Tiassa:
I'm going to take a moment here to agree with you (I think). Surprise!
We might take a moment to wonder why that is even possible. It's one thing to
suggest↗ conservative voters are "consistently and repeatedly fed a whole bunch of lies, and coming to believe them", but that would say nothing about who is lying to them or how they came to believe.
In the same post you quoted from (#175, above), I had something to say about who is lying and why they are doing it.
The United States has a few strongly right-wing media outlets, which are owned by conservative billionaires who are willing to tell lies to make even more billions. There are, of course, also a number of left-leaning media outlets, some of which are also owned by billionaires, most (not all) of which are also for-profit enterprises. However, while the rightist outlets are happy to have people on who are demonstrable liars, the leftist outlets are more likely to just fail to platform certain stories or points of view (things the Right also does). As a rule, the left-leaning media tends to report fact-based stories, whereas the conservative media is willing to platform lies and liars, while often ignoring the facts or pretending there are "alternative facts".
In an ideal world, people would be rational about this. They would compare the various media and make some effort to distinguish fact from fiction; then they would gravitate towards the more trustworthy, fact-based media. But ours is very far from an ideal world. People often prefer to listen to what they want to hear and to play down or ignore what they wish wasn't the case. The polarisation of the media landscape in recent years has led to a situation where people can tune into things they want to hear pretty much exclusively. That is, they can get all their "news" from one or a few sources that are all ideologically driven and aligned with a certain world view tailor-made to the viewer/listener. And if you're a media mogul, it can be highly profitable to give the public what it wants rather than what it needs.
The media and its polarisation is not just a cause, though. There is an ecosystem in play in which the media reinforces certain political messages and the politics drives the media to even greater polarisation and extremity.
There is applicable history; just like it's one thing if "Republican voters live in an alternate reality", but nobody needs to encourage them.
I agree that the people themselves obviously bear some responsibility for their own ignorance. It's not just that the media does it to them. They do it to themselves. They are willing participants. The causation goes both ways. However, they
are encouraged. Constantly and actively.
Try thinking of it like censorship, James. Perhaps to you it sounds like a loaded statement, but these are people who think they are censored when they are not allowed to censor others. And if I say this is a problem that has been going on for years, I don't mean the eight and a half years since Donald Trump rode down his escalator to say the things they so badly wanted to hear, I mean decades, and not just the one or two since Bush lied about Iraq. That market demand, the things those voters so badly wanted to hear, has persisted for generations.
Another way to put it is this, I think: certain groups of people used to have more political power - more power to make sure it was their way or the highway - than they have today, and their power appears to be waning, if we are to judge from a birds-eye-view historical perspective. One of the main reasons is demographic change in the US population. It's the recent immigrants. It's the lower white birthrate compared to people of colour. It's the decline of religion.
People with power tend to want to hold onto it. People who don't have power tend to want those who they believe best represent their interests to hold onto the power, ideally on their behalf. Fear is an especially powerful motivator. People who are told over and over to fear certain things are more willing to buy into the lie that they require a Strong Man to protect them and their interests, or even to Make them Great Again.
And if you follow the history of rhetoric, politics, and justice in the U.S., you'll find a tenuous, even volatile, relationship between conservatives and fact.
I'm not sure that "conservatives" is the most appropriate word to use to describe the MAGA crowd. Conservatives have traditionally supported institutions, the Constitution, and ... well ... traditional politics, religion, moral values and so on. The MAGA crowd are radicals. They want to throw out democracy and replace it with authoritarianism, although I'm sure that only a fraction of them would go so far as to describe (and celebrate) the logical ends of their position in those terms. But yes, "fact" is typically one of the first casualties of totalitarianism; these are people who prefer burning books to reading them.
You, for instance, ought to be able to remember the idea of intelligent design as part of the politics around creationism and the Bible in the classroom. Inasmuch as "Republican voters live in an alternate reality", and some part of that is that is, as it goes, they are "consistently and repeatedly fed a whole bunch of lies, and coming to believe them", we might wonder how that works for theocratic rightists, such as who has been lying to the Christian nationalists. Nor is it just Dominionists; it was unsurprising to hear of Seventh-Day Adventist literature in the detritus of insurrection.
I have long believed fundamentalist religion to be detrimental to human flourishing in most instances. When religion is co-opted by cynical politics and used to manipulate people (even more), it can be an even more destructive force than usual.
"Intelligent design" was a smokescreen for Creationism from the start, put up by the fundamentalists because that pesky First Amendment of yours meant they didn't get to pretend that the Bible is a scientific text in school science classes. But why did they want Creationism in the first place? The answer again, I think, comes down to fear. Fear that telling the truth to children - e.g. educating them about the science of evolution - would lead to a moral decline that could only be prevented by telling kids some lies about the Bible and God.
The usual disclaimer goes here, of course:
not all religionists. Just the ones that are the religious equivalent of MAGA. And, let's also not forget there's a rather large crossover there, too. Donald Trump has even taken to pretending he is religious, because it gets more evangelicals on side.
Because, sure, maybe it sounds like a loaded statement to suggest these are people who think they are censored if they are not allowed to censor others, but you've also experienced part of that history, yourself.
It's not ridiculous, by any means. It's the whole thing about fearing a decline or loss of power, resenting it and then vigorously demanding their "right" to it.
And if the problem is that Republican voters can wish hard enough that they might actually get what they think they want, we can also wonder why that is even possible.
That's still a bit of a mystery to me, watching it all unfold from half a world away. I sometimes wonder if the progressive media and commentators and analysts might just be a little too
nice about the whole business. They report and comment on the facts: "Today Trump told 3 new lies and 10 old ones; decide for yourself what they means to you." Maybe what is needed is some dumbing-down and some more patient explanation for those who have fallen under the spell. On the other hand, I don't think those people can be reached through the normal channels. They don't pay attention to those.
The big mystery is not so much the dyed-in-the-wool MAGA types, Hillary Clinton's "deplorables". Those people have always been unreachable. No, the big mystery is the so-called "moderate" Republicans, who for some reason have still decided that Trump is preferable to Biden, despite his character, all his lies, his narcissism and the rest; maybe tribe is more important than principles? Or maybe it's the fear again. What will Trump do to his detractors if he is re-elected?
Of course,
all of this still only covers the Republicans. There is still possible hope to be found with the unaffiliated voters, who
might be sensible enough, brave enough and motivated enough to want to prevent Trump 2.0. But there are no guarantees.
In American history and discourse, it would be more than a little ironic if this question that coincides with conservative politics, the mitigating story, would tell a tale that seeks to blame nebulous others.
I am not trying to absolve "conservatives" or to place the blame on "nebulous others". The "others" aren't particularly nebulous or anonymous. Many of them are conservatives themselves. And sure, the rest are doing it to themselves, as well. The scary thing is that they might just take the rest of you down with them. And that's not just bad for all of you over there in the USA. It's bad for the rest of us, in what remains of the "free" world.
Trump can confess, and even boast, of crimes, and they adore him all the more.
They believe he is sticking it to the Man. They don't realise he's going to stick it
to them, if he gets half a chance. There's only one person Trump really cares about, and yet some people practically worship him. That's a peculiar sort of blindness and naivete that I think is only possible when you live in a more-or-less impermeable, inward-looking and self-absorbed social bubble.
