Intelligence is no defense
So one of the things that’s scary about the political direction the world has been taking lately, and the upcoming election, is I recently got a reminder that intelligence is not a defense against propaganda. One of the problems I think we run into is that we humans are to a certain extent herd beasts and so we tend to absorb without even thinking about it the points of view of the people around us.
I’ve been continuing to discuss with my friend who is convinced the chinese communist party is the source of all the trouble in the world, that BLM and Antifa are fronts for the CCP, and that Biden is a Chinese puppet. I do agree that Biden clearly sees China as a ally – and that the TPP was a shameful attempt to pass a backroom deal without letting it see the light of day. But I also think that BLM and Antifa are primarily what it says on the label – a organization about police murdering black folk and a not-even-organized group of people fighting facism. I think Trump clearly represents facism – his attempts to rig the election by destroying the post office during a pandemic, his statements about how he should be allowed to have three terms, and his general behavior as if he were king, not president, and making no attempt to represent more than half of his constituents underline this.
Anyway, this friend of mine is clearly intelligent and capable and yet from my point of view they are deeply bought into a conspiracy theory that I suspect is being pushed by conservatives as one of the many examples of their motto “If you can’t win, cheat.”. It wouldn’t actually make sense for most of America to back the conservative party as it currently stands so they’re trying for a disinformation campaign to get people to vote for them anyway.. and clearly at least in a few cases I could mention it seems to be working.
Part of the problem here also I suspect is party identity.. a lot of people I think would never vote for Trump if he had “democrat” on the label, and would be horrified by his now clear-as-day white supremacism, his misogyny, all the creepy pictures of him with very young girls and his admitting to doing things like looking in on people in their dressing rooms at the miss america pageant – not to mention his attempt to destroy the post office in order to win, his tax cut which was a gift for the 1% who hardly need it, and let’s also not forget the grab ’em by the pussy tape, etc
By the way, does anyone want to bet about whether we’ll “wait until the election” to elect a new supreme court justice as the republicans insisted we do during the obama years? No, of course not, Mitch McCheaterson will probably have a pro-Trump-as-king-anti-abortion justice in the court before the week is over.
Anyway, it’s rather terrifying to me that intelligence is no defense – what ends up happening is intelligence ends up getting used to sell people on the point of view they’ve already adopted. Of course this underlines that I have no real way of knowing whether my POV is valid either – there’s kind of this hopeless sinking in quicksand feeling – but I do know that conservatives in general are headed in the wrong direction from my POV because I don’t *want* to return to the 1950s, or even stay where we are – I don’t want to live in a world where cops shoot black folk whenever they want, or where women are carefully held in subjugation, or where the president can destroy large swaths of services that are inconvenient for him (i.e. the post office)
I honestly think Trump belongs in jail far more than Hillary ever possibly could have, that conservatives are largely bought in on total bullshit stories, that the conservative entertainment shows like Fox and Friends are hugely damaging to the future of our country as well as selling non-stop lies and propaganda..
And let’s please all remember that Trump fired most of the pandemic team a few years ago, and that Trump’s repeated lies and inability to comprehend the situation led to the USA having 4% of the world’s population but 22% of the COVID cases. Well, that combined with the USA having capitalism as a disease.
It did also occur to me that by making sure they confirm whatever awful partisan judge Trump wants before the election, the Senate will be demonstrating that acting against the majority of the country is more important to them than acting in the best interests of the country (since what they really should be spending their time on right now is helping with COVID and the corresponding crash)
I also note that I would guess that at least a third of the lawmakers electing that judge have paid for a mistress’s abortion. I am certain Trump has. No hypocrisy here.