This seems to be a common pattern. Conservatives recognize a problem (eg: housing is expensive) and then come to some pants on head wrong conclusion (it’s the {outgroups})
It’s not that they figured out the problem independently but were too stupid to come to a rational solution. It’s that their propaganda sources know these are problems and are proactively introducing them and providing nutty solutions so when they’re raised naturally the issue will both validate the conservative end goals and be vaguely idiotic to the liberals.
“Every accusation is a confession” is real, even for things that seemed kind of outlandish like the elite pedophile cabal. I’m seriously concerned that the various baby blood and baby cannibalism conspiracy theories also aren’t just creative fiction by addled minds.
Its because right wing media is own by fascist billionaires who feed them disinformation while defunding their school districts, leading to them being unable to think for themselves and buying the outright lies as fact.
Yep I think that’s a big part of what made MAGA so successful. They said a lot of the right things. They clearly didn’t mean them, AT ALL, but naive MAGA people didn’t realize that (and to a large extent still don’t fully realize how deeply cynical the lies actually were).
That’s how he got farmers on his side, military people on his side, the rust belt working class on his side. And so many of them still are. Because they want somebody to look out for and support them, and in a world where neither party gives a fuck about any of them, the one who says they’ll give a fuck (but doesn’t) becomes the only obvious choice. I’m convinced the most truthful words that ever came out of Trump’s mouth was his infamous quote “I love the poorly educated”. They don’t have enough insight into what’s going on to realize how thoroughly betrayed they’ve been, but they feel betrayed already. That’s why they joined MAGA. It’s not a new or surprising experience for them.
I think Cory Doctorow does a good job of explaining this when he talks about Naomi Klein’s book. They both call it a “mirror world” of political beliefs.
Qanon’s obsession with “child trafficking” is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about “immigrants stealing jobs” is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-waged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about “decentralization” is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.
It’s easy to be convinced by that type of logic. I used to be heavily into cryptocurrency because I saw the failure of capitalism to protect us from corporate consolidation and monopolies, so I assumed “this system that decries centralized authorities must be better.”
They were only half right though. It’s true corporate consolidation was a problem, and the centralization it brought causes issues, but the reason that consolidation happens is because of capital, which crypto is very much not against, and heavily supports, through tokens that give you ownership over a share of all the income a protocol generates, even if that protocol could run just fine indefinitely on-chain without paying you a fee.
People slowly accumulate more wealth, more voting power, and eventually control how these “decentralized” protocols operate.
In the same way, MAGA thinking has the same problem, where they’ll correctly identify an issue or motive, but entirely misjudge what the cause of it is, will fight the wrong enemies (or worse, support their true enemies), and only later will they realize things have just kept getting worse.
I think its more republicans point their fingers and say “these immigrants and woke people are responsible for your problems, so we need a giant fascist prison camp system to fix it” knowing full well it will make things worse.
Many democrat politicians do this thing where they try to make the answer as obtuse as possible to deflect their donors from blame so they mostly just sound like Nancy Pelosi when she said something like “the problems are very bad but their causes are very good”, the causes there being corporate donors that largely prefer republicans but also fund democrats to a lesser extent.
Republicans are willing to point their fingers at people and blame them for people’s woes which at least suggests a solution, even if its a full lie where they’re just blaming the victims or full absurdity like Elon Musk blaming George Soros for things (a guy who has like 2% of elon’s wealth and his political spending in politics is dwarfed by elon’s buyout of twitter alone)
Or when he said smart people don’t like me recently. No shit.
But it’s no secret why he’s popular with some of the working class, or shouldn’t be, if it’s a mystery to you it’s a sign you are being deliberately misled by people you trust. He looks like he’s fighting the status quo. That’s it.
He seems like he’s fighting the corrupt system. And he is, he is just fighting to make it more corrupt for him. But we all know the public doesn’t know that. So it’s no excuse for not running our own campaigns that can win.
When MAGA complains about mAiNSTreaM MEdiA, they’re right. Just not in the ways they think.
This seems to be a common pattern. Conservatives recognize a problem (eg: housing is expensive) and then come to some pants on head wrong conclusion (it’s the {outgroups})
It’s not that they figured out the problem independently but were too stupid to come to a rational solution. It’s that their propaganda sources know these are problems and are proactively introducing them and providing nutty solutions so when they’re raised naturally the issue will both validate the conservative end goals and be vaguely idiotic to the liberals.
