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"Deprogramming" the Trump cult
(www.salon.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Just curious, do you think the programming due to echo chambers applies to Democrats as well?
I think it's pretty obvious one side is operating totally outside of reality where the other is not. Are democrats peddling stolen election lies and denying the existence of COVID?
I'm not saying anything negative Democrats or doing any comparison on idiologies. I feel like echo chambers keeping politics in their own little bubbles is bad for everyone. I just wanted your opinion on echo chambers being applicable to both sides. Don't know why I can't ask a question without getting down voted.
It's because the way you are posing questions is disingenuous. It's an article about issues with the Republican party and voter base and you turn around and go, "well, yeah, but there are two sides so Democrats must be the same right???" It's like you can't even discuss the topic at hand, you have to make it a "both sides" thing.
But sure, I'll bite. Do Democrats have huge numbers of talk radio stations, shitty news stations, and grifting facebook pages all pushing the same bullshit? Because Republicans do, and they all for some reason talk about the same shit in the same way. You can hem and haw about how MSNBC could be more "neutral," but it doesn't hold a candle to the ridiculousness of Fox News. And if it did, don't worry, we've still got OANN to talk about.
Democratic echo chambers amount to "we don't like you saying racial slurs in our forum," where Republican echo chambers amount to "don't you dare post that scientific study or countermand the will of the Great Leader." They aren't the same, no matter how desperate you are to equivocate.
I can see your point about my comment being disingenuous. You are correct I'm not staying on the topic of the article and I'm instead commenting on a comment instead. Again my question was meant to discuss echo chambers in general.
Post something about transgender athletes in women's sports, or how boarder protections are a positive. You'll get smashed to bits in the exact same way.
The echo chambers are there for both side and reasonable discussion of middle ground has been eliminated from American discourse.
What do you feel are the problematic issues stemming from the “dem echo chamber”?
Oooh, can I play?
Tribalism is the real problem and the echo chambers are where it's fostered. The inability to see a fact, event, or report clearly without blue-tinted glasses can stand in the way of progress.
Of course a segment of the right has some weird issues with accepting science as fact – or facts as facts. It wasn't long ago this fringe population was ignored and isolated while mainstream middle America politics existed (relatively) out in the open. The echo chamber everyone is living in right now is this - social media. This is not reality. This is not you and I sitting down and having a face-to-face chat about our lives and experiences and how we can agree and disagree on things regardless of who we've voted for.
Our extreme political polarization exists because of the internet. The internet is not where we're going to solve this problem. Just because we generally all agree that "the left" is ~~right~~ correct, arguing over facts and truths with people who's primary objective is to reject them is not going to foster progress. Arguing over what laws should exist in one state and not another and if the Constitution even allows for such laws is not going to be resolved in a Xweet. You may win the battle but the war will certainly carry on without you.
The "dem echo chamber" is made up of virtue signaling propaganda (as is MAGA). It's selling rally towels outside a football game and people are just there to have a good time cheering along for their team. The teams are dressed in red and blue but the QB is still rich and the D-Line is still poor.
I also feel like the left's use of social media to call out the stupidity and malice and atrocities of the right strengthens the right's defenses and their numbers. What in the past may have been a small story in a local paper now can become an international headline within minutes. I generally think this is a good thing but there's a lot of overly sensitive people who feel like the internet is reality and they can be susceptible to intimidation and bullying. As the echo bounces around the left's chamber, the right aren't getting weaker, they're getting stronger.
"Facts" aside, I see very little difference in the echo chambers and tribalism.
Which brings us to the right's issue with facts. To be brief, there was a study that showed brains of conservatives are actually a little different than those of liberals. Conservatives are more protective. They're afraid of change and threats to their families and communities. They have real not-invalid concerns. So, when presented with actual facts and science that attack their stance and weaken their protections, they're going to fight harder, even is that means using "fantasy" as their reality to "prove" you wrong.
The problem with these echo chambers and tribalism is that people are locking themselves in and forgoing real world conversations that involve vulnerability, humility, and negotiations. No one is interested in taking the time to give the other person a chance to step outside their echo chamber. All they want is to be right and to convince the other they're wrong.
Now, to be fair, I do not have an answer as to what to do about literal textbook definition fascists trying to take control of our government. If I were a more well educated about WWII, I might have an idea about what not to do.
People have called me out in the past for being an idealist and that I'm not considering the reality of the situation. I feel pretty strongly that the issue is people not stepping outside their echo chambers to take a look at the reality they actually have control over. I also feel very strongly that Ranked Choice Voting would quell the vast majority of the polarization found in politics and social issues.
