I have spent the last 8 years arguing with whack-jobs on a right-wing board. It began in 2015, a few months before Trump announced his POTUS campaign. I keep hoping that I can make a break-through with a few of them. But it never happens. As a group, they reinforce each other, and being part of the Mob is more important than listening to reason or reading links that show them my points of view. Examples of what I post to them that gets swatted aside as deep-state conspiracies:
Statistics around how Covid vaccines save lives.
Studies of the inefficacy of Invermectin.
Studies that back up man-made Climate Change
Links that debunk all kinds of nonsense on any number of topics
Comparisons of healthcare systems around the world.
economic statistics comparing blue & red counties
crime statistics comparing, say, NYC to Oklahoma, for example…
etc etc etc
I’ve been wasting my time, and will no longer take part in those forums. I’ve come to realize that I’m a stage prop in their act. I’m there to be a punching-bag, and provide comic relief. Usually, when I post something and can back it up, they get angry, and the name-calling starts.
I will not provide a link to the site I’ve been frequenting. But I will say that a lot of right-wing sites are buried inside college football websites. These websites are mostly for fans of various schools (think SEC & ACC & Big-10, etc) to discuss their teams. But there are off-shoot board within the overall site that is usually for “other topics” or for “political talk”. And the stuff that gets thrown around will make you sick to your stomach. There are alot of these boards out there, and they fly under the radar. The owners of the sites don’t heavily moderate. So, it becomes a Lord of the Flies situation, and college football fans are on average heavily Republican, and either full-blown MAGA or quietly supportive of MAGA.
I can say without a doubt that the right-wing is freaked-out - I mean FREAKED OUT - about lgbtq and race and just general culture war stuff. Economic policy, environmental policy, healthcare policy, and even defense policy doesn’t motivate them. It’s red-meat hatred of gays, transgender, black people, immigrants from non-European countries…
And anyone there to remind them that there are other ways to look at things is treated as if he/she hates America & is a piece of human trash.
Anyway, it’s taken me 8 years to remove myself from their stage act. I guess I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes.
Get out and stay out for your own sanity and peace of mind. These guys get their “news” from Trump’s Truth Social postings. Get out, and don’t look back.
Hang out here, instead.
Sorry about the wasted time. It’s so much easier to repeat sound bites, especially if they are reinforced over and over again by others, than it is to slog through statistics and studies.
There are a few of the right-wingers who hate Trump as much as I do. But what I find is that they will make anti-Trump arguments, and then turn right around and pretend (yes, they are pretending, IMO) that the Democrats are just as radical as Trump or even worse. They will say stuff like Biden is a segregationist or Hillary has murdered people, or the ACA is a fascist takeover of healthcare. It’s maddening, because I think they’re doing that to protect their image on that board instead of really looking at both parties for what they are.
I’ve always felt there are two types of people; people who think and people who believe. And these two types of people often don’t even realize the other type exists and feel that everyone else arrives at the “truth” the same way they do. So when people from these two different groups argue over what the truth is, they’re often not communicating at all.
I was once having a conversation with a co-worker who was a heavy smoker and she said “Some people believe smoking is bad for you and some people don’t.” And she wasn’t joking. She apparently felt that there wasn’t an objective truth about whether or not smoking was bad for you. She felt is it was a matter of opinion and either side was equally valid - and that believing your opinion made that opinion true.
If I had argued the issue with her and forced her to look at the evidence, I might have convinced her that smoking was bad for her. But she wouldn’t have thanked me for it. In her point of view, I wouldn’t have revealed the truth that smoking was dangerous - I would have made smoking dangerous by undermining her belief that it was safe.
Based on the letters i used to get from the Trump campaign, they are also deeply misogynistic, and terrified of and disgusted by the idea of women in power.
They didn’t say why Trump was good. They didn’t say why Biden was bad. They said that if Biden won the election, Hillary and Nancy would be in power.
The remarkable thing about that list, which I agree is typical of the subjects on which right-wing morons hold delusional beliefs, is the way they can reject facts that are well supported by credible sources yet cheerfully accept utter nonsense that is supported by nothing except their own rants and a cabal of comically discreditable propaganda outlets. If something is effective against COVID, they’re against it; if it’s completely useless, they’re all for it – and so on and so on across virtually all topics.
