Null Hypothesis = Democrats are wrong, Why is that?

[Sherrerd]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

That seems like a silly place to draw the line. Say a guy votes for Democrats, and donates money to them, and so on, but never the Republicans; how am I to reply to someone else, who says that said voter is astonishingly easy to manipulate? Sure, he readily grants that Republicans can’t actually manipulate him into doing a damn thing; he just clarifies that it’s the Democrats who can and do manipulate that guy with ease. “With astonishing ease,” he slowly and patiently explains.

To me, that claim is as pointless as the other one: of course people get talked into supporting the side they support ‘with ease’, and don’t get talked into doing the reverse ‘with ease’. Is that interesting? Am I missing something?

Yep. You’re missing that the manipulation being worked on the FoxNews viewers is to get them to vote for candidates who will act against the best interests of the majority of their voters. (How many of those voters are in the top 1% of the economy, after all?)

By contrast, people with more left-leaning or even centrist views, who are urged to vote for Democrats with the goal of supporting a rule-of-law platform, will be voting for measures that are in their own best interests.

The Republican “might makes right” platform will not benefit the majority of their voters, so getting those votes requires manipulation. Fortunately, due to the psychological makeup* of those voters, this can be accomplished with–you guessed it–Astonishing Ease.

@drad_dog

When you “manipulate” someone to do something it’s based on negative emotions: envy, greed, gluttony, rage, resentment. So yes I agree with you that the republicans are masters at manipulation. But I don’t see any inconsistency in it, if dems can’t or won’t "manipulate " people as the rebuplicans are doing.

You can’t “manipulate” people to be decent and conscientious.

Well said.

As with any other con job, getting people to vote against their own interests partakes of exploitation of the weaknesses of the marks.

*The right-wing cultural distaste for education plays a role here, too.

[drad_dog]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

That seems like a silly place to draw the line. Say a guy votes for Democrats, and donates money to them, and so on, but never the Republicans; how am I to reply to someone else, who says that said voter is astonishingly easy to manipulate? Sure, he readily grants that Republicans can’t actually manipulate him into doing a damn thing; he just clarifies that it’s the Democrats who can and do manipulate that guy with ease. “With astonishing ease,” he slowly and patiently explains.

To me, that claim is as pointless as the other one: of course people get talked into supporting the side they support ‘with ease’, and don’t get talked into doing the reverse ‘with ease’. Is that interesting? Am I missing something?

Well Democrats and Republicans are different. You can’t just say that as a conservative you are entitled to do whatever I do as a progressive and have it mean the same thing, because we are all equal, or something. You would probably be seen as disingenuous under those conditions in the rw. The conversation about how republicans vote has gone way beyond where you want it to go. So you are trying to make a big mud puddle and try to make everyone dirty.

I think the conversation has turned to why the right has gone in big for Putin and his platform, and seemingly committed moral/political suicide. When that happens people are going to look at your party and wonder what’s up. If you don’t then you are missing something or determined to miss something.

I get it. It’s hard to be a rightie.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Sherrerd

Yep. You’re missing that the manipulation being worked on the FoxNews viewers is to get them to vote for candidates who will act against the best interests of the majority of their voters. (How many of those voters are in the top 1% of the economy, after all?)

By contrast, people with more left-leaning or even centrist views, who are urged to vote for Democrats with the goal of supporting a rule-of-law platform, will be voting for measures that are in their own best interests.

The Republican “might makes right” platform will not benefit the majority of their voters, so getting those votes requires manipulation. Fortunately, due to the psychological makeup* of those voters, this can be accomplished with–you guessed it–Astonishing Ease.

Well, that helps make some sense of it, I guess. Clearly I disagree; I think what the Dems are pushing wouldn’t be in the best interests of those voters, and so from my perspective those voters are acting in their best interests and the Dems would need to manipulate them into doing otherwise — and so I didn’t get why the Dems wouldn’t, if you’re correct about it being so astonishingly easy.

But from your perspective, the right has an astonishingly easy time getting them to vote against their interests — while the left not only doesn’t get them to vote against their interests, but also doesn’t get them to vote for their interests, which, okay, granted, would be an interesting point.

[Velocity]

@drad_dog

the whining and complaining and obvious projecting, by rebuplikans **about how the dems supposedly “hate” Trump. **Where the hell did that word come from? THe dude has been self impeaching for 3 years. No one fucking hates him.

I guess this is what political scientists mean when they say America now lives in two separate worlds of facts.

From what I can see, a great many people, including many Democrats,*** do “fucking hate” Trump.***

[drad_dog]

@Velocity

I guess this is what political scientists mean when they say America now lives in two separate worlds of facts.

From what I can see, a great many people, including many Democrats,*** do “fucking hate” Trump.***

OK. I am allowed a clarification then:

People hate trump but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fantastic claims of some rebuplikan pols, that somehow, animosity towards him predated his admitted flagrant public human offenses. He is also very notably, a troll, and for someone to describe any one as hating him: well it has no weight whatsoever in getting truth out of this.

[RioRico]

@drad_dog

People hate trump but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fantastic claims of some rebuplikan pols, that somehow, animosity towards him predated his admitted flagrant public human offenses. He is also very notably, a troll, and for someone to describe any one as hating him: well it has no weight whatsoever in getting truth out of this.

People despise Tramp because he has spoken and acted despicably for many years. It’s not a matter of being prejudiced against him, PRE-judging him. Rather, his past is seen and accurately judged. The God-Emperor is a shitstain on the face of the nation. Regrets.

[Sam_Stone]

Even many Trump supporters will admit that his personal behaviour is atrocious, but they support him either because he’s doing the things they want (judges, tariffs, whatever), or they support him because his behaviour is atrocious but his enemies are their enemies and they like watching him stick it to them. To me, that’s extremely short-sighted behaviour, as what goes around eventually comes around. Democrats will eventually be back in power, and the right isn’t going to like Trump’s rules when applied to them.

The other argument is that lots of presidents have been rather horrible in their personal behaviour - it’s just that Trump is doing it in public where everyone can see. LBJ was a profane asshole. Kennedy was a womanizer. Roosevelt literally created concentration camps and threw Americans in them because of their genetic heritage. He tried to run roughshod over the Constitution, and when the Supreme Court kept stopping him he tried to pack it with loyal partisans. Woodrow Wilson was an authoritarian, racist eugenicist. Clinton was a serial sexual assaulter who inserted cigars into an intern in the Oval Office. And we all know how bad Nixon was.

The difference is that all the others were smart enough to put on a show of presidential behaviour in public, while Trump is too much of an ass to be able to turn it off.