Does Trump’s recent/continued endorsement of QAnon help or hurt his reelection chances? It seems perfectly normal if you’re an Ultra MAGA, but if you are conservative-leaning independent, does it hurt Trump, help Trump, or not make much of a difference in the long run? I’m particularly interested in hearing from any conservative-leaning independents out there.
Nothing Trump says or does seems to hurt him much. It is inexplicable to me, but it appears to be reality.
I agree with that sentiment, but is it a characteristic of Trump only, or are there other prominent people who live with complete impunity? … and how does someone acquire that trait?
No idea. I feel like it is mostly Trump. Palin has a little bit of that too. An armor of stupidity or something?
Wealth.
It takes an awful lot for truly wealthy people to experience consequences.
I don’t know. Bloomberg, who is a far better man and administrator and actually self-made can’t say 1/10th the outrageous crap that comes from Trump. But maybe that’s because he is a short Jewish guy?
Bloomberg is richer by any account I can find.
It seems like he’s tapped into something that nobody else has. Whether intentionally or purely by accident, his followers believe everything he says and won’t believe anything wrong about him. I don’t think that’s just because he’s wealthy, although I don’t think that hurts. Brainwashed is an understatement.
Fox News may be part of it since it reinforces, or at least used to, all of Trump’s lies 1,000 times a day. You soon become brainwashed entirely if it’s your only source of news and information.
It’s cult-like behavior of millions of people… but I would hope the independents would see through his smoke screen of lies…
I think a lot of independents still somehow see him as the lesser of 2 evils. This was especially true against HRC and thankfully not as true against Biden.
Scary thing, is HRC and Biden are very moderate Dems and they struggled to get support from the independents.
And telling the truth doesn’t matter anymore…
From the linked article in the OP:
On Sunday, police fatally shot a Michigan man who they say had killed his wife and severely injured his daughter. A surviving daughter told The Detroit News that she believes her father was motivated by QAnon.
“I think that he was always prone to (mental issues), but it really brought him down when he was reading all those weird things on the internet,” she told the newspaper.
This happened in a neighboring community to us. I pity the poor, misguided, beknighted people who actually believe that utter nonsense. But the people who don’t believe it yet cynically use the movement for their own personal gain, like the person who started it, and (I assume) trump, deserve a special place in hell.
I think this is the biggest reason. What other cult has a major network news channel actively promoting that cult?
I thought the FCC could go after broadcasters that purposely mislead people. Why was Fox News never held accountable for the lies they told their gullible viewers?
I think that it’s because they restrict their BS to their opinion shows. Their newscasts can also be misleading, but only through selective reporting and omission. If anyone is going to lie, it’ll happen on the opinion shows, and they can practically say anything they want ({cough}TuckerCarlson{cough}). Sometimes they’ll even have one of their talking heads say some BS that is directly contradicted by their newscasters (especially involving election fraud). Fox News viewers have absolutely no problem accepting contradictory information. Cognitive dissonance is part of the lifestyle.
Does the FCC have any regulatory control over non-broadcast (i.e., cable only) channels?
Remember, a court found that “no reasonable viewer” would take Tucker Carlson seriously, so they are running with that for the whole network:
It has always seemed to me that the QAnon Trump stuff came about because Trump is so unbelievably bad that people found conspiracies easier to believe than that someone so horrible had won. Trump was only pretending to be bad while rooting out stuff.
As for how Trump won? He understood the concept of the big lie stated with confidence. And he understood trolling tactics to deflect. Other politicians would always back away from issues. Trump would double down, and then change the subject whenever things changed.
Then, of course, there was that he tapped into something already building, saying the things that other people thought but were too afraid to say out loud. He tapped into the persecution fantasy of the white cishet conservative, and the white evangelicals. He tapped into the Tea Party and GamerGate. A whole lot of that was being in the right place at the right time.
It’s hard to replicate without all of this working for you, especially with everyone aware of what was going on. You don’t get the same level of media attention from other people trying Trump’s tactics, as they’re no longer novel.
How much of this is Trump’s own talent? I think he has at least an intuitive understanding of how to anger people as well as how to string them along. He knows how to play power games. But it is mostly other factors that led to him getting as far as he did.
Pretty much all dictators from the past had the same sort of delivery. Repeat the same lies over and over and over, ad nauseum, and they take on the aspect of reality to people who are easily swayed. He plays the victim and makes others believe that they are also victims. Once the group-think is there, anything he says becomes gospel.
Yep!..
- If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.
- Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.
- There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be “the man in the street.” Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.
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Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
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No, and that is covered by the link dolphinboy used. So, I’m not sure why they linked to it while asking that question.
I’m not totally happy about that, but that’s the way it is.
To a point.
Even the head of the cult can find himself painted into a corner if he’s primed his followers to think a certain way.