Beyond convincing them they're wrong, it can seem they want the righteous vindication of a concession. They want their opposing interlocutor to proclaim the error of their ways and denounce their former position. It can lead to just beating down an opponent to the point they don't even reflect on the full discourse. Sometimes you need to make some solid points and leave it at that. When people are flat out denying facts they usually fall into one of two groups. The first group are the Fucker Carlsons and Bitch McConnells of the world. They know they're lying and pointing out facts won't matter. The other group is people who haven't employed much critical thinking to the "facts" the first group provides. Either they've fully committed to the lies and are lost causes, they haven't had the time to truly flesh out their positions, or they might categorically lack the mental faculties to use critical thinking.
For the former group, they are playing their role and won't change no matter how foolproof your argument. So putting out facts at the forefront can help to have that information available to contrast the propaganda should someone from the latter group see.
For the latter group, no one wants to be wrong. So being systematically shown to have been duped and lied to can cause some pretty typical defense mechanisms. Enter cognitive dissonance. So making a few points and trying to not be abrasive or confrontational can set them a little more at ease. You need to allow them some time to process. Trying to force some "win" can cause them to just dig in deeper to their preconceived notions. Then it's harder to pull them out.
I agree with this.
My general approach to someone whom I'm having a face-to-face discussion with is to ask questions. Tell me why you feel this way and how your ideas solve a (perceived) problem. Then I try to lead them outside the box and think with a broader brush. Is this really the solution to the problem or a solution looking for a problem.
But, frankly, more often I just get a better sense of where they're coming from and I find that we're not so different. We have different ideas about tangible things but when you step further back, we have a lot more in common. It's these echo chambers that give a distorted focus on our ideologies.
I find that this is when our true core difference become more apparent. And here is where we can start having real discussions and negotiations about framework and policy. When you can find some respect for someone, you might find you want to help them, even if you never vote for the same representative. We do't need to agree with each other but we should offer to help one another.
Yeah... complete lack of respect for one another may actually be the greatest threat to our democracy. People don't even want to consider offering respect to someone who doesn't respect them first. I genuinely don't think a lot of people even know what respect means anymore. Treat people like you want to be treated.
When I was in third grade I was to catechism classes and had my first communion. The whole time I'm going I'm like, but what about Judaism and Buddhism, and Islam, and the Native American and Roman and Greek and Aztec gods? Who says Catholicism is the "right" religion? Granted, these are philosophies based in fantasy but the point I'm trying to make is that it's extremely easy to stay within your echo chamber and not question what's right or wrong or truth or fiction. The liberals love to lean on science to prove themselves right but they're also the same people who wear "free range" as a crown when the chickens are still living in shit and believe paper and reusable bags are better than plastic bags (its complicated).
Everyone is a product of propaganda / marketing / branding / advertising / political and religious greed / The Algorithm.
All we will ever truly have is each other.
Make peace with it.
It's not about "dem echo chambers" to me it's about echo chambers in general. The problems I think they cause are more devision, less ability to reflect on held beliefs, and make it difficult to have conversations or debates with those who old different beliefs. Again this is specific to echo chambers in general.
My brain has stopped functioning since this AM 🤣 but that’s fair re: “echo chambers in general” - just the “both sides” rhetoric and the specific questions about “dem echo chambers” had me wondering what specific problematic issues were stemming from that. I was gonna be specific but I can no longer find/follow the convo - Oy old age ig - thank for taking the time to answer.
You have fallen into one of the liberal echo chamber traps. I like to think these traps were born of genuinely good intent and have simply been overused. An issue that liberal echo chambers can have is bad faith actors trolling the various forums and social media. For example, an unabashedly "pro-life" conservative wading into the topic of abortion calling themselves "pro-choice". Then they start Just Asking Questions and ultimately reveal they think the choice should be to not have sex. And once someone is pregnant, they've made a choice and now must live with the consequences.
So liberals have these "traps" that started as somewhat of a defense mechanism. Rather than waste time attempting to truly flesh out a position with someone acting in bad faith, they will begin the process by sort of vetting the person. If you ask the "wrong questions" or provide the "wrong answers", you'll be effectively labeled a bad faith person. This will be evident initially by a flurry of downvotes on a few comments. Once the avalanche has started, it's hard to avoid. People will barely peruse your comments and follow the judgement that you are acting in bad faith.
It makes it impossible to play devil's advocate or really dig deep on topics that have tons of nuance and layers. Once a comment chain gets long enough maybe 1 or 2 other people will still follow it. If you've been judged earlier on, any valid points or questions you proffer will be ignored and/or downvoted.
FWIW I've come to describe myself as "horrifically liberal". Even given that, I have been downvoted to oblivion on topics where I didn't pass whatever purity test the first few viewers required.
Edit: as you can see, I've already been downvoted. Basically proving exactly what I said in my post.
This is unironically the most common view on men and reproduction.
