As instructed pulling this to its own thread, as I think it is relevant to how campaigning should be done.
From here.
My take is that there is hope to inform the simply ignorant but otherwise average intelligence and well intended, hope to education the stupid even, but that the hard bit are those who are not stupid, and whose ignorance is the result of an intentional avoidance of information that conflicts with their established position, and those who believe they know much more than everyone else when they actually know little.
Reaching those groups is … hard. Not sure how it gets done within a political context, if possible at all, but dismissing them as dumb is certainly not the path.
I agree with your premise. Convincing somebody with strong beliefs that they are wrong is really hard, and for most people, it’s impossible. But I think it depends, on some degree, where you live. If you live in a purple state, where there is no one clear majority party, that tells me people are open minded, and may be willing to change their position based on clear arguments presented to them. That’s why candidates spend so much time and money in battleground states. They want to sway voters who haven’t made up their minds, or can be swayed to change their minds.
I’m even less optimistic about that possibility. In all your years on message boards like this one, have you ever been able to reach those kinds of people? I haven’t. I think Trump is proving that the only way to change hearts and minds is to just lie.
It matters. Someone who is willfully wrong is much harder to persuade than someone who is merely misinformed and has the heart to change view if corrected.
I agree up to a point, I guess. I think that a majority of American voters lack any sort of understanding of economics, diplomacy, legislation, etc. A subset of these find it convenient, since it facilitates their choice to believe only what they want to believe, based on whatever twisted nonsense they conjure up or digest.
But the remainder of that majority still lack the capacity to realistically address their lack of understanding. You will never get them to understand inflation, supply chain shocks that follow pandemics, the importance of strong alliances, and a litany of other things truly needed to make an informed voting decision.
Politicians recognize this. The grandaddy of widespread false beliefs, the bedrock of voting ignorance, is the notion that politicians (especially the president) control the economy. No politician will speak the truth because as surely as they do, the other guy will promise economic prosperity. And that’s the guy the majority will follow, not the Debbie Downer who asserts the business cycle is largely beyond anyone’s control, except at the margins.
So, I don’t think there’s a huge need to make a distinction. Most Americans are dopes, and campaigns are enormous stews of sound bites and photo ops. The candidates may well have solid policy proposals that will produce real change, but that doesn’t matter unless it can be reduced to a sexy headline. Our hope has always been that enough of the dopes find the good guy sound bites most appealing.
Part of the issue is that disengaged voters sometimes do have very strong beliefs that can’t be reasoned with, they just don’t always set off the alarm bells that the more mainstream partisans do.
But I’m not a politician or political campaign adviser. My take is that the Harris campaign is working hard on getting to those people. The techniques they are trying is first off to get the information to where these voters are, going into their silos. Traveling to those towns, appearing on Fox, on the podcasts they listen to, so on. And is identifying what emotionally they are reacting to and trying to undercut it.
The results will be a test if it is possible I guess.
I still think stupid, misinformed and ignorant are all hugely condecending.
I think Trump (and equivalents in other countries) voters are none of those.
They are spitefull, hatefull and plain evil.
The cruelty is the point.
It is about hurting the people that are supposed to hurt.
They know exactly what they are voting for. They are not fooled by Fox or the others. They tune into those media to hear how they can spin the facts to fit their views.
The people claiming they were duped are just angling for undeserved sympathy. They are as self-centered as ever, they just found out they won’t get away with it.
This is the kind of assertion that will make things much harder for politicians who want to help and convince people. Many aren’t dopes or stupid, they simply don’t have the time or inclination to learn the information they need. That’s not (entirely) their fault-if I’m raising a kid and working two jobs, I may not have time to look up what a tariff is and what it means.
There isn’t one single motivation which applies to Trump voters across the board. Everyone of them has their own reason. You’ve got dumb people who think he’s a good businessman who will fix the economy, open racists, people who reflexively vote R, single issue voters, nihilists, other people I haven’t thought of.
I feel like Ron White said it best - “You can’t fix stupid”.
But you can (hopefully) present misinformed and ignorant voters with correct, or at least less biased information, and hope they make good sense of it.
What I fear though, is that those three adjectives are all profoundly intertwined. One doesn’t get to be misinformed and ignorant to the degree that it would take to where you either don’t have an opinion about who to vote for, or are undecided at this point in the game. That takes stupidity.
I’ve mentally wrestled with this for a while now- what sort of thought processes does it take to see Trump and Biden / Harris and actually think about it and not have your mind already made up? I mean, I can actually fathom how some people might choose to vote Trump, and I can see how people would choose to vote Harris, but I can’t for the life of me, figure out who is undecided at this point, except for people who just can’t think very well. Or are too dumb to realize that the two sides aren’t the same or are actually campaigning on policy or something like that.
I saw a brief interview with a Republican State Senator.
He said of course that he would vote for Trump.
His reasoning was that Trump wanted ‘to make America great again’ … and who could vote against that?
Depressingly the interviewer left it at that instead of asking questions like:
isn’t the real test of a politician what his actions and policies are, not his slogan?
Trump is a convicted criminal, who lies, creates unwarranted fear and hatred and has staged an insurrection … does any of that matter to you?
Adolf Hitler promised to make Germany great … would you have voted for him?
Just my opinion, of course. But also my opinion: There is a sizable portion of the dope class that can be convinced, but it will be via shiny objects and musical toys.
So, our candidate should campaign hard, but any part of their strategy that tries to get them to understand something even mildly complex is doomed. “I like when prices are lower,” that’s the depth of their understanding.
Many on this board have become regular scolds when someone points out strong economic indicators. “Why would that matter to someone whose grocery bill skyrocketed?” It won’t matter, because they have the critical thinking skills of toddlers. All they need to know—more importantly, all they have the capacity to understand—is that prices were lower under Trump.
I suspect at least some of them simply lack compassion, as opposed to feeling active spite/hate. Not sure if you consider excessive self interest and a lack of compassion/interest in a safety net for the less fortunate to be “pure evil.” I don’t think I do.
So, maybe there are at least 3 categories:
-stupid/ignorant/misinformed
-selfish
-mean
There is another category that is not included, and that is “intelligent but biased.”
Many Trump supporters (and conspiracy theorists) are in fact highly educated and knowledgeable. Many are engineers or work in trades that require high IQ. They aren’t dumb by any stretch; same for many deeply-religious folks.
But they can 1) swallow more cognitive dissonance than others and 2) they have a particular bent and colored-lens with how they see the world.
I think that if you read up a bit about the banality of evil you will find there is no practical difference.
The only thing that defines evil is the results.