I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I think it's just beyond incredible that conservatives think Trump sounds intelligent
He's a stupid person's idea of a smart person, a poor person's idea of a rich person, and a trashy person's idea of a classy person. Can't remember where I heard that, but it seems very true.
I remember hearing that when he was prez, and it really does ring true.
Guess there's a nontrivial amount of cognitive dissonance there too, and more than a dash of "I don't care what the truth is, this is Our Guy and I'll sing his praises"
It's politics as a sport: My team is the best and your team sucks and we'll beat you in the final!
But more than that, the biggest issue is the FEELING of disenfranchisement. People that FEEL mishandled or mistreated look up to a guy that holds power and seems to wield it in favor of their group. And they'll side with that guy come hell or high water, because at least it gives them a FEELING of hope and control.
Notice I'm underscoring the FEELING aspect of it, because it doesn't matter if these people are correct about who they perceive as their enemies and their allies. Republicans will vote for GOP candidates that actively and demonstrably oppose their interests, as long as the Republican propaganda machine has convinced them that those people are on their side, and the other political party is the bad guys. Facts and the truth have no room in it.
An important saying: You can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Within 24 hours of Kamala Harris announcing her candidacy, PBS did a panel with MAGA women asking them what they thought about Harris. Like clockwork, these airheads repeated every bad-faith Fox "News" propaganda talking point and nothing else. Fox told them Harris is a bad candidate for A, B and C reasons, and they embraced their team's views immediately with zero effort to look for evidence, facts or diverse views. If you ask them what's up with politics, they'll repeat like good zealots: Harris is bad because of A, B and C, and we have to vote for the GOP to stop Harris.
If we want to save these people from themselves, we need to address their unsubstantiated feelings, their low information on the issues that should matter to them, and their steady diet of malicious propaganda telling them to act against their own interests. Until then, they'll keep doing politics as a sport, and Trump is their local team.
their low information on the issues that should matter to them
While I do agree with you in general, I don't think lack of information is much of a factor. Anybody with an internet connection has access to a fucking fantastic amount of information, but here we are – I think the problem's everywhere else than lack of access
I meant the information that they hold. If they only listen to propaganda outlets, what they actually "know" is very low information in terms of what's true and correct, and instead they fill their heads with nonsense, hate and BS talking points.
One way to fight that is to give them real information, but that's hard to do. There's a reason their propaganda outlets have them convinced that experts and real journalists are "fake news," because that way they can only get their diet of information directly from the right-wing bad-faith actors selling them the bullshit.
To them, it doesn't matter that the internet is a click away, full of real news sources and real experts discussing the issues. They will never deliberately go read those sources, and if they ever run into any of that by accident, they'll label it fake news and move right on.
In essence, the MAGAs are intellectually captive in the nefarious web of malicious right-wing propaganda, and have no means to break free on their own. In their world, Biden eats babies, the Democrats are trying to legalize 4th trimester abortions, Hillary Clinton abuses minors and Trump is the hero trying to stop it, and so on. They know almost nothing about facts and the real issues, and instead their brains are occupied with conspiracy theories, BS and hate.
One way to fight that is to give them real information, but that's hard to do.
Exactly! This is why I think it's not lack of information that's the problem – if accurate information itself was enough, it wouldn't be as hard as it is to inform conservatives
Donald Trump, June 9, 2024:
“So I said, let me ask you a question and he said, nobody ever asked this question and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. He goes, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there, by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that a lot of shark? I watched some guys justifying it today. Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood what who she was? These people are. He said there’s no problem with sharks. They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now. It really got decimated and other people do a lot of shark attacks. So I said, so there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you he didn’t know the answer. He said, you know, nobody’s ever asked me that question. I said, I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time.”
I guess thank you for finally filling me in on what was going on with sharks and batteries.
Move over shark-with-freaking-lasers, we got sharks-with-freaking-batteries now!
What was the question that prompted this reply?
He was trying to rail on electric vehicles and how we need fossil fuels.
Note to any scientists out there who may have a conversation with trump in the future:
When he says something so incredibly incoherent that your brain reboots, please do your best to quell your default "nice" response (in this case "Oh, no one's ever asked me that before") and instead take a moment to formulate a thorough critique:
"I've never encountered a person with such a limited understanding of so many topics who was actually willing to apply that knowledge in a conversation, let alone a pointed question about the safety of batteries. I need to teach you about how sharks, boats, water, batteries and electricity work before I can even begin addressing that catastrophe of a question."
I've had this conversation with people who send me big brain conspiracy videos on topics I actually know things about.
"Look, this is wrong in a very specific way but for you to understand why I'm going to have to take you through a physics class."
There's this baseline thing that I don't think we teach in school very well about words and language. We can be using the same words to say things, but our underlying meaning can at times be so different as to be in opposition. Science uses words weird, so a lot of times people who don't know that very badly misinterpret the meaning of what scientists say.
The UV and bleach thing was dumber than most know. Can't find a longer video any longer, just the ones with him already talking. Picture this.
Trump enters from stage right to give a press briefing on COVID. On the way up he spies a CDC infographic poster suggesting bleach and UV light as ways to disinfect surfaces. Trump then takes the stage, and like the totally unprepared school child he is, starts blabbering.
Sun work good outsides. Y no insides too?
Weren't a bunch of those Covid claims just badly inspired from a sign that he saw while he was walking onto the stage - like a much, much stupider version of The Usual Suspects?
Yep, here it is:
I still find this hilarious.
"Nobody ever asked this question" is so rarely actually true. It's usually more like, "people have been asking this question for centuries, and we had a decent idea of what the answer is, but we only just now have the data/understanding/technology/circumstances/math/computational power to be able to answer it definitively." See: Philolaus > Copernicus > Galileo, or Fermat > Wiles, etc.
When it really is true, it's usually because, like, a kid asked a question about The Hulk punching the ISS out of the sky or something similarly bananas. Cute when it's a kid, less so when it's an elderly man trying to use it as evidence that he's qualified to have the nuclear launch codes.
I distinctly remember he said people should inject bleach not drink it.
The news noticed quite a few people dying by the "inject an UV lamp from your ass" procedure.
[Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was](https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=nSuregWhlWk)
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