One of the voices contrary to it was the fourth national president of the National Organization for Women, Karen De Crow. She had a bunch views that are still considered controversial today, like that cases of contested child custody should start from a position that shared custody is best for the child unless there's a reason it should be otherwise (this is actually law in two states now) or that “If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.” That quote is from a case where she represented a man who was trying to get his child support order vacated because the mother had lied to him about her contraceptive use.
Speaking of contraceptives, if a form of male contraceptive ever reaches market whose use is not visibly apparent to his partner (say vasalgel), I fully expect to see lots of talk online from feminist spaces about how a man not being honest about whether or not he is using said contraceptive is sexual assault in exactly the way it isn't for a woman to do the same thing with the options available to her.
The idea that all Republicans are literal Nazis who can't be worked with.
It sure would be easier to counter that idea if the republicans’ leading contender for speaker of the house wasn’t someone who described himself as “David Duke without the baggage”. I guess technically the former grand wizard of the KKK wasn’t a literal nazi, but that doesn’t seem like a hair worth splitting.
I see you've not argued with many conservatives. They'll split the hair until there's nothing left. I'm surprised none have won a Nobel prize for splitting subatomic particles, as that's how far they'll take it.
The longest serving Senator in history (and the man in second place for longest total time serving in Congress between both houses) was a Democrat but merely an exalted cyclops in the KKK (if I understand the organizational structure right, grand wizard is like a national president while exalted cyclops is more like a chapter president?). He also filibustered the Civil Rights Act. Again, Democrat - spent much of the late 70s to late 80s as either Majority Leader or Minority Leader as appropriate. Biden gave him a eulogy.
So is the lesson here that Republicans pick higher ranking KKK members for leadership positions than Democrats will?
Man, you’re reaching back 40 to 50 years to find an equivalence in the Democratic Party. A lot can change in half a century. It’s also worth noting that Byrd renounced his KKK membership later in life.
I’m pointing out that just 2 days ago, a majority of the republicans in the house voted in favor of a speaker who compares himself favorably to a former KKK leader.
Well, those "literal nazis" are part of your government and have a vote just like anyone else. You can wish them away, whine and bitch about them, or work with them where there is common ground.
In the case of both sides (yes I said it - deal) the partisans have chosen option's A and B. Just bitch and whine and refuse to work together. It's cathartic for partisans - but not great for those of us who want a functioning government.
This is where you complain about how "Republicans did it first do you really think they will work with us they all lie and always go back on their word and they want a fascist state so working with fascists means you're a fascist something something fascist bar something something paradox of intolerance".
Just to be clear, your primary issue with
is not the association of Republicans with Nazis, but that Democrats should be more willing work with the Nazi politicians?
Compromising with people that want you dead, just makes you dead.
No no no, it only makes you half dead. Successful compromise!
I think anyone can be in an eco chamber regardless of your political beliefs. I think it is less likely for Democrats as their news isn't just a single channel that has been proven to not be news.
Right wing news is from the limited sources it is because those are the only sources that will align with their biases. Most other news sources align with center-left or farther left biases depending on the source. This is very much about the market - the largest population centers tend to lean left so there's a bigger market, it comes down to whether an outlet is trying to get a smaller slice of a much larger pie or a bigger slice of the smaller pie that right wing outlets share - it's a lot easier to get a big market share when there's less competition.
For an example of the sorts of biases you see - let's look at hate crimes against Asians resulting from COVID.
Left leaning sources would upsell that increase in hate crimes, but weirdly avoid using any specific examples or saying anything about who was perpetuating them other than some vague statements about "white supremacy" and blaming the increase on Trump calling COVID a Chinese virus. Well, until one day when all the talk about it started using one specific example of a white guy hate criming an Asian, but that was a couple months after they'd started talking about the topic.
Right leaning sources would ignore or avoid the topic until they couldn't get away with that any more. Then they focused on who was doing said hate crimes, because by the numbers it was mostly black-on-Asian hate crime, and blacks being criminals is aligned with their biases. This is the same reason why left leaning sources tried to avoid who was doing the hate crimes against Asians until they had a prominent example with a white perp - it's hard to sell black folks acting in the name of white supremacy, and blacks being criminals is not aligned with their biases.
Democrats are just denying that neoliberalism and capitalism are destroying the planet.
The democratic party is a coalition party ranging from the neoliberals all the way to anarchists and everything in between. In general, the people that are nominated are controlled by the party establishment but the people that vote range from a variety of left biases. After all, the Democrats are the only decent conservative party left in this country.
The Democrat's establishment is what matters in these conversations, and yes they refuse to acknowledge that the root causes of climate change is late stage neoliberal capitalism.
What exactly is a solution to that?
Educate the masses. Read theory.
