I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is | What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
The last time Donald Trump was President of The United States of America, a viral pandemic emerged out of China, he did not stop flights coming in, he did not enact the war powers to manufacture PPE for our first responders, health workers, or public, he eschewed the use of ventilators, and openly mocked those who wore masks.
A Million fucking Americans perished from COVID during his Presidency, the largest per capital, and total of any nation on gods green earth.
What's happening is not the result of misinformation, it's informed self immolation.
Republicans realized they cannot win on their arguments, so they wish to burn it all down, themselves and their children included.
Yep. Per the article:
But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not.
Yeah but at least he was able to send free COVID tests to his Daddy Vlad when supplies were short and Americans were dying.
Free COVID testing machines. Not just disposable tests. It's way worse than what was initially reported.
I'm against the death penalty and I hate these posts that compare to Hitler but hear me out.
Though the US and world death toll in covid wasn't entirely Trump's fault, he was a major, if not the largest, contributer to it being that high through his actions and inactions. He lied about it, dismissed it, made it appear to be no-risk, egged his followers on to ridicule, hate, and threaten those that tried to protect themselves and their families.
Millions died. How many of those were needless deaths? How many were thanks directly or indirectly through the actions of orange dipshit clown? I think his death count is (obviously) lower than Hitler's, but I think it's in a similar range. I think he thinks about the deaths he caused in. A similar way that Hitler did, those that died were nothing, worthless.
If I murder more than two persons in the US, there is a good chance I get the death penalty. Trump willingly caused the deaths of millions just.tonfuether his political career. Why isn't he on death row?
I guess the quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" is real indeed.
I relatively yearn for the days where it was only crazy trump supporters getting covid wrong, as opposed to tons of formerly sensible people joining them in pretending it went poof because we got tired of it, or that it suddenly became not enough of a problem to warrant massive action.
You forgot the part where they were literally given a pandemic playbook and they choose to actively ignore its existence, with some republicans even claiming it didn't exist.
How is there any hope against misinformation when the top comment on a thread decrying misinformation contains major misinformation itself? Specifically, way more Americans have died of COVID under the Biden administration than under the Trump administration.
Just one source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/09/18/covid-19-deaths-under-trump-1-million-fact-check/75197222007/
Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).
Please note: I am not a Trump supporter! I am only interested in truth, reason, and reality. Downvoting my post is a sign that you're not interested in any of those.
Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).
Not only did it have more time under it, but it also inherited a public that was much more threatening toward anyone attempting to advance COVID control measures, including common sense ones like masking indoors.
The utter lunacy that polluted the public square during the late 2020 - early 2021 time frame caused a lot of the deaths that happened under Biden's early days to be in the category of being completely preventable but a large portion of the country had been fed bullshit for a year that told them to resist every possible preventative measure.
To be honest the other politicians around the world talked a big talk but they also failed to deal with the pandemic as it should have been delt with.
Meanwhile the Cuomo was on the news every night talking about the need to balance human lives with "The Economy" and as soon as democrats were in power, they ended covid measures and testing.
Prioritizing short-term profits over human lives was a bipartisan effort.
Edit: NYC Governor Cuomo, not that he and DeBlasio weren't competing to show how much they were doing to balance safety and the economy.
yeah its called capital accumulation, here's how it works:
A cabal conservative institution of international rich people don't want to pay taxes on their enormous wealth so they're spending some of their money to prop up nazis, religious freaks, and insane conspiracy theorists to drown out common sense economic policy and pin the blame on minorities and a departure from religious orthodoxy.
Obviously persecuting people on these grounds makes the situation worse and people don't want to be the next scapegoat so they fall in line (face eating leopard logic, etc.) but because we're removing the most exploitable workers from the economy the economy spirals, creating the need for more scapegoats. Fascism in a nutshell.
In the long term its self destructive to every society that allows it but in the short term they get another hour of power.
The slightest bit of material analysis exposes the whole thing, but the minute you add "Marxist" to that sentence everyone shuts their brain off because of over a century of red scare nonsense. As designed.
the minute you add "Marxist" to that sentence everyone shuts their brain off because of over a century of red scare nonsense. As designed.
Which is a real shame, because collectivist systems are the only way we can survive long-term on this planet. Collectivist systems allow us to pool resources and consumption, allowing more people to subsist at the same level of comfort while using far less.
