Of all the schisms that cleave contemporary America, few are more stark than the divide between those who consider themselves to be victims of US history and those who fear they will be casualties of its future.
Of all the schisms that cleave contemporary America, few are more stark than the divide between those who consider themselves to be victims of US history and those who fear they will be casualties of its future.
Except he is not American.
No need to be pedantic. My point is that the author clearly likes Harris and doesn’t like Trump. The author does a good job illustrating the perspective of people who like Harris and don’t like Trump. But someone who likes Trump and doesn’t like Harris would say that the author doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Gee, it’s almost as if – how’s it go again? – “facts don’t care about your feelings.”
Nobody who likes Trump is worth listening to. Nobody.
Not even to try to understand them so that you can address the root cause of why they like him? Or is the fact that they like him evidence of them being irredeemable and flawed humans? In that case, how should they be dealt with?
The root cause is immaterial, because those people don’t like Trump. They like an idea of who Trump is, an idea that is informed almost exclusively by PR teams and marketing campaigns.
The appropriate way to “deal with” people who are trapped in a media filter bubble is to ignore them. They are of no consequence until they try to leave their bubble and interact with those outside it, at which point they are forced to either come to terms with their deception or else double-down and retreat even deeper into it.
I mostly agree with you about the bubbles. Getting outside your bubble is extremely important. It’s important that they get outside, but additionally it’s important for each of us to step outside our own bubble to make sure it isn’t happening to us. None of us is above that affect, and it’s instinctive to seek validation of our own preconceived notions. Trump has a propaganda machine working for him, but his opposition has an equally powerful machine working as well. Would you recognize it? Can you tell when it’s the machine and when it’s the truth? It’s pretty tough to separate out the noise, especially in a place like this that has an overwhelming sameness of opinion.
I’m not a Democrat either, but I am so familiar with their machinations that I correctly predicted the last 9 years of national politics based on how Dems did Bernie dirty in the 2016 primary, all the way down to knowing Biden would have to drop out to give Harris a chance this year.
I’m autistic, which doesn’t make me immune to propaganda but does makes it very easy to recognize when someone is trying to manipulate public opinion. The truth has almost nothing to do with politics, ours is an entirely vibes-based government.
The noise is especially important, because political machines are colonial superorganisms. Their leadership likes to pretend otherwise, but they don’t speak with one voice, they are more like beehives where each individual has to coordinate their activities with the rest of the swarm. It’s important to know the range of acceptable opinions within the in-group and those that are tolerated outside it, and the noise is where human political organisms do their bee-dancing.