It is the power of stupid. Democracy’s greatest weakness, as I’ve said before. There are an awful lot of stupid, poorly educated people, and they all get a vote.
Hitler understood this - from Mein Kampf:
Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favorable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favorable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must, of course, be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula.
Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?
In every jurisdiction I am aware of, including local, state, and I am guessing federal, if you commit a crime you are culpable for any criminal incident that results from that crime. By culpable i mean you can be arrested, indicted, and put on trial for that subsequent crime and it is up to a jury to determine if your are guilty. Some examples: 1) you and a buddy rob a bank and your buddy shoots and kills someone in the process - then you are as culpable as your buddy for the crime of murder. 2) You and your buddy try to rob a bank and the bank guard tries to shoot your buddy but misses and kills a bystander - then you and your buddy are culpable for the crime of murder. 3) You and your buddy rob a bank, but in racing away in your getaway car you collide with an ambulance rushing a heart attack victim to the hospital - you had the green light and the ambulance went through the red light but had its siren and flashing lights on. The ambulance driver calls for a back-up ambulance but there is an added one hour delay in getting the heart attack victim to the hospital resulting in his/her death - then you and your buddy are culpable for the crime of murder. Often, the prosecutors will use the threat of the more serious charge of murder to get the defendant(s) to plead down and confess to the lesser crime that they set out to commit and to implicate any others involved.
According to Rachel Maddow, Donald Trump this evening used the official presidential Twitter account, the POTUS account (https://twitter.com/potus?lang=en), to again enumerate his grievances, and Twitter has already deleted that tweet. I assume that Twitter is now engaged in internal discussions about what to do about the POTUS account. One solution might be to suspend that account until 12:01 PM on January 20.
I’ve been thinking a little further and more deeply about Trumpism, MAGA, Libertarianism, The Tea Party movement, as a collective phenomenon, and my crediting their power to the stupidity of the mass of their supporters is probably too simplistic.
Certainly, stupidity accounts for part of it, but I’ve heard a few Trumpists interviewed, and a good number of them seem reasonably articulate and intelligent.
Is it a factor that American society has become so used to having belief (in other words, evangelist Christianity) pushed past evidence, that the right wing populists can sell their false narrative to people, in the total absence of evidence for that narrative. People have, in short, become used to being brainwashed.
This is what makes Trumpism so hard to defeat - trying to get people to accept evidence, will result in them having to also question their fundamentalist religious beliefs.
ABE - same goes for conspiracy theories, QAnon etc - all linked very cleverly to right wing populism. No evidence - loads of belief.
Edited by vimesey, : No reason given.
Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?
..and the worship of a charismatic leader who speaks "truth" that isn't tested.
I heard someone yesterday say that Trump wants to be a king, preferably one that is also a god.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Is it a factor that American society has become so used to having belief (in other words, evangelist Christianity) pushed past evidence, that the right wing populists can sell their false narrative to people, in the total absence of evidence for that narrative. People have, in short, become used to being brainwashed.
This is what makes Trumpism so hard to defeat - trying to get people to accept evidence, will result in them having to also question their fundamentalist religious beliefs.
As one of those "intelligent evangelicals" I will share my thoughts: I viewed the news reports tonight(last night)O after I got off work. I had heard that some people were shot and killed and yet was not up on the news until now. As many of you know, I am a political moderate. What I witnessed thoroughly disgusted, enraged, and saddened me. Never in the history of politics have I witnessed anything as blatant and outrageous as the anarchy and lawlessness at the Nations Capital. And the facts clearly show that Trump himself incited these riots!! I will admit that any feelings that I had regarding Trumps competency...whjch were slightly less than I had for Biden before seeing all of this....evaporated.
We cant get rid of him soon enough.
I will defend the conservatives in that I believe that most of them are not that evil as what I saw. I have changed my mind, however, regarding my prior belief that the Laft were the more evil of the two polar opposing ideologies. I now see greater evil in the Right, even if it is from a Populist minority.
I still respeect belief as much as I do science based thinking. I believe in the authority of GOD, Creator of all seen and unseen and believe that Jesus is His human character. What I dont believe in is lawlessness and anarchy.
I really hope that this new administration (which I believe will receive an orderly transfer of power) will modernize and encrypt the voting system once and for all...so that both sides can agree on the legitimacy of a peoples vote.
I predict(as do others) that we will undergo a depression or long recession and reset after Covid 19 is contained and its danger minimized(hopefully by June)
Spiritually, the love of many will grow cold towards religion and spirituality, but thee fervor of many will also burn hot as economic conditions worsen.
I notice that Kim Jong Un is threatening America again even as his buddy Trump recedes from power. How anyone can think that Trump was a good president or favored is beyond me now. Sometimes things are not as they may have once appeared.
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ***
far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence.- Dr.John Lennox
The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. - Criss Jami, Killo
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him. Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).
Sometimes things are not as they may have once appeared.
It's a shame that it took a riot, deaths and an invasion of the Capitol instigated by Trump to make you see what the rest of the world saw 5 years ago. But at least you now have.
But Phat, he's been a narcistic, despotic, dangerous, lying turd since day one; you've had thousands of incidents to prove that beyond all reasonable doubt. It's not that 'things may have once appeared' different, they didn't; what has changed is your ability to see them.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
Is it a factor that American society has become so used to having belief (in other words, evangelist Christianity) pushed past evidence, that the right wing populists can sell their false narrative to people, in the total absence of evidence for that narrative.
Yes, I think so.
Among evangelicals, there is a lot of peer pressure pushing fundamentalism. And this seems to be taken as believing absurd things, as long as the Bible supposedly says them. Typically, what the Bible supposedly says comes from the pastor rather than from actually reading the Bible.
People have, in short, become used to being brainwashed.
Yes, you have many people trained to be extremely gullible.
Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity
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