“Every accusation is a confession” is real, even for things that seemed kind of outlandish like the elite pedophile cabal. I’m seriously concerned that the various baby blood and baby cannibalism conspiracy theories also aren’t just creative fiction by addled minds.
Its because right wing media is own by fascist billionaires who feed them disinformation while defunding their school districts, leading to them being unable to think for themselves and buying the outright lies as fact.
And the conservatives in the blue uniforms throw their hands up and just pretend to be powerless in response.
It’s also because these problems are multifaceted, layered and complex and generally don’t have simple solutions.
They often gravitate to a “solution” that they “understand” and right wing politics have been pretty good at promoting those “solutions”.
To play devils advocate: their solution isn’t wrong, it’s just to help rich folks not the poor.
Them recognizing a problem comes down to: poor people are complaining about X.
Their solution: well it would help me if we do this for X.
They are recognizing opportunities that could benefit them than actual problems.
Yep I think that’s a big part of what made MAGA so successful. They said a lot of the right things. They clearly didn’t mean them, AT ALL, but naive MAGA people didn’t realize that (and to a large extent still don’t fully realize how deeply cynical the lies actually were).
That’s how he got farmers on his side, military people on his side, the rust belt working class on his side. And so many of them still are. Because they want somebody to look out for and support them, and in a world where neither party gives a fuck about any of them, the one who says they’ll give a fuck (but doesn’t) becomes the only obvious choice. I’m convinced the most truthful words that ever came out of Trump’s mouth was his infamous quote “I love the poorly educated”. They don’t have enough insight into what’s going on to realize how thoroughly betrayed they’ve been, but they feel betrayed already. That’s why they joined MAGA. It’s not a new or surprising experience for them.
I think Cory Doctorow does a good job of explaining this when he talks about Naomi Klein’s book. They both call it a “mirror world” of political beliefs.
It’s easy to be convinced by that type of logic. I used to be heavily into cryptocurrency because I saw the failure of capitalism to protect us from corporate consolidation and monopolies, so I assumed “this system that decries centralized authorities must be better.”
They were only half right though. It’s true corporate consolidation was a problem, and the centralization it brought causes issues, but the reason that consolidation happens is because of capital, which crypto is very much not against, and heavily supports, through tokens that give you ownership over a share of all the income a protocol generates, even if that protocol could run just fine indefinitely on-chain without paying you a fee.
People slowly accumulate more wealth, more voting power, and eventually control how these “decentralized” protocols operate.
In the same way, MAGA thinking has the same problem, where they’ll correctly identify an issue or motive, but entirely misjudge what the cause of it is, will fight the wrong enemies (or worse, support their true enemies), and only later will they realize things have just kept getting worse.
I think its more republicans point their fingers and say “these immigrants and woke people are responsible for your problems, so we need a giant fascist prison camp system to fix it” knowing full well it will make things worse.
Many democrat politicians do this thing where they try to make the answer as obtuse as possible to deflect their donors from blame so they mostly just sound like Nancy Pelosi when she said something like “the problems are very bad but their causes are very good”, the causes there being corporate donors that largely prefer republicans but also fund democrats to a lesser extent.
Republicans are willing to point their fingers at people and blame them for people’s woes which at least suggests a solution, even if its a full lie where they’re just blaming the victims or full absurdity like Elon Musk blaming George Soros for things (a guy who has like 2% of elon’s wealth and his political spending in politics is dwarfed by elon’s buyout of twitter alone)
Or when he said smart people don’t like me recently. No shit.
But it’s no secret why he’s popular with some of the working class, or shouldn’t be, if it’s a mystery to you it’s a sign you are being deliberately misled by people you trust. He looks like he’s fighting the status quo. That’s it.
He seems like he’s fighting the corrupt system. And he is, he is just fighting to make it more corrupt for him. But we all know the public doesn’t know that. So it’s no excuse for not running our own campaigns that can win.
The other truthful thing he said was he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any support.
I feel like my reading between the lines isn’t comprehending. Why the random capitalization?