It’s not going to be easy.
Here’s a 37-second clip that needs to be shown at every Democratic meeting and function, and probably should be part of political ads, too. CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan corrects a lie repeated by a Trump supporter—who proceeds to tell him why facts are completely and utterly irrelevant to her:
It’s chilling because we know that this is the mindset of millions of voters. Literally millions.
I watched Wonder Woman spin arond and change outfits from casual attire, to a Wonder Woman outfit. And for just a second there, in the middle, I swear she was completely naked. I watched it on TV!
Part of the problem here is that we need to get away from this narrative that for most of these people “facts are completely and utterly irrelevant”. She never says anything of the sort. The problem is, she believes she does have facts (she saw them on tv!). That’s she’s utterly wrong about that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about the facts.
What we need is a way of getting through to these people, and convincing them that they’ve been lied to.
And yes, that’s going to be really freaking hard, but I can’t see what else we can do to even begin to try to fix this shit show.
I think this is such an important point. However, one of the reasons they’re so easily led is, they want to believe this stuff. What they’re hearing on TV is simply confirmation bias. It puts a double lock on getting through to them.
So many of these people have felt, rightly or wrongly, downtrodden for a long time. Finally, here is someone who loudly proclaims their opinions are just as good as everyone else’s facts. They won’t let go of that easily.
Don’t confuse ‘facts’ with ‘truth’. To the human brain, these two are completely different constructs.
That woman is not a member of the downtrodden. If anything, she’s one of the trodders. They live in The Villages in Florida-that’s unaffordable to anyone who isn’t at least solidly middle class if not upper middle class or higher.
She does not think of herself as downtrodden, either. She and her husband know where they are in the various social hierarchies and part of the reason they support Trump is that they want to make sure it doesn’t change and that everyone else (including the actual downtrodden) knows and stays in what the interviewees see as “their places.”
Hence the qualifier, “rightly or wrongly.”
My parents are not downtrodden by any measure, either. Yet they eagerly subscribe to the Cult of Perpetual Grievance and Victimhood. I did not say their views were congruent with reality.
“Downtrodden” doesn’t necessarily mean poor, unemployed, or homeless. It means they belong to this group:
Even if they’re already well-off, they feel they’re not getting all that they’re entitled to.
They’re singing the song that trump sang-- wasn’t he the World’s Biggest Victim? Everyone was always against him and trying to take what was his?
Exactly. Meaning, “Everything I want, and fuck the rest of you.”
Pretty much. They want to live in a world in which they don’t have to ‘apologize’ for who they are.
I think we need to convince all those who had previously lost money in Trump investments (Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza) the need to speak up. They settled for pennies on the dollar. I doubt they invested with him twice. Would that help them understand he’s a lifelong liar?
And how are these investigations going? Tax fraud? Money laundering? Something big has to start the dominoes rolling over.
The FEC won’t do it:
Mississippi’s Secretary of State says we need to vote for more Christians because the end times are coming.
I know I’m an incurable optimist and it sometimes leads me to erroneous conclusions, but my interpretation of this is that Trump should be more worried, not less.
First, as the WaPo article points out, the FEC handles the civil end of things only, not criminal. That Trump has evaded a civil penalty on behalf of the government is probably not a huge dodge.
It remains to be seen if a Biden DOJ will pursue criminal proceedings in this particular matter. If they don’t, I suspect the reason is because they have much bigger fish to fry with respect to the former guy. No sense wasting resources on what may be, by comparison, only a herring.
Webster lists this as Definition #1 for “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
I’ve now listed that as an example of a tautology.
Well, that’s one way of parsing what she says.
But notice that she never cites any facts. What “I watched it on TV” seems to mean to her is not that she saw facts that she accepts, but that she was TOLD what the situation is and she accepts that interpretation of what the situation is (in this case that some misconduct occurred–votes shoved under tables–that resulted in a false election outcome being announced).
You appear to believe that facts are important to everyone. I just don’t find that argument convincing. Everyone may pay lip service to the concept of “facts,” but not everyone believes in the rational examination of evidence.
Here’s another example. A CNN reporter went to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, California district, and talked with some of his constituents; first, “Bertha and Delmar”—in this transcript, “I” is for the interviewer and “B” is for Bertha:
Bertha knows that “evidence” is a good thing to have and that she should claim to have it. But she feels perfectly comfortable in declining to say what it is, because no one in her world actually believes that facts or evidence are real things—they’re just magic words you say to satisfy questioners, so that they will accept that you are justified in believing what you want to believe.
For Bertha, actual facts, in the sense of something you disclose in order to support your position or make your point, are indeed completely and utterly irrelevant. She has no problem with claiming she has them, and then declining to support her claim.
This is a problem.
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(my emphasis in the transcript)
Source:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/05/05/constituents-kevin-mccarthy-district-bakersfield-california-tuchman-ac360-vpx.cnn
I agree that people who argue in bad faith like this are a problem. However, that’s not all of them, and we really do need to get through to the ones who can (at least potentially) still be saved.
But if we go into it with the attitude that none of them care about the facts, then why even bother talking to them, or about them? If they really are that far gone, there’s literally no point to these discussions. At some point, if you really think it’s that bad, you eventually have to conclude that democracy is now just broken, and it’s time to start killing people.
I really hope we’re not at that point. I really hope some of them can be reasoned with. It wouldn’t even take that many to make a difference, either. Get even 5% of the current GOP voters to switch sides, or even just stop voting, and the whole electoral picture changes.
I’m pretty sure that I haven’t made any argument that could be construed as a claim that “none” of those who support Trump care about facts, or are reachable, or worth talking to, or anything close. I just don’t see any contentions that we should condemn every member of any particular group, anywhere in what I’ve posted.
If you are seeing such a theory being advanced in my posts, please specify the particular sentences you feel show such theorizing.
I do believe that a large proportion of the American population is being encouraged to consider “facts” and “evidence” as nothing more than words to be used to manipulate others, with no actual facts or evidence being of any interest, or being worth producing. That’s not the same thing as saying that not one single Republican voter cares about facts (or whatever it is you’re claiming I said).
In other words, you appear to be intent on arguing about something no one has actually claimed. Time for moving on to arguing about what people actually have claimed, maybe?
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ETA: If I added up all the times I’ve been challenged here for saying we should try to reach right-wingers on the fringes, or that it’s worth trying to communicate because some are going to dislike some particular outrageous FG position or action—well, your campaign of the last couple of posts does come across as richly ironic, is all I’ll say.
I think you’re talking past each other.
I don’t think there’s much distinction between people who think that “facts” and “evidence” are just buzzwords, like “fake news”, that you just throw into a sentence for rhetorical purposes.
Versus those who think they are important, but have a very poor understanding of how to evaluate evidence and claims (e.g. those people who think that Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson represent the pinnacle of objective logical analysis).
In both cases it seems that a level of education on basic reasoning is necessary before we can even start debating the issues. Well, you might get lucky and convince one such person of one claim. But in general, it’s a lot slower than a evidence-based discussion.