Conspiracy theories erupt regarding COVID-19. Don't trust. You are surrounded by predators.
Donald Trump understands that. He gets it. He gets that other people feel that way, too.
Conspiracy thinking happens on both left and right. It isn't partisan and it isn't political.
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| Make THIS much money from COVID-19 |
5-G technology created COVID-19 by mutating another virus.
Barack Obama created it because he hates Americans.
The Chinese created it by accident from their Wuhan lab.
Or maybe the virus doesn't actually exist and this is a hoax inflating death counts to give governments license to take away our freedoms.
Most media reports show people we profile as the Tea Party white working class Trump base. There are Trump 2020 signs, confederate flags, and now familiar image of pickup trucks and people holding guns.
That isn't the full story on conspiratorial thinking. There is left populism, too, and it shares the mistrust and suspicion that things are not what they appear to be. Supporters of Sanders share memes on Facebook and Twitter that explain Sanders' failure to celebrate a big win in the Iowa caucuses as a multi-month ultra-secret con, arranged by Buttigieg, Hillary, the DNC, Iowa Democrats, computer companies, and the media to deny Sanders an election night victory dance.
The fact that the conspiracy involved essentially everybody, and that no one knew about it, and that it could have been foiled by Sanders simply having stepped up to the camera to say he was thrilled by his apparent win, does not diminish the credibility of the conspiracy. It enhances it. Only an extraordinarily adept and powerful conspiracy could pull off something this complicatet. See? It's proof that it's worse than you think.
The conspiratorial left see people and institutions representing liberal reform to be Potemkin villages of deceit. It sees Sander's failure to win overwhelming majorities in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and on Super Tuesday to vote count fraud and ubiquitous voter suppression, carried out in secret for the benefit of Biden and against Sanders. MSNBC, CNN, the NY Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Huffington Post, Politico, are all just "corporate media," and in on the con.
That isn't the full story on conspiratorial thinking. There is left populism, too, and it shares the mistrust and suspicion that things are not what they appear to be. Supporters of Sanders share memes on Facebook and Twitter that explain Sanders' failure to celebrate a big win in the Iowa caucuses as a multi-month ultra-secret con, arranged by Buttigieg, Hillary, the DNC, Iowa Democrats, computer companies, and the media to deny Sanders an election night victory dance.
The fact that the conspiracy involved essentially everybody, and that no one knew about it, and that it could have been foiled by Sanders simply having stepped up to the camera to say he was thrilled by his apparent win, does not diminish the credibility of the conspiracy. It enhances it. Only an extraordinarily adept and powerful conspiracy could pull off something this complicatet. See? It's proof that it's worse than you think.
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| Debunking conspiracies |
This blog's description of this group as the pro-Trump left drew outrage from many of them. How can you say we like Trump? We oppose Trump! Indeed, they do. It is just that they hate rapist, racist, corporate-owned devils like Biden even more. So they won't vote, or will vote Green or even for Trump. Screw those Democratic frauds.
Michael Trigoboff shares an insight that part of Trump's crossover appeal is his own conspiratorial thinking. Trigoboff earned his Ph.D. at Rutgers, had a long career in the software industry, and now observes politics, academia, and the computer industry from his role as a Computer Science professor at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon.
Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff
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| Trigoboff |
- Both sides of our current political polarization are equally likely to entertain conspiracy theories. They are just about different topics. The right pays that sort of attention to the “deep state.” The left sees conspiracies in Wall Street. Elites on either side (e.g. Fox, MSNBC) direct conspiratorial thinking in their particular ideological directions.
- Conspiracy theory thinking is associated with level of mistrust and cynicism. These are personality traits, not ideological beliefs.
The discussion went on from these two points to a thought about how Donald Trump practices politics:
- Donald Trump treats the mistrustful/cynical subset of the population as a political constituency.
Political analysis usually breaks down the population by where they stand on particular issues or (more recently on the Democratic side) by gender and ethnicity. Donald Trump is doing it on an entirely different level, based instead on emotional orientation and personality type.
This explains a number of things that have been puzzling about our current politics:
- Why is Donald Trump's 42% level of support so durable?
(Personality types don’t change.) - Why did a significant number of Bernie Sanders supporters go on to vote for Donald Trump in 2016?
(Same attitude, different conspiracies. They liked someone who presented himself as a conspiracy fighter.) - Why are what the Democrats like to think of as intellectual arguments based on "science" so politically ineffective?
(Directed at the wrong target, completely irrelevant to what is actually happening politically.)
I previously have described the current political situation as Democrats attempting to play chess while Donald Trump, in WWE style, is body-slamming them and hitting them in the head with a folding chair. That was the best I could do until today.
But this new idea is higher-resolution, more accurate, and potentially much more useful.
6 comments:
"Only Science and Facts Can Debunk Conspiracy"
The election of 2016 revived America's abiding belief in "science". And in "true facts". Science and facts combine to create "pure truth". Until the 2016 election, I had pretty much stopped thinking about science. In the 90's I religiously followed the NPR program "Doctor Science". While he may not have been a "real doctor" he did have "a masters degree in science", and therefore we all accepted that "he knows more than you do". He even has a Wikipedia page. Now the pandemic has put "science" and the "facts" front and center not a moment too soon.
