this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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The problem is that it's not a question of intelligence.
Trumpists and their ilk are living in echo chambers of "alternative facts", perpetuated by Fox News, Murdoch newspapers and an nearly endless amount of rightwing influencers (starting with Rogan at the top). They are not looking at what's happening, because they are surrounded in a very comforting bubble of disinfo and propaganda that confirms everything they wanted to hear: The illegals get deported, the queers get finally put in their place, the liberals are frothing with anger, finally men are back in charge who tell women where they belong and America is going to be "great" again any moment now.
It's fascism and fascism has always been a "cult": The early pioneers of fascism (particularly D'Annunzio and later Mussolini) explicitly said their aim was to create a "secular religion" around the nation, the people and the leader. And you can only be a member of that religion if you accept its "truth" and reject everything that contradicts it.
Very smart people can adhere to a religion for a variety of reasons and the most obvious one is (and always has been) because it promises them power over others.
That's the key word. The promises of greatness don't actually have to be delivered. You can be in the midst of a pandemic and/or collapsing economy. As long as you have the comforting myth.
Same idea behind conspiracy theories.
Uncertainty is scary. Instead of feeling that fear (and turning to a project like science), any imagination that explains the unknown will work.
You make a lot of important points. I'd like to also add that those same communities actively discourage critical thinking.
We all enter the world without knowing how it works. We spend our early childhood learning the rules of reality, sometimes testing them. Consider an infant in a high chair that repeatedly drops their spoon - will the spoon fall to the ground again? Is this a consistent thing? What if it just hovers in the air this time? Gotta drop it again and find out.
Our brains not only build a set of "rules" about how the world works, but our imaginations help us fill in what we don't know. Like how having scared feelings at night can be interpreted by children as a monster hiding in the corner. They don't know the world with any sort of certainty, but their emotions are strong, so of course the existence of a monster makes sense.
Now imagine that nobody ever told you that monsters aren't real. Imagine, instead, that the adults around you reinforced such fears, by using words like "demons" or "devils" to describe the creature you should be afraid of. These same adults can't answer the "Why?" questions that kids have, except to say "God did it." Natural scientists get blocked from information that can help them accurately understand the world.
But it goes beyond simply maintaining ignorance. When kids are raised to sustain their magical thinking past the point where it is developmentally appropriate, they never acquire the mental scaffolding upon which reasoning is built. The logical way to connect concept A to concept B is obvious to you or me, but doesn't stand out for them. Why? Because magical thinking is a free-for-all. Such kids are actively taught to misunderstand reality. If there are no rules to making things make sense, or if everything is some invisible creature's "mysterious plan," then what you or I would call a "logical conclusion" becomes just one of many, equally-valid possibilities.
On poor reading skills, this was a really interesting read/listen: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ - We've apparently just been teaching kids how to read poorly, and not because of like a sinister agenda. That almost makes it worse, that it started with good intentions.
Also I think about how a lot of the people who are, as you're alluding to, bad at language simply won't show up on a platform like this that's all text. That's probably why visual platforms like youtube and tiktok are hugely popular. There are a lot of people who simply cannot comfortably operate in a text-first medium.
This should be the actual democrats message before voting begins
effectively calling at least a quarter of the population some kind of mentally handicapped is certainly a novel strategy...
i wonder why politicians don't typically run on such a platform? /s
Yes, I think we are both in agreement that there is a distinction between intelligence and education. And - while these two points often get thrown together - it matters in political contexts, particularly because the Trumpists attempt to destroy the education system which they see as an obstacle to their rule. Critical thinking and language skills matter.
Exactly right. The one saving grace is that most cults are tied to their leader. Once Trump is gone, MAGA will fracture into sub-groups over who to follow.
There’s a creator who goes by the name Knitting Cult Lady, who grew up in the Kingdom of God cult and then became intelligence for the US Army. She has some very enlightening insight on the cult of MAGA. Pretty fascinating stuff actually.
The ~~Branch Davidian~~ Jim Jones kool-aid test was a great analogy for Trump’s fearmongering. The leader would ask people to drink poisoned kool-aid as a final test of faith. They had to experience the horror of facing their own death, only to then be filled with relief upon finding it was only a test. This was repeated over many occasions before the kool-aid was actually laced with poison. Trump keeps talking about taking Greenland by force so when the time comes, we’ll be desensitized to the reality.
Wasn't Jim Jones the koolaid test? The Branch Davidians went up in flames in Waco, TX after the Feds attempted to raid them.
Or did they both do it? It's been a while since I read about David Koresh.
You’re absolutely correct. Edited for accuracy.