It’s easy to just dismiss it all as abject stupidity, which it is, but it’s more productive to try to propose a more analytical explanation. ISTM that these characters could be described as paranoid counter-culture anarchists – or more simply, perhaps, paranoid sociopaths. Their central thesis seems to be that we are dominated by tyrannical evil powers that seek to control us and do us harm, that everything in the mainstream media is a pack of lies promoted by this evil cabal, and that the only truth is to be found among those who think just as they do. Granted, it takes a certain lack of basic intelligence to allow oneself to be drawn down that rabbit-hole, but once there it’s supported by the incessant drumbeat of a small coterie of “news” organizations like Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Breitbart, and a few others, plus of course the right-wing’s own delusional blogosphere.
The frightening thing is that in saner times delusional paranoiacs like that would receive much-needed therapy and might be able to resume normal lives, but in today’s America, these people vote. And demagogues like Trump have no qualms about exploiting them. And that’s no exaggeration – many of them are currently serving jail terms, while Trump continues golfing, fundraising, and evading criminal prosecution.
Of course. Their pivot is that they’ll concede Trump, the individual, is an obnoxious corrupt asshole. But (a) “they ALL are!” and (b) the policies of the other side mean the End Of America and a dystopian future where they’ll be forced to be disarmed and pay taxes to finance their children’s sex reassignment.
What happens also is, that, to a great extent, she is transposing the keys of safe/unsafe to the keys of right/wrong. Many of the people on the Right read “this (thing/conduct) is bad for you” as simply “this (thing/conduct) is bad”. A moral judgement. And of course they’ll go defensive about their right to be wrong.
I used to regularly post on a board that became this way. It used to be a gardening website, and morphed into…this. It looks like the reasonable people went away, although I do occasionally visit and see that it’s worse and worse all the time.
Yanno, if you’re homeschooling your kids because you don’t want The Evil Public Schools finding out about your massive unlicensed gun arsenal, it’s really not a good idea to post it on Facebook, or anywhere else online. And, as some people put it, “the black problem”? Crickets when I ask what they propose for a solution (although being an Iowa resident, vouchers are going to be a start, to re-establish segregated schools IMNSHO).
Seen this a lot in various venues online. Part of it is that the RW hardliners will be committed to taking over the discussion space and will be aggressive about it.
Yes, Hillary and Nancy are easy go-to for the hate-mongers. When Nancy’s husband was attacked in his house, they had a lot of “fun” with that one. Very disgusting.
Their term for the Hillary murders is “Arkancide”. You see stuff like that, and they don’t even blink at the hate that it implies.
When your political schtick is free of facts, then everything is a game. And the right-wingers are not burdened by facts, generally. So, they are very good at dominating a board and shutting down opposition. Then, you throw in the fact that the board is lightly moderated, and it becames an anything goes for the right-wing environment.
One thing I noticed was the love of violence. Some of them love seeing stuff like Kyle Rittenhouse, or Daniel Perry in Austin, or the Marine in NYC subway. They like seeing people die at the hands of these people, and they turn them into heroes. They fantasize about Antifa being beaten to a pulp.
There’s one guy I remember that would say that he wanted to see James Comey swinging from a tree, along with other liberals. It’s like a modern day version of the Day of The Rope fantasy.
Anyway, me being on that board was only giving those people oxygen. I’m done with it now.
In other words, the Other. When you feel like your life and surroundings are out of your control, that the world has passed you by and you don’t know what to do about it, you may just find that hating the Other will take your mind off your real troubles. And it’s extremely addictive, especially when you grew up with that hate, most of your friends and family are following that same path, and when that hatred is backed up by leaders who somehow manage to make it seem more palatable.
If everyone were exercising only sweet reason to settle their disagreements, some people would lose those disputes most of the time. Just disagreeing with people who can out-argue you (i.e. being wrong) is not very satisfying, after all. What else have you got, except to hate people who are different from you, especially people who are, on average, lower on the ladder than you are?
Once a person has reached that stage, where their opinions are settled and they are relying only on their emotions, they are probably beyond the reach of reason and logic, or even good sense. Frankly, I admire people, like the OP, who make the effort. You never know who you might be reaching, after all; the people who bother to respond online are not the only ones reading what you post. My advice to be able to keep going (if anyone wanted to) is to not read the responses. Post your facts and reasons, and move on.
What I found is that the more links I posted, the more likely they were to reject my arguments. There was the usual “such and such is liberal propaganda”. But it went beyond that, into the territory you describe. Covid vaccine, which saves lives, bad. Ivermectin, which is useless against Covid, good…That type of thinking is repeated over and over.
Wow — that’s good to know, as well (seriously). I doubt many of them are brave enough to engage in it, but many are armed, so grave incidents will continue to sporadically occur — plus the occasional January 6-style mass riot. And the endless cycle of reinforcing the lack of empathy, of treating others (any others) as human beings.