The masses are more likely to believe the Earth is flat than read and comprehend theory.
They’ll figure it out once the fascist kill enough of their people. Until then, we read.
Fascist ideas always lead to war.
They don't deny it but exaggerate how much they care in order to get that sweet, sweet social credit - much like conservatives and "traditional values". The ones that play this game the best are the ones that end up in power.
There is a definite difference in magnitude / severity but there is a similarity in partisan thinking.
Many on "the left" still believe Trump coordinated with Russia in his election for example. And that Russia was instrumental in that win.
And I keep seeing"the left" talking punishing people for protected speech, etc.
Pretending one side is "virtuous" and fighting the "pure evil" of the other side is an attribute of both sides.
Partisanship doesn't like nuance. As indicated by all the down votes I'm about to receive.
Anyone who actually read the Mueller report knows this to be true
The report which concludes on page 173 that
?
That doesn't mean what you think it means.
You seem to think it means that the coordination or conspiracy didn't happen, but what it actually means is that Bill Barr prohibited the investigators from plainly stating the conclusion on the bullshit argument that it was Congress' job to connect the obvious dots themselves, which the Republicans in charge of it promptly refused to do.
2020:
(Emphasis mine)
It’s not that far-fetched at all to think that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in 2016.
If you go by the results of this investigation, it’s equally as wrong to assert that they didn’t.
Yet it's not what the investigation into that question concluded.
Manafort has literally openly admitted to it. It's also in the 2020 Senate report you didn't read
No shit, Sherlock! But how is that a problem?
The research doesn't indicate this. Everyone is prone to echo chambers, but left leaning folks tend to have more diversified news sources, which is the balance to negate echo chambers.
The left have more diversified news sources because the country has generally been left-leaning in recent generations. It wasn't "left" when ABC, CBS, NBC were the only news outlets; it was very much "middle-America".
Not until Fox News came along did conservatives have a real alternative outlet. Still, most news outlets are left / left-middle to represent most people. If there's five outlets with similar perspectives, a segment of the population will be divided among them. If there's only one or two conservative outlets, there isn't much diversity for conservatives to get their news from.
So, while I agree with you about diversified media, I'd argue the echo chamber is getting much stronger.
Ultimately, these news outlets report to their advertisers and corporate overlords. They control what news is being broadcast now that we have algorithms telling them what people want to watch. Back when the big three were all there were to report the news, they pretty much only had to report to the public trust and their own integrity. Today's media works in both directions at near-lightspeed.
Regardless of political ideology, is the general population choosing to watch news reports that inform them or that enforce their existing feelings? Are you the kind of person who's buying groceries because they're good for you and good for the environment or are you the kind of person who buys cheaper comfort food? Perhaps more importantly, who's telling you what's good for you and what's bad for you?
If only people knew the truth! The issue is: That’s not how information actually works. Despite what you are told, social media and the internet often increase the range of views to which people are exposed. Algorithms are less likely to create a echo chamber for you than living in a neighborhood surrounded by Republicans with limited media.
So what are echo chambers, really? They are epistemic bubbles, where other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. When they get contrary information that doesn't match their preconceived beliefs, they dismiss it. It confirms what they already believe—they’re wrong.
While privately owned social media companies can influence us, they’re hardly the only things that do. Our core ideologies and values are determined by everything from where we grew up to whom we love, to the actual impact of politics on our lives. Fixing Facebook wouldn’t solve the problem of many echo chambers—your family’s opinions, your friend’s bigoted talking points—even if it’s a good idea.
In a way, those who worry about echo chambers are too hopeful. Many voters really do want Trump, Brexit, and other things that liberals abhor. A lot of people do not care, deep down, about democracy. Better information might not be a panacea for that, even if it would slow down a conspiracy theory like QAnon.
That is the main difference of the two sides, Liberals get a multifaceted message with various perspectives and they latch onto those messages that most resonate with them. Conservatives on the other hand only get one perspective and thus rarely hear opposing views in context.
Which side you land on largely has to do with your personal environment.
That's a very well thought out response and I find myself really agreeing with you. It is frustrating that in order for me to ask the question the elicited a response that changed my perspective, my post automatically gets down voted by the community. That alone makes me not want to ask questions thus perpetuating the echo chambers in the community.
Fake internet points!
I've never been in favor of visual voting where it shows positive and negative.
It does. Their propaganda is that equality matters but they maintain status quo with minimal progress. They definitely prioritize corporate interests over gen pop.
Of course it does
The Internet has made people flock to places where people think like them.
Additionally, FaceBook, Google News, and many other sites intentionally show users material that it knows they will interact with to trigger dopamine releases. It's addictive by design.
Social media has far less influence than ones family, their local community, and their religion or lack there of.