One of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on humanity (other than religion, that is) is the adoption of an economic system that demands infinite growth on a finite planet. In the real world, such as when looking at population dynamics, these systems always lead to catastrophic collapses that eviscerate that population and frequently produces long-term damage to the local ecosystem that prevents said population from easily recovering. Or recovering at all, if we’re talking about a species of megafauna (over 45Kg, on average).
Most megafauna that significantly overshoot go extinct, and humanity entered overshoot at the 2B population point early last century. With how we have damaged the ecosystem, the planet’s natural carrying capacity has probably declined to less than 1B humans. This is particularly concerning because any end-stage economic crash (via the chaotic weather of climate change) will lead to a population crash (with the failure of agriculture at scale and the international trade that supplies us with 90+% of all food), and will also destroy any ability to produce and maintain the technology that allows us to artificially exceed the planet’s carrying capacity via agriculture at scale. I would be very surprised if humanity still exceeds 2B people by the end of this century.
And let's not forget that lies are a lot cheaper to create and spread than the truth. They even propagate themselves, or rather, people will do it for you, in their free time, expecting nothing in return. They'll spin and develop them further and further, just like that. It must totally make sense for any top capitalist to harness this free energy.
Top comment here. I was thinking along very similar lines in my commute to work this morning. The polarization that never ends or decreases seems to me to be purely a tool for rich elites to divide and conquer the general population.
The only minor asterisk I would add to your post is that I have personally been trying to avoid the term "cabal" because it can be accused of being an antisemitic dogwhistle. I don't think you meant it this way, but wanted to alert you to that possible interpretation. In fact, I heard something a little while back that some people even claim that decrying "elites" in general is antisemitic. I don't agree with this, but I think it's a good idea to keep this in mind to try to prevent that line of attack.
That's a fair point. The race science freaks are always trying to distort these things when in reality its usually like a conservative media, religious, or academic institution that facilitates and coordinates these projects: the federalist society, opus dei, the heritage foundation, fox news, xitter, etc.
Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own.
Oh, you mean like how the orange turd's administration in 2020 was legitimately very literally seizing shipments of critical PPE in 2020 at the height of COVID and selling it to fellow grifters for them to auction off to hospitals?
Your use of "legitimately" might be construed by some as "acceptably"
Only because he sold off all the emergency reserves (and never replaced it) when he took office
Well, and also to enrichen himself, too. Obviously.
Don't forget about tossing paper towel rolls to people, while restricting actual emergency supplies.
This isn't fair!
He also gave plenty away to Putin.
First they politicized a pandemic, now they're politicizing a hurricane.
When will it end?
"Never let a good catastrophe go to waste"
when the deep state turns off the chemtrail plants and stop pumping microchip vaccines into the air.
/s
What is the common thread that links almost all of these crazies? I mean, even more than religion.
Conservatism. Almost all of them vote for, or are elected representatives of, conservative parties.
And conservatism encourages divisiveness and bigotries like this. To be suspicious of and actively hate others, to find “evil” where none exist. To believe in falsehoods even when they have been demonstrably debunked.
Conservatism of all stripes is fundamentally evil. Conservatism is what will destroy civilization, and eventually, humanity.
I think it can be further boiled down to a belief that hierarchies are either necessary or good. All of the evil are cases where those higher up in the hierarchy impose their will on those lower.
Under those beliefs, the meaning of things like "respect" and "good/bad" are different than when one believes that everyone should be considered equal. The politeness version of respect is for equals, when they aren't equal, respect only needs to go one way and if it's sent the other way, it's more "effective management" and not giving respect "downwards" then boils down to a different management philosophy rather than simply being an asshole. They can even acknowledge that it is an asshole way to treat people, but there's an underlying belief that it's ok to be an asshole to lessers.
It also makes the whole "they believe in things that hurt themselves" make more sense. They just believe that those higher than them in the hierarchy deserve better treatment. Maybe there's an element of hoping to get there themselves one day, or maybe there's an element of just feeling like they are inferior to those they agree are their betters.
This is why they don't really care if Trump is consistent or if he'll help them directly. It's also why his support is wavering, because if he's not strong enough to win, then he isn't really their better and is just fooling them, which also helps explain why the ones who have tried to take his life seem to be former followers because they can't be neutral about him, it's either gotta be love or hate.
It makes sense that those who believe in it and those who don't would be at odds with each other because the two beliefs are very incompatible. I'm not sure there is a resolution. It used to be "just don't talk about politics, keep it private", but that wasn't sustainable as each side of the divide wanted to push for improvements under their belief system.
