Good points. But I feel like I got a little comfortable with a Harris win with some of the threads here, e.g “How can Trump win?” I agree this wont be a pleasant place for a MAGA-type poster, but did we turn a blind eye or were we too dismissive, again, to evidence that Trump’s chances were better than we thought, and Harris’ campaign was at more risk?
Well at least we were in good company; almost everywhere that was commenting on Trump’s rallies these last few weeks has commented on a person clearly falling apart and making own goal after own goal.
I actually frequent MAGA forums, and even they didn’t want to talk about anything that has happened in recent months. They just kept repeating the talking points and asserting Trump would win – yes correctly, but not based on anything specific.
It would be interesting to know what kind of factors influenced the betting markets, which were confident of a Trump win from quite a while ago.
We did have some cockeyed optimists in our midst who thought that Harris was unbeatable, but I think that that was more the exception than the rule, most of the posts in that “how can he win” thread point out that he could easily win. We also had our share of nervous Neillies who were sure that Harris was doomed and as it happens were right to be nervous. Most people I think were of the opinion that it could go either way. As I recall there was a “who will win” poll on the dope shortly before the election that had about equal numbers Trump vs Harris.
I don’t think this is an echo chamber. But, I think many liberals have no clue about the tide of bullshit we’re up against.
It’s easy for people who get their news from reputable sources to see that Trump is grossly unqualified to hold office, or employment in any respectable profession for that matter.
But, if you watch Fox News, you never hear anything bad about that guy. They often have it on in the break room at work, so I’m exposed to it much more than I would like. And to watch it, you would think that Trump is a Great American Hero who’s ready to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity and cheap gas prices. Kamala on the other hand is a corrupt communist who speaks in word salads and wants to flip your kid’s gender - and probably to a gender most people have never heard of at that. On Fox News you’ll never see Trump’s most embarrassing moments or hear the details of the numerous legal cases pending against him. But if Kamala, Biden or any other prominent Democrat makes even a minor gaffe, they’ll put in on a loop and their talking heads will engage in endless discussions about how that person is a complete dunce who should be allowed nowhere near the levers of power.
And Fox News is just the tip of the iceberg. You also have talk radio, which is its own form of toxicity. You have a slew of conservative and brotastic podcasters, of which Joe Rogan, sadly, is among the more civilized. You have outfits like OANN and Newsmax which make Fox News look like a bunch of hippie wokesters. And an awful lot of people in this country spend their days marinating their brains in that crap.
There’s really nothing on the left to combat that tsunami of misinformation. Even the big journalism outlets which traditionally turned out solid investigative reporting are now at war with themselves, as evidenced by the shitstorm that ensued when the LA Times and Washington Post declined to issue an endorsement for president.
Yes (((( yes yes yes
I think this is very much true and also I don’t always mind that. That being said, to say that some of us aren’t very welcoming to posters with a different view is a huge understatement.
@Crafter_Man said this in the Now what should people on the left do? thread and I think it bears repeating. I mean, we all know what the maga crowd thinks and wants but clearly we’re missing some insight into what normal Republicans are thinking. I don’t recall ever having a problem with most folks on the right until numpty trumpty foisted himself upon us. I may still have disagreed about a given issue but I wasn’t mad at them because of their political affiliation.
slight hijack: I don’t know of a non-clunky way to refer to non-maga Republicans
A post was merged into an existing topic: FreakinLiberal posts and his thread: Why no “introduce yourself” section?
Back in July of this year I had to ride in a car for a couple hours with someone who just had to had their daily allotment of right wing talk radio.
I was stunned at the non stop flow of anger from the host even when he was saying something relatively benign.
If one lives with that every day I can see where it would seep into your bones. They are angry about everything.
If you’d asked me whether Trump might win, I’d have SAID yes, but what I discovered on election day is that I didn’t really believe that, and I was pretty caught by surprise.
Pretty much this. I think with Biden at the helm my soul started to consider a trump win, but I still had a hard time believing that many people could do something that dumb as vote for him.
Since Kamala, I was playing lip service to the idea of a trump win. It seemed out of the question.
I had a moment of doubt a few days ago when I was driving on the highway and saw a Trump Caravan at least 200-300 strong, here in CA. But I still didn’t believe it.
Where I feel like I was in an echo chamber and was rudely pulled out is with Trump winning the popular vote. I never imagined that would happen. And it was a wakeup call.