Ill have to take a look into Knitting Cult Lady, sounds like a very interesting perspective
Yes, but as someone who is unfortunately related to dozens of Trump supporters, many of them are also dumb. A couple of them are just raging bigots who are happy to buy into the lie, but a lot of them are objectively not very smart. I could tell from a pretty young age, well before politics entered the picture, and my family isn't unique. My cousins married people from similar families and had kids that are also kind of dumb.
There's nothing inherently wrong with being dumb. There are plenty of people who do just fine and are kind, decent humans. But Republicans saw the less intelligent as a target, and that echo chamber is a lot more effective when you don't have critical thinking skills. Fighting against it feels impossible because logic and facts don't really make a dent.
I agree.
The other thing to consider is that while the stock market is tanking many of these people don't have investments like that.
My experience is that conservatives discount anything that is not directly and very obviously affecting them, and even then it takes a while to sink in. They won't change until every retail outlet they patronize jacks the price or every product they use aggressively shrinkflates.
nail on the head with surgical precision, they are getting exactly what they wanted.
everything else is stuff they choose to believe because those are the people making it happen.
Well said
Does their comfort bubble include comfort prices on things? If so how do I get in on that?
It was one thing when all the bad stuff was happening to people they wouldn't associate with, but tanking the economy and firing scores of government employees has gotta be breaking into that bubble, right?
AFAIK that depends really: Sure, those who are not really part of the "cult" will likely drop out, but the "ever faithful" will double down, because they will consider such hardship to be a test of their faith.
That effect can be seen here:
It scares me that even the "normal Republicans" still have >= 50% approval on the economy and prices
Yeah, it is simply unbelievable but I just saw people thinking drumpf will "pull it off" and "solve debt crisis" in investing.com.
Literally every post including yours is just repeating the same bullshit:
Republican voters are idiots who are easily manipulated while us chad liberals are ultra smart and can see through any propaganda immediately.
You are just as susceptible as anyone else, and you are just as falsely confident in your own ability as the people you are shitting on.
It’s always valid to say that everyone is susceptible to propaganda. That said, republican voters tend to be worse educated, more religious, and more likely to spread fake news than democrat voters. It seems reasonable to say that they’re more susceptible to propaganda, no?
Each group is susceptible to different types of propaganda. I dont think liberals are better because they are deceived in a different way.
I don’t think they’re better people, but I do think it’s generally possible for people to be more or less susceptible to propaganda than others. If I wanted to gauge that, I think education level, religiosity, and likelihood of sharing fake news would be pretty good data points.
The problem is this is all secondhand information. People have to trust something, which makes them susceptible to being manipulated. Some people choose to trust noone and others try to take in all sides and assume the truth is in the middle. Everyones acting on faith.
The point I'm making is that both sides seem to spend a lot of time arguing over each others propaganda, which is a huge waste of time. No understanding is furthered and no problem is identified or solved.
It sounds like you think that everyone is informed near exclusively through propaganda, which is reasonable- by some definitions all information shared between people is propaganda. In that case everyone would be equally influenced by propaganda. I wasn’t using that definition, but I also don’t disagree under it.
I think the larger the scale of something or the farther away from someone it happened, the more susceptible that person is to propaganda about it. Its why we think china is a third world country, and that america is a peace keeping force in the world.
Its a lot harder to put out propaganda about my extended family, because I'm actually a better source for information in that case due to proximity.
I guess I just mainly dont like the overconfidence people display, we still know so little about human limitations on a societal scale it seems.
It’s also why we think the US is an advanced country, and that’s pretty close for most Americans. I would be very surprised if nobody in your extended family was less religious/heterosexual/happy/in love with their partner than you realize. Every piece of information you receive from someone else is tainted by their perspective and intent in sharing it, including the actions you see them perform.
You are likely right but I also wouldnt put a lot of confidence in my assessment of how others feel, especially generalizing it over time.
If someone tried to convince me my mother was a secret Nazi though they'd need some strong proof for me to consider it.
Everyone is susceptible, yes, but the difference is having the ability to think critically about things and not take them at face value. Which is a virtue that is absent today.
Its absent from both major parties left or right. Both sides are absolutely drowning in propaganda. Very few people think critically, and when they do they are not celebrated.
I strongly disagree. Yes, both sides are drowning in propaganda, and I've seen it on the left many times. However every single time, I've noticed someone speak up about it and it's both a reminder that both sides have propaganda and also to not blindly believe everything. I do my best to verify facts for myself before believing any headline, and I'm sure at least half of other lefties do too. Compared to the right where if rarely someone speaks up about it, they are silenced.
You could be right but I have seen the left silenced as well, mainly through account bans or community bans, or politicians mocking or shaming those with ideas they dont like.
Sorry but I'm not defending whatever it is you are attacking here.