The Republicans are creating a whole group of voters who are the opposite of WOKE: Deliberately Uninformed with Misguided Beliefs (DUMB). And it’s contagious, as being DUMB spreads like wildfire under right wing voters.

This is a surprisingly good article. It would be nice to see more of the mainstream media reporting on how insidious his disinformation campaign(/lies) is.

They are just breaking down all the systems and consolidating power while they are doing it.

Is this news from 2004?

This isn’t new, it’s just out of the closet now. If it weren’t for weaponized ignorance, conservatism would have died out long, long ago.

ya think?

That's like saying "baseball players pitching balls at the batter is a dangerous game."

Like, that's the game. The whole game. It always has been. Why are you using the verbs in the present tense to imply that it's something new, something they haven't been doing from the beginning?

I don't think it's as much ignorance as it is tribalism. Humans are highly tribal, by our nature. People believe what they are told by trusted authorities, by the trusted leaders of their "tribe." People will be skeptical of anything that doesn't come from a member of their own tribe, even if what they're being told is based in facts and evidence. Politicians have known this for a very long time, and they use it to their advantage. They just have to convince a group of people (usually one that feels alienated or disenfranchised) that they are "one of them," and then you can steer them in the direction you want them to go, usually by pinning them against some other, opposing tribe.

Conservatives and liberals are opposing tribes. They don't like each other and they don't trust each other. All Donald Trump and other conservative politicians have to do is present positions that are in opposition to liberalism, the ideology of their hated enemy tribe, and members of the conservative tribe will quickly adopt them, not out of ignorance but out of tribalism.

Really disgusting, particularly coming from "law and order" leaders who are turning the U.S. into a police state. I hope we see more articles about this leading up into the election.

I'd also like to see more discussion about striking a number of non-violent crimes. If a criminal and felonious ex-president will have special exemptions to laws that others are expected to follow, doesn't the guideline of equality demand similar treatment for the poor and politically disenfranchised?