People shit on religion, but it's rarely a problem until it's conservative.
You've hit the nail on the head.
Conservatism is the mistake of assuming outright that people are evil, and therefore need to be punished and conquered into being good, or at least restricted. Where the reality is people aren't quite good or evil, they're more marbled, and if you buy the conservative misunderstanding, the punishing and the conquering are morally good, whereas stopping them is bad. What conservatism won't acknowledge or doesn't see is that when you grow, encourage, support, and develop the good parts, you can safely drop a large portion of the punishment and conquering stuff.
Most of what conservatism is defending itself against is its own way of doing things.
Conservatism
Have you ever met conservative atheists? I have and SOME of them have been the most hateful and vile people I ever met. It's like without any form of religion holding them back, you obtain the "purest form" of conservationism.
Some people think with no god, that means it's actually on humanity to take care of each other.
Other people think that with no heaven, better make this life count and fuck all y'all bitches, carpe deez nuts. Every man for himself. (Not women though because those aren't people).
That sure is a divisive opinion...
We were watching Rings of Power and my wife kept being like "How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense."
I legitimately cannot even. These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago, and that is just the version on my TV today. The danger of populism, the deception of the demagogue... It's all fucking right there... Impossible to ignore. Yet here we are, dealing with the same shit in a different age.
These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago
Just a nitpick: Rings of Power uses Tolkien's characters but its story is almost entirely the work of the show's modern script-writers. They don't have the rights to use anything Tolkien wrote about that period of Middle Earth's history beyond what is mentioned in LOTR and its appendices (which is very little).
Ah, that explains why everything felt pretty off with the whole thing.
The danger of populism
The wacko conspiracies aren't due to populism, it's the opposite.
People understand they have an antagonistic relationship with the government, but they don't have the theory and historical knowledge to understand the systems at play due to centuries of anti-communist propaganda, so they latch onto conspiracies that match their prejudices and don't threaten any of their beliefs.
We saw the same thing with nazi germany.
You've basically defined populism:
Say whatever rhetoric you believe to be currently popular at this very moment, with absolutely no coherent or consistent policies, within the framework of 'all us normal people' vs 'those degenerate elites.'
This is actually precisely in line with appealing to latent rhetoric and amplifying and creating conspiracies.
Trump did/does this, the Nazis did this.
Basically all populists say whatever the fuck they want and then their actual policies are almost always in line with whatever helps out them and their immediate friends/allies the most. But these can also turn on a dime.
Instability and erratic decision making are the hallmarks of basically every populist leader in the modern era.
Mostly only in the US does the term 'populist' have connotations of actually popularly supported policy positions, as mostly only in the US is 'Libertarian' a right wing, pro business ideology instead of a left wing, socialist ideology, and mostly only in the US does communism/socialism mean 'whenever the government spends money on stuff I don't want it to.'
You are correct though that populism works best in a very stupid, uneducated, angry population.
... Which is why the Republicans actual 'masterful political strategy' of the last 30 or 40 years was:
Make everyone stupid and uneducated by destroying public education, and angry via bombastic fear and hate spread via talk radio, tv news, and more lately the internet.
We were watching Rings of Power
My condolences
How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense.
This is one time where the Simpsons answer is actually appropriate: A wizard did it.
Except the wizard is a Maia.
(note: all wizards are Maia but not all of the Maiar are wizards)
The article mentions people are willing to suspend their belief in understandingthe truth in order to further their "team" or party objective, but I think this whole thing is simply foreign adversaries vying to destroy us from within by sowing contempt and spreading lies on social media and news outlets.
Occam's Razor.
Occam's Razor would suggest this is largely a domestic problem, perhaps exacerbated by foreign adversaries but far from being all their work.
Por que no los dos?
A meek, terrified populace is ripe fruit for the picking for actors both internal & external.
I think it's been foreign adversaries meddling with our politics. Our whole country knows we need to be spending a lot more on public education. It's not a mystery. Ask anybody who's been in a public school.
And then with the grip that social media has on our masses, The ease with which social media silos us into a weird kind of social affirmation tunnel vision platform that essentially brainwashes us.
If you're a foreign adversary that's already meddling in the United States politics, it's a hop skip and a jump to start meddling in their private sector. In fact it's quite a lot easier id imagine.
