. All of this for our future not just the future, as if it had no belonging. The future is ours, as long as we have our Democracy. Fight for it, vote Blue so you can.
The follower of the ex pres cannot use thinking to override their emotions- the orange could shit on their dinner table and they’d still vote for him because they think he will have the military kill me. WTF.
I forget what year exactly, but there is a news story about a visit by Tucker Carlson to Victor Orban of Hungary; as they finished their conversation, rose from their chairs and shook hands, Carlson can be heard to say, “I think this will work in our country.”
The excrescence which we call our "entrenched duopoly" is a phenomena that way too few Americans are willing or able to acknowledge. The "beautiful idea" of our Founding Fathers, expressed as a rebuke of European Monarchical excesses, has been made a mockery of in our contemporary history and politics. Oligarchic rule and propaganda has invaded our collective ideology and subsumed all those formerly beautiful ideas. Our impending election is little more than an insult to the American People and to the beautiful idea of democracy itself.
Indiscriminate selling of products makes the intended message just another product, and if we already know and understand the issue, this is absolutely counter to the presented concept.
Go back further. Rush Limbaugh: "The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper." People's minds have been poisoned for a long time. That is why it is so hard to break through to them.
Why are you asking other journalists to explain the psychology of this nonsense instead of asking mental health professionals? Try asking 1 of the 37 mental health pros that authored NY Times bestseller “THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP”
Why are you asking other journalists to explain the psychology of this nonsense instead of asking mental health professionals? Try asking 1 of the 37 mental health pros that authored NY Times bestseller “THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP”