Democrats pledge that their decisions on the lockdown are based solely on "science" and "facts". The left has labored tirelessly to teach us that only we follow the facts, and warn us that Trump and the GOP most certainly do not. Red state governors don't care about science and the facts. Everything on FoxNews that attacks Democrats or the New York Times is, of course, "false", "without evidence", and "disregards science". To even cover GOP disputes over the facts, science or truth is, we have all learned, "false equivalency".
Indeed, so threatening to democracy are the lies and conspiracies of the right, especially those espoused by Trump himself, that they should not even be reported. The media should refuse to even attend Trump's press conferences because they are dangerous distortions of the facts, science and truth. Absolutely no one in the Obama administration did anything wrong in leaking to the press the surveillance files on General Flynn. A total conspiracy. Donald Trump is personally beholden to Putin under a quid pro quo for Russia stealing the election from Democrats, and just because Mueller didn't find the evidence or true facts does not mean it wasn't true. How can anyone believe any part of the Mueller investigation was a Democratic conspiracy or hoax? In fact, other than Sanders supporters, Democrats don't promote conspiracies or hoaxes, only the GOP does.
Only the GOP has no respect for pandemic science. Every lockdown restriction imposed by Democratic governors is based on science, but every lifting of lockdown restrictions by GOP governors is an abdication of science. "F.D.A. Halts Coronavirus Testing Program Backed by Bill Gates", the NYT reported two days ago. The FDA said that Gates' people were violating the law and ordered them to "discontinue patient testing". How on earth could Trump supporters and FoxNews twist this well-meaning violation into a conspiracy and suggest that Gates should be arrested? Gates was promoting the science of testing, while the GOP's arguments against over-reliance on testing are not based on science. Science says the economy stays closed until there is a test kit in every medicine cabinet.
Just because the classified information on General Flynn was leaked to the New York Times shortly after a meeting in the Obama White House suggests nothing about wrongdoing, and it is a baseless Trump-GOP conspiracy to claim the Obama White House had anything to do with the criminal national security breach. It's like that absurd conspiracy theory about Bill Clinton meeting with Obama's attorney general Loretta Lynch in a parked airplane. Obamagate, Russiagate, where does the GOP (and Sanders supporters) come up with this stuff?
We are so lucky that science, facts and truth are on our side.
Thad said:
We are so lucky that science, facts and truth are on our side.
And yet, the D's do not seem to be winning like one would think, given what you said.
Because you know that something's happening,
But you don't know what it is,
Do you, Mister Jones?
-- Bob Dylan
Why is Donald Trump's 42% level of support so durable?
(Personality types don’t change.)
I agree. Indeed, "Something happening here/What it is ain't exactly clear" (Buffalo Springfield) at least to the liberal establishment who remain self-righteously incurious and self-assured in their scientifically informed, but sadly neoliberal worldview. There are lots of cultures that lacked science but were better stewards of the planet, as one example.
Why did a significant number of Bernie Sanders supporters go on to vote for Donald Trump in 2016?
(Same attitude, different conspiracies. They liked someone who presented himself as a conspiracy fighter.)
I agree but I would also like to remind folks that many, if not all of them, were Obama voters in 2012. What does that tell us? Unless Biden picks Warren or Bernie or some AOC type as his VP, you ain't seen a defection like this one will be. It will be blamed on the Berniecrats, after every obstacle was put in Sanders' and Warren's way to the nomination by so-called "centrist" Dems and their corporate media. The system works perfectly, always providing us the lesser of two evils...but still evil. Biden will then join the pantheon of Republican-lite losers: Humphrey, Dukakis, Kerry and HRC. As someone on FB said recently: "Biden is winning the Democratic nomination on the basis of not being Bernie Sanders and wants to get elected president on the basis of not being Donald Trump. He’s as purely a negative candidate as we’ve seen in a very long time, running largely on who he isn’t and what he won’t do." And the Dems will be left once again scratching their heads wondering what went wrong and why their party only holds 27% of registered voters while Independents, many disgruntled Democrats, are 42%.
Why are what the Democrats like to think of as intellectual arguments based on "science" so politically ineffective?
(Directed at the wrong target, completely irrelevant to what is actually happening politically.)
I agree...Dems waste time simply preaching to the choir. Repugs "don't need no stinkin' science." Especially when the professional class of Democrats focus on it for their own ends, ignore the struggles of the working class, and vilify them as "deplorables."
"Change is coming to America" (Barrack Obama, 2008)...and it ain't gonna be pretty.
Andy Seles
Continuing the musical theme, here's one from my favorite band, the Grateful Dead:
I won't slave for beggar's pay,
Likewise gold or jewels,
But I would slave to learn the way,
To sink your ship of fools
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah (L.Cohen)
Andy Seles
Trigoboff asserts that a significant number of Sanders' supporters voted for Trump in 2016. Is that an established fact? Many voted third party, I suspect, but Trump? Could he supply us the factual basis of his assertion?
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