If you’re a foreign adversary that’s already meddling in the United States politics, it’s a hop skip and a jump to start meddling in their private sector.
You don't need any scary duplicitous foreigners for that, our own billionaires, are quite transparent about their desire and actions to "reform" education by channeling money from public schools to voucher schools. Bill Gates alone had put >10 billion into privatizing schools in America between ~2008 and ~2018., and haven't stopped.
Russia buying $40,000 worth of FB ads is an utter drop in the bucket next to the oceans of influence our own billionaires/corporations legally exercise.
Isn't occams razor the idea that it's stupidity, not malice?
You explain two types of "malice" - one which is primarily driven by a lack of critical thinking and another which is an intentionally planned attack.
Occams razor would say the former is more likely. You may have well said "fuck occams razor I believe it's Russian bots"
Occams's razor is, go with the simplest explanation.
There's another quippy rule that says a lot of what looks like malice is just incompetence.
lol holy shit the irony contained within this comment is 🤌
That's begging the question.
While riding home with my son this evening, I found myself apologizing to him. This world today--the people--are a profoundly unbelievable mess. He brought up things he's read in the news and I hardly know what to say. We both understand how insane it all is, but people still believe it... truly...
I get it. The world has always been a mess. This mess today is simply uniquely ours at this time in history.
But...
My gods...
What...
The...
sighs
I'm approaching my sixties now. I've been through a lot of the messes of recent history. The world today (and it is the world, its not just the US although that is the most flagrant example) feels genuinely different. Just the sheer amount of misinformed hate and self-destructive uber capitalism feels like its reaching a crescendo. What comes after that is worrying to think about.
50 something also chiming in.
I think the nutcases have always just been there. Hiding in plain sight. They just never had a platform. It was always "uncle jerry in the back, spilling nonsense while drinking his beer. Dont mind him."
And that was the end of it.
Uncle Jerry now has twitter , facebook and all those other bullshit channels for furthering his bullshit. And some of us just eat it up.
I work in IT, which is more then anything else, a business of truths. Its binary. It works or it don't. 0 or 1. Yes or no. A lot of highly trained and educated people work in IT, which is a field which only exists because of science... and blatantly ignore that same science about society, environment, immigration, economy, chem trails and god knows what else.
It's baffling. There are a lot, i would say 1 in 10, who will spout the most insane bullshit after a few beers. About stuff "the government doesn't want you to know." what exactly is the government ? I work for the government but apparently I'm excluded. Im good government?
we haven't been on the moon. Chem trails are real. Climate change is just a fad, covid is a way to control us, vaccines give cancer, polio isn't a real disease, its made up.
Da fuq.
I truly believe that social media, and I mean all social media should be banned. People should not be allowed to spew their bullshit. We as a people are really not ready for this. Maybe China is right with their "social score" system. Maybe stuff like the bilderberg group is really needed. We seem to need guidance. We, the normal civvies, seemingly are too hell bend on watching it all burn. And are too stupid to stop it. People like trump, inciting hate, spraying unlimited bullshit, should be thrown in jail. That's not politics. That's rage baiting.
The path we're on leads to 2 things: the capitalist dystopia, think blade runner and a total melt down of our ecosystem which, ultimately, will lead to our dinosaur moment.
We are living, this moment, in a great filter event. I truly believe that. Wanna know why we don't see, hear other planet wide civilisations? Look around you. See where this leads. Connect the dots. "do your own research." ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I don't think there's more disinformation as before in terms of % of info being wrong, but a lot of people have gotten really good at calling it out. The best example on-hand is the "cigarettes are good for you actually" and "we will buy tramways put of every city in North America and tear them out, then sell you a car!"
It's always been like this.
we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging
yea
This runs in parallel to tribalism and being part of an "in" crowd. Some people are so bound by their tribalism that they'll stare at facts and cry that it's not true because their tribe told them differently; they will reject the facts to continue to be a part of the tribe.
To them, being "in" is more important than being right, or even being logical.
Tribalism can take all sorts of different forms, from politics, to your local sports ball team. Even religion is a form of tribalism.
When everyone you know is a part of the conservative/republican/christian/whatever tribe, even if you don't agree with any of it, it's difficult to face the consequences of being ostracized or excluded from the only tribe you've ever really been a part of, by following what your mind and heart actually believe. In time, you might actually convince yourself of the bullshit you have to say you believe, in order to maintain your status in the tribe.
