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American politics

elltrev said:
I’m trying to understand why so many Americans believe a) anything that Trump says and nothing that anyone else says, and b) conspiracy theories about Satan worshippers and pedophiles. What is it about these people and/or their life experiences that make them believe these things? Can anyone link to some good articles that genuinely try to understand this?
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You have to understand culturally it's very different there. Few factors but one of the main ones is the President has a status, he's the president. Whoever holds that title, they're indoctrinated from a young age on believing a certain infallibility about the title. If the president says something, he's speaking the truth.

Second of all (and this is what scares me for the UK)... You have a variety of news networks. Now, where do we consume most of our info from? BBC. The BBC whilst slated from both left and right does a fairly decent job of appealing to the mass audience and generally fair reporting.

As you get factions of new news channels coming up like Fox etc (and this is now happening in UK next year with a new right wing channel) you'll end up peeling off some people who consume that "general mass" info and giving them slanted views such as Fox etc.

Lastly, the echo chamber that is twitter. This is why politics so polarised. People on the left follow people on the left and consume that info and same for the right. I had to get off twitter couple of years ago it was all consuming for me. Read the Bellingcat Ashley Babbit piece I think @Rorsach shared, shows a clear spiral into the abyss on her social media.

It's radicalisation plain and simple. That's what we'd call it if the person was Islamic. Because it's white people in the US we give them a pass.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
 
I'm not massively comfortable with the direction we are going in terms of censorship and cancel culture tbh. We all get the Trump thing but he has consistently broken rules for years and now as he isn't President he is gone. Parlour being taken off Google too. Nasty thing. Was nasty before. But gone now.
 
Diamond Lights said:
You have to understand culturally it's very different there. Few factors but one of the main ones is the President has a status, he's the president. Whoever holds that title, they're indoctrinated from a young age on believing a certain infallibility about the title. If the president says something, he's speaking the truth.

Second of all (and this is what scares me for the UK)... You have a variety of news networks. Now, where do we consume most of our info from? BBC. The BBC whilst slated from both left and right does a fairly decent job of appealing to the mass audience and generally fair reporting.

As you get factions of new news channels coming up like Fox etc (and this is now happening in UK next year with a new right wing channel) you'll end up peeling off some people who consume that "general mass" info and giving them slanted views such as Fox etc.

Lastly, the echo chamber that is twitter. This is why politics so polarised. People on the left follow people on the left and consume that info and same for the right. I had to get off twitter couple of years ago it was all consuming for me. Read the Bellingcat Ashley Babbit piece I think @Rorsach shared, shows a clear spiral into the abyss on her social media.

It's radicalisation plain and simple. That's what we'd call it if the person was Islamic. Because it's white people in the US we give them a pass.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
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Good post. I would include Facebook as a significant contributor considering its pervasiveness. Fox and Facebook are all these folks consume for their news, and basically, you are what you eat. The rot starts there. Is it any surprise that both Facebook and Twitter have decided to turn off Trump 'newsworthy' bile the day the electoral college votes were certified? I think not. They see the writing on the wall after this latest episode and the calls to regulate them will now grow louder. Where we are going is not a good place and it is time to take on these tech giants before it is too late.

As for Murdoch's corrosive influence, I've seen it in my own family. One of my nephews is special needs, autistic, and went to the states for special care only available there. So the family packed up and went en masse for a few years. On one visit home the dad in this story treated me to a 3-minute pro-Trump Fox news fueled rant that frankly stunned me. It doesn't take long to get your mind warped and rationality goes out the window.

This is from Marina Hyde's opinion piece in the Guardian today, which I recommend reading in whole.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/08/us-chaos-britain-fox-news-trump-presidency
"And yet … imagine being the country that is RIGHT NOW deciding to get in on the bonkers newsotainment game. Imagine being the country that has watched the last four years unfold in the US, with its bloodlines so easily traceable to the Fox sensibility, and is nonetheless thinking: let’s have a bit of that. Because that’s us, of course. In the coming months, not one but two anti-impartiality news channels will launch in the UK – GB News, backed by Discovery, and News UK, courtesy of that aforementioned adornment to international life, Rupert Murdoch."
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LutonSpurs said:
I'm not massively comfortable with the direction we are going in terms of censorship and cancel culture tbh. We all get the Trump thing but he has consistently broken rules for years and now as he isn't President he is gone. Parlour being taken off Google too. Nasty thing. Was nasty before. But gone now.
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I miss the days when Nazi's were considered bad guys. The far right were allowed by the media to rebrand as "Alt-Right" when literally there was nothing alternative about them.

Hate brown/black folk? Check
Belief in White superiority? Check
Holocaust denial? Check

So I don't care much about cancel culture.

Remember that arsehole Milo? Where's he now?
clamy Hopkins?

When you de-platform people who are literally calling for genocide of a race, I don't see that as a problem really.

In the spirit of free speech should we give a platform to Paedos for example? Let them publicly make a case for it? No. So let's not give some people a platform who literally are happy with black people or Jews being killed.

Call me old school.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
 
scaramanga said:
I absolutely believe Trump is racist.

With regard to my earlier statements on him today, I don't think he would let those beliefs interrupt him amassing money and power for his family, given a choice between the two.

Edit:
I don't think the examples negate my point about polite society being free of racism.

Neither the rednecks you mentioned nor Trump would ever find themselves at a dinner table with those I know - not even from the position of POTUS.
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So "polite society" is just another way of say that there aren't any racists apart from the racists?

It's fair enough to say Trump wouldn't get a dinner invite, but the power he has, the power of other racists, the power of those willing to support racists, impacts a lot of people in and outside of "polite society".

One might say that because it probably doesn't impact you much you're speaking from a position of privelege?

scaramanga said:
I don't know what happened there. I do know that the neckbeard riot wasn't nearly as publicised as the BLM one because I have no interest in either group but knew (along with the rest of the world) that the BLM one was happening.


For example, when describing racism as being in decline, a regular response is that that is an opinion of privilege and that I couldn't possibly know the extent of racism.
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Just to be clear, that's a statement you agree with?
 
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