I guess I underestimated how little “normies” know about politics or care about things like the false elector scheme/Jan 6, or how much frustration with the status quo there was.
Everyone lives in an echo chamber at this point. And the left-wing media over the last 8 years has adopted a lot of the tactics of the right, at least in terms of sensationalist reporting. I agree with the posters above who cite the constant “Trump has dementia, he’s exhaust and falling apart, this race will end any minute” coverage. Or the “Why is NPR/WAPO/NYT giving Trump a pass on his dementia!?!” headlines. I see on Reddit a lot, “Trump humiliated by fact check” titles. What does that even mean? It means some pundit went on MSNBC and said Trump was wrong. Full stop. That’s a terrible headline.
But here on the SDMB? I wouldn’t call it an echo chamber. Yes, a lot of the same garbage left wing “journalism” gets posted here. But generally speaking, when the right sees polls they don’t agree with, they attack the truth – the polls are all lies, the pollsters are hucksters, the polls are being used by the media to deceive you, etc. When the SDMB sees polls they don’t agree with, we take them seriously.
And I think we did. I don’t think anyone thought this election would be a cakewalk. It was a close election, and the polls / analysis all showed that. Even if they showed a 70% chance of Harris victory, that’s terrible odds.
I mean, I’m surprised that Trump won. But that’s because he already lost once – voters rejected him. And since then he did an insurrection, got impeached a 2nd time, was found legally liable for rape, was convicted of 34 felony counts, was convicted of massive fraud, etc. I had a little more faith in voters 2 days ago than I do now. But I didn’t ignore the polls, so I’m not, like, gobsmacked. More just dismayed and depressed.
when I tried to bring up in another thread that maybe, just maybe, not ALL of the 70+ million people who voted for Trump are raging racists and misogynists hell bent on overthrowing US democracy, and that it might be helpful to try to understand their motivations instead of just forever dismissing them as evil incarnate, I was greeted with what amounted to petulant child responses of “I don’t want to”. And you know what, that’s fine if they want to take that position, but it’s not very open minded and it’s certainly not very consistent with the mission statement of “fighting ignorance”.
So yes, at least politically, this place is an echo chamber. But what is worse, it’s not even an open minded echo chamber. It’s one that is actively hostile to even trying to understand the motivations for why others believe something different.
Really? Because I’ve been posting consistently on how it has mostly been about disinformation / ignorance and not encountered any resistance to that idea.
But yes, it does also appear that an awful lot of Americans are racist and misogynist. I’m not going to label them evil incarnate but I’m also not going to ignore the sad reality.
This thread in a nutshell.
I recommend perusing this thread:
Some predicted a close race, but many were hilariously confident on the side of Harris (Harris will win Florida! Maybe even Texas!). I see one person (totally ignored) that predicted a Trump popular vote win, and honestly, that one just seemed like a glum case of predicting the worst so they’d be pleasantly surprised. If the thread is representative of the SDMB as a whole, yes, this place is a total echo chamber.
that is certainly interesting reading in retrospect. I don’t fault people for thinking Harris would win, it was projected to be very close. I figured she would as well. But some people predicted she would win 330 or more electoral votes, that was simply delusional.
Generally people who espouse MAGA views with claims that , being factually false, can’t be backed up with evidence (i.e. pretty much all of them). If you make a controversial claim on this board you may be called out on it and will be expected to be able to back it up or retract it. That is what makes this board different from most of the internet and so not that welcoming to Trump supporters who rely on misinformation.
They show up occasionally generally make a few erroneous claims, which are immediately jumped on by the populace. They will then either usually ignore the evidence presented to them and just re-assert their claims until a moderator steps in and tells them to put up or shut up, or start insulting people or both. Either way they either quit or are banned relatively quickly.
Thank you. This is my experience. It’s not that they aren’t welcome, it’s that they’ve been feeding at the trough of misinformation for so long, they can no longer think critically about what they’ve been told.
Usually they are here to take pot shots at our regular posters or make unfounded, unsupported claims and doggedly stick to them no matter how much legitimate evidence is offered in opposition. We won’t keep someone long if those are their objectives. But we do try to give them lots of chances.
To be fair that thread was a pit thread specifically designed for people venting the frustrations of their ID. It was not meant for rational nuanced look at the opposition, but for rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth.
that’s a good point, and certainly true for some of those responses, but I also posted in a P&E thread, and got very similar responses. Now what should people on the left do? - #140 by Miller