See, I don’t think that is enough to motivate Trump’s supporters to do anything. If they end up suffering MORE THAN minorities, then they’ll definitely act. Likewise if they suffer LESS THAN minorities, but I suppose in the opposite direction.
Trump supporters in the general population are different from rationalizing so-called conservatives and rationalizing so-called christians. These last two groups have some interest in policy, at least to the point of having to simulate interest in their own supposed advocacy goals.
But Trump’s general-population supporters can’t tell the difference between bad things that are done to them by the government and bad things done by corporations and bad things they do to themselves. If they could they wouldn’t have voted for Trump in the first place.
So not only do they not care about policy, they don’t even care about their own well-being over time, because they will happily accept big-lie claims that any negatives are caused by Trump opponents. Trump could personally cancel medicare and social-security and his benefit-receiving followers would accept his claim it was a liberal plot.
It is interesting to see The Daily Shows reporter at those Trump Rallies when he is asking leading questions and then followups where the interviewee has to “flip-flop” to support their Leader - and it seems that most of them are oblivious to the fact that they are doing it… (I’m sure they have some B-roll where they get actual responses as well, but those wouldn’t be as funny).
(Course; You’d find the same “die hard followers” in the other camp, I am sure…)
You can, but not as many.
I mean, one party has been all about dismantling critical thinking and education. Not surprisingly their constituents are less likely to think critically.
https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/807339694765801472
“He no longer had to manipulate journalists and wait for them to act. He could tap out a few words and get what he wanted immediately. It reminded me of psychologist B.F. Skinner’s experiments with chickens that learned to push a button with their beaks for the reward of a food pellet. Once they had trained themselves, the birds couldn’t stop pecking even when the pellets no longer came and they injured themselves,” he said.
“Like Skinner’s animal subjects,” he concluded. “Trump has learned to get what he wants. No matter who criticizes him, no matter the consequences, he will keep doing it. Those who ask if he will stop scouring the press for evidence of enemies and using his power in an indiscriminate ways should stop thinking of him as a conventional politician and start looking at him as a chicken.”
A chicken with the nuclear code. A chicken with a cult-like following. A chicken who would shit-talk the CIA to defend Russia. A fucking chicken.
It’s funny that one of the hardest-hitting pieces I’ve read about the rise of Trump and his campaign has come from… Teen Vogue:
There is a long list of receipts when it comes to Trump’s lies. With the help of PolitiFact, clear-cut examples of deception include Trump saying that he watched thousands of people cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City (police say there’s no evidence of this), that the Mexican government forces immigrants into the U.S. (no evidence), that there are “30 or 34 million” immigrants in this country (there are 10 or 11 million), that he never supported the Iraq War (he told Howard Stern he did), that the unemployment rate is as high as “42 percent” (the highest reported rate is 16.4 percent), that the U.S. is the highest taxed country in the world (not true based on any metric of consideration), that crime is on the rise (it’s falling, and has been for decades), and too many other things to list here because the whole tactic is to clog the drain with an indecipherable mass of toxic waste. The gas lighting part comes in when the fictions are disputed by the media, and Trump doubles down on his lies, before painting himself as a victim of unfair coverage, sometimes even threatening to revoke access.
Trump has repeatedly attempted to undermine the press, including such well-respected publications as the New York Times. He has disseminated a wealth of unsubstantiated attacks on the media, though this baseless tweet from April pretty much sums it all up, “How bad is the New York Times – the most inaccurate coverage constantly. Always trying to belittle. Paper has lost its way!”
As a candidate, Trump’s gas lighting was manipulative, as President-elect it is a deliberate attempt to destabilize journalism as a check on the power of government.
Teen Vogue has been reliably on point and hard-hitting. One of the few magazines in the country to do so. How shameful for all the other newspapers and media organs.
You have to value and teach history in order for individuals who never lived through it to still learn from it. We don’t seem to do that anymore as a society. We seem to be shifting to a fuck you I’ve got mine mentality.
Aren’t most public schools in the US teaching the test to keep funding coming vs. teaching anything else already?
That can depend on the school district and how strapped for cash they are, also state laws. The mantra these days seems to be STEM to rule them all, nothing else matters. When I was in K-12 there was a lot of emphasis in the system I was in towards history tends to repeat itself if it’s not known or understood. I have a vivid memory of high school of one of my history teachers telling us this can happen again if we’re not careful… it’s right up there with how polarizing and sexy piano legs were back in the day (you know, so sexy and naught they had to be covered).
That reminds me of a few lines from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars:
[quote]
“They were so ignorant! Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, just like always. It was appalling how stupid they were, really, and he could not help lashing into them.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars[/quote]
Also relevant:
[quote]
“History was like some vast thing that was always over the tight horizon, invisible except in its effects. It was what happened when you weren’t looking – an unknowable infinity of events, which although out of control, controlled everything.” [/quote]
and
[quote]
“The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y.” [/quote]
This was published in '93, but seems to cut sharper today. Damn I need to read those books again.
Aside, I’ve been recently more deliberate to read authors I’m not as familiar with. How worthwhile would this series be to seek out?
I read the series about 20 years ago, but my memories are very favorable. I’ve read most of KSR’s stuff since then, and while he’s not my favorite author, he’s usually pretty good.
I loved Red Mars, but as the books switched from settling Mars to the politics of the new population I lost interest in it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything like that too. I do hate what I am hearing these days though, this idea that the education system should just be a tool to create efficient but also complacent (there might be a better word this) workers for employers. Whether we intend to or not, that is what we create when we removed the knowledge that doesn’t equate to some sort of productivity skill.
Not sure of the veracity but this is interesting:
Eh market opening drop. Queued up orders make opening minutes higher volume. Interesting, but that’d be real hard to prove anything.
Many people are saying it though. Smart people. Just last week ICE said it, they said it for the first time. And look at Wyoming, we’re doing great in Wyoming.
This is a bit depressing: