Can someone please make me understand how people like Gaetz, MTG and all these very obviously either stupid as fuck, or evil as fuck people keep getting voted in? My brain can’t ever wrap around this. Am I crazy or is there more to elections in politics. Like how in the fuck does a man like Ted Cruz keep getting reelected over and over by people?
Belief is largely social. This is true for all of us, to some extent. It doesn’t matter much when the social belief is “our baseball team is the best”. Unfortunately, the republican worldview is afactual and hateful. That’s really the bulk of it, I think. People identify with republicans, or with their neighbors that are republicans, and that’s the most important thing. More important than facts or truth.
Also there’s a lot of authoritarians. They want a strong in-group and an out-group to hurt.
So when someone says like “So-and-so Republican is a rapist, felon, and liar” that smashes right into the “my in-group is important, and if i reject my in-group I will die alone” part of the brain. So the facts bounce off and they write you off as an asshole.
Fixing that seems difficult. Appealing to a shared group identity can work (eg: we’re all americans here and we want to make the best of our great country, together). You see this sometimes where someone hates some out-group, and then actually meets a member and spends time with them. Now that person might be part of the in-group, and things have to shift around.
The other thing that changes minds is trauma. Horrible trauma. If your house gets blown apart by a hurricane, that might be enough for you to reevaluate your world view.
One can only guess that there is a large and chronically uninformed body of people that only get their information from the bad guys’ personal propaganda machine.
Can someone please make me understand how people like Gaetz, MTG and all these very obviously either stupid as fuck, or evil as fuck people keep getting voted in? My brain can’t ever wrap around this. Am I crazy or is there more to elections in politics. Like how in the fuck does a man like Ted Cruz keep getting reelected over and over by people?
The uneducated can vote.
Racists vote. Old people vote. Sometimes they’re the same person.
As they always teach over at Electoral College.
Belief is largely social. This is true for all of us, to some extent. It doesn’t matter much when the social belief is “our baseball team is the best”. Unfortunately, the republican worldview is afactual and hateful. That’s really the bulk of it, I think. People identify with republicans, or with their neighbors that are republicans, and that’s the most important thing. More important than facts or truth.
Also there’s a lot of authoritarians. They want a strong in-group and an out-group to hurt.
So when someone says like “So-and-so Republican is a rapist, felon, and liar” that smashes right into the “my in-group is important, and if i reject my in-group I will die alone” part of the brain. So the facts bounce off and they write you off as an asshole.
Fixing that seems difficult. Appealing to a shared group identity can work (eg: we’re all americans here and we want to make the best of our great country, together). You see this sometimes where someone hates some out-group, and then actually meets a member and spends time with them. Now that person might be part of the in-group, and things have to shift around.
The other thing that changes minds is trauma. Horrible trauma. If your house gets blown apart by a hurricane, that might be enough for you to reevaluate your world view.
Anyway, the oatmeal did a comic about belief: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe Here’s a free book about authoritarians: https://theauthoritarians.org/
Love this, thanks for sharing!
In their districts, they have the right letter next to their names on the ballot. Also, the “own the libtards.”
As Olbermann asked about MTG’s district,“Does the entire district resemble the movie Deliverance?”
My Uber reductionist explanation.
I get you scared. You vote for the cure to what I’m scaring you on.
Most people, except the very scared, don’t vote.
Republicans say “hell is coming unless you vote for me”, which gets people scared and thus voting
Democrats, “well try our hardest to build helpful systems that make the middle class grow again” … People stop listening and don’t vote…
That’s how
Fuck. 2020 got more people voting than any other presidential election in recent history and it STILL didn’t break 50% of legal voters.
Maybe dems should say stuff in their ads like “we don’t want a fascist regime. This is America. Vote blue to fire these morherfuckers”
Because the people voting are dumber than these fucktards.
They are so fucking dumb it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking dumb
One can only guess that there is a large and chronically uninformed body of people that only get their information from the bad guys’ personal propaganda machine.