Primary field research: a conversation over dinner with the couple at the next table.
I am in St. Petersburg, Florida, chatting up the locals. Sitting next to me at dinner was a couple in their 80's, whose name I learned were Jim and Helen. He was a retired lawn and tree man, who grew up on a farm near Decatur, Illinois and stayed put. It is farm country--the kind of place that looks bright red on election maps. Everyone they know voted for Trump.
They, too, like Trump and voted for him.
The news today is about 1,000 paid employees in Russia whose job it was to create clickable stories about Hillary Clinton that would circulate on social media.
Those stories had traction and credibility. Republican voters were ready to believe the implausible. Obama faked a birth certificate in a conspiracy that goes back over fifty years. Hillary ran a pedofile sex ring with kid napped children out of a pizza parlor. Helen and Jim were ready to believe anything, so long as it was bad:
1. Hillary is a liar. Each repeated this multiple times.
2. She just let those people just die in Benghazi, and did not even care.
3. She murdered people back when she was First Lady. She had a big affair with that guy, then had him murdered and made it look like a suicide, but everyone knows what really happened. It was murder to cover the affair.
4. She let Bill get away with that fooling around in the Oval Office.
They stated these as pure simple facts.
They read the Decatur newspaper and watch Fox News. Helen could name who she liked the most. Brett Baier, then Charles Krauthammer. She recognized that O'Reilly and Hannity were opinionated but she liked them, along with Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.
Was Obama any better than Hillary? No. he was from Chicago and that means he was corrupt and Chicago dominates the state so Chicago methods make the rules. Obama was a community organizer and he tried to get people in his area to vote a certain way, she said, disapprovingly.
I am in St. Petersburg, Florida, chatting up the locals. Sitting next to me at dinner was a couple in their 80's, whose name I learned were Jim and Helen. He was a retired lawn and tree man, who grew up on a farm near Decatur, Illinois and stayed put. It is farm country--the kind of place that looks bright red on election maps. Everyone they know voted for Trump.
They, too, like Trump and voted for him.
The news today is about 1,000 paid employees in Russia whose job it was to create clickable stories about Hillary Clinton that would circulate on social media.
1,000 Paid Russian Trolls Spread Fake News On Hillary Clinton, Senate Intelligence Heads Told
Those stories had traction and credibility. Republican voters were ready to believe the implausible. Obama faked a birth certificate in a conspiracy that goes back over fifty years. Hillary ran a pedofile sex ring with kid napped children out of a pizza parlor. Helen and Jim were ready to believe anything, so long as it was bad:
1. Hillary is a liar. Each repeated this multiple times.
2. She just let those people just die in Benghazi, and did not even care.
3. She murdered people back when she was First Lady. She had a big affair with that guy, then had him murdered and made it look like a suicide, but everyone knows what really happened. It was murder to cover the affair.
4. She let Bill get away with that fooling around in the Oval Office.
They stated these as pure simple facts.
They read the Decatur newspaper and watch Fox News. Helen could name who she liked the most. Brett Baier, then Charles Krauthammer. She recognized that O'Reilly and Hannity were opinionated but she liked them, along with Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.
Was Obama any better than Hillary? No. he was from Chicago and that means he was corrupt and Chicago dominates the state so Chicago methods make the rules. Obama was a community organizer and he tried to get people in his area to vote a certain way, she said, disapprovingly.
2 comments:
As I've commented before I've been pondering these folks for some time. Recently I did some reading about those who have a marginal IQ. They can function at a fairly high level (gardener, truck driver, etc...) but do not experience reality fully, and as such are susceptible to simplistic explanations for the complexities of the world around them. Often these folk's lives are troubled; success eludes them and they mismanage relationships and finances. Not having the intellectual depth to take responsibility for their situation, if someone offers an reason that victimizes them they grasp it and hold on tight. On the other hand, those with higher IQs can have their rationality short circuited by conditioning, and coupled with sociopathic tendencies can create racist, homophobic, and bigoted behavior that is equally difficult to dissuade. It's a toxic psychological stew that, while destroying personalities, can also do a lot of collateral damage along the way, especially if they are in a position of power.
The remedy would be intensive therapy, education and perhaps some form of "quarantine", to keep them from harming themselves and others, in particular by voting for those who take advantage of their ignorance and narrow view of the world, but that discussion seems very far away at present. If this theory has merit, then any talk of "working with the other side", becomes ridiculous.
Thanks for sharing Jim and Helen's insights. They, like so many others, bought the right wing stories "hook, line, and sinker." Patribotics is another blog I've been reading. You might find interesting, too. Today's entry is certainly worth reading. https://patribotics.blog/author/patribotics/
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