Tribalism is a survival trait. It's what has divided us into nations, countries, states, provinces, cities, towns, etc. Looking back, if we need to do something that will screw over the survivability of the neighboring village, so that we can ensure the continued prosperity of our village, then the answer is yes, do it. It's rewarded to be greedy and selfish in those circumstances.
Tribalism in the form of villages and towns like that is basically non-existent today, so instead we divide ourselves along other boundaries for what tribes we partake in. Whether that's religion, sports teams, political ideologies, conspiracy bullshit..... It doesn't really matter, the tribes are all still present, they've just taken a very different, more abstract form.
All of the MAGA hats, Trump flags, big trucks rolling coal on "hapless" EV drivers.... It's all just parading around your tribes colors, announcing your affiliations so others will know (the same way that marine vessels sail under a countries flag, or an army marches carrying the flag/colors of a country or whatever). All this showboating is the same as a peacock trying to attract a mate. All these fancy colors, and not a hell of a lot more going on.
They're baboons waving their big red buttocks around so everyone knows their butt is more red than yours.
That's why the Kremlin uses tribalism to divide people through its social media disinformation (aka fucking up people's cultures)
Is anyone else starting to wonder whether Orwell was a time traveler trying to warn us?
It couldn't possibly be that Trump and his handlers are using it (edit: 1984) as a road map and his followers are stupid enough not to notice.
Orwell wrote that book based on his personal observations from how the government already worked decades prior. All he did was 1+1=2 and he was visionary because of it. Same with Marx. Or Verne.
There's a reason dystopian fiction has reigned supreme for over a decade now. We're obsessed with our inevitable fate.
It's more that Trump read a book:
Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler's speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
"Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?" I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. "Who told you that?"
"I don't remember," I said.
"Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew." ("I did give him a book about Hitler," Marty Davis said. "But it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish.")
Edit: I'll note that this appears to the only time Trump has been observed reading a book.
No time travel, it is just that Orwell and the Repubs are both basing their content partially on observations about Nazi Germany.
Orwell's writings were inspired by what he had experienced in Burma and Spain. The issue isn't that he was particularly prescient, it's that nothing has changed.
Besides, of the two dystopian novels, we're much closer to Brave New World.
Orwell was writing specifically paranoid delusions about the USSR and it's really funny to me how his work actually more accurately describes capitalist countries today.
I believe the framework Warzel is looking for is something like:
'Mass Delusional Narcissistic Sustained Psychosis at a Societal Level'
With many of the characteristics of Nazism.
Well you see, according to the DSM whatever the latest edition is, a mental condition is ultimately only real and serious and diagnosable if it seriously impacts your or others ability to function in the economy.
Strong religious beliefs? Literally magical thinking and delusional, but nope, generally not a disorder in and of itself.
Brainwashed by a fascist cult leader into conspiratorial delusion generation upon being presented with facts you do not like?
Eh, as long as you don't directly, obviously, repeatedly threaten to harm others, you can probably still go to work, no problem.
Driven to nervous breakdowns by the stress of work, trauma of poverty, knowledge that capitalism is going to kill billions of people in the coming decades and you as a moral being feel helpless, yet somehow responsible?
Oh sure, you probably qualify for something, here's some pills that may help you get back to work.
There is no ethical Psychology or Psychiatry under Capitalism either.
Funny thing about humans is that they only really have their own life’s frame of reference for evaluating their experiences. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the decline of the American empire is unique, I am sure when other empires were experiencing similar levels of decline they had just as much douchebags to contend with. But the threat posed by increasing natural deterioration is a unique factor of our current era. Well that, and the specter of large scale nuclear war. Other than that, the culture wars have always been raging. Honestly, there’s no war but class war. I sound like a broken record now
Climate change was also probably behind the Bronze Age collapse (widespread drought,)- though it probably had nothing to do with humans changing things.
Gotta have the ol double-think.
I just tell myself that the ones saying the hurricanes are fake are bots just doing it for lulz
And the ones that repost it and assert that the conspiracy theories are real are also bots.
See someone in a grocery store who is ranting about chemtrails? She's a bot.
Make a post? Bot. Post a comment? Believe it or not, also bot.
We have the best Internet because of bots.
It's fascism. Y'know how Nazi shit started? We're doing that.
Some vague Other killed your dog and groped your daughter, nevermind that you have neither pets nor children, so shut up and experience a fear response we can exploit.
