How to Dedupe Republicans

The Sandbox Political Topics
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So…What do we do with the brainwashed Republicans?
How do we get them to trust the main-stream-media, science, democracy, justice?
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Something like 75% of Republicans believe that widespread voter fraud occurred in 2020, effectively stealing the election for Biden, despite 50 lawsuits failing with judges at all levels and all politics failing for lack of evidence. This is mass hysteria. It is also the cause of the attempted coup (really isn’t a coup justified when all three branches of government have conspired against you?)

Note: none of this is brand new. It’s not because of BLM, the “anti-fa”, absentee ballots, carter page, Ukraine-gate, COVID, etc. Republicans were primed to expect fraud before the 2016 election.

I believe it goes hand-in-hand with distrusting the “MSM”, scientists, newspapers, educators, judges, doctors, basically all the people (like actuaries) that are paid to provide the truth and be accountable for our lies.

Note how incredibly sudden the graph changed. It’s like millions of completely grown adults, who have more or less believed that education is a benign thing for their entire lives all woke up on the same day and decided, “wow education is evil.”

Of course they have reasons or whatever, but their reasons don’t make any sense in terms of how suddenly their beliefs changed. Schools didn’t suddenly become atheist communist anti-free-speech zones in 2016-2017. They either were or they weren’t for decades.

The same of course is true of the “MSM”. And science. And basically every other institution. It’s all just brainwashing, incredibly fast powerful brainwashing.

By Trump of course, and by countless conservative tv shows, websites and talk-radio types.

Here is a hot take that registered with me. It's anecdote from a CIA profile of Hitler.

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

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Excellent first post! I think in the short term focus on trimming away the not so committed by giving them a republican alternative. Arnold’s post 6th video was excellent. If a number of well known republicans cane out with a clear simple fact based message and path forward and kept it in the news everyone would benefit.

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Republicans can continue to not go to college. I’m cool with that.

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I don’t know if we can.

Based on some conversations with a friend who thinks these are all broken, he sees it as mind control by the left with the “adherents” of it uncapable of thinking. The right wing play book is to find the smallest inconsistency and amplify it to prove deceit and chip away at the truth. Better quality journalism is about the only solution, one that can deal with these kinds of attacks and deflect them. That means getting rid of the small minority of lazy or bad journalists that produce the type of easily attacked material.

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:iatp: We need an outgoing, fact-based conservative. I think he’d (or she’d) struggle to win the primary now though. Fingers crossed.

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Amen

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I think the way the question is asked got a lot of people reacting to incidents and isn’t necessarily an overall feeling on education. When they ask the impact colleges “have on the way things are going” I think a lot of responses were giving more “colleges aren’t as good as they use to be” answers.

This poll asked just a general favorable/non-favorable poll and had 60% republicans favorable towards 4 years colleges and a lot higher in community colleges and trade schools. Certainly less than I think it should be, but I don’t think the average republican view is that higher education (4 year colleges specifically) is bad…at least not yet.

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https://www.thirdway.org/polling/beyond-free-college-and-free-markets-voters-want-greater-accountability-in-higher-ed

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It’s interesting how different than they are. While I appreciate the nuance, I suspect they are just different surveys with different sampling.

Here’s an update on mine. Again, I’m less shocked by %'s than I am by the rapid and decisive change. Whatever you think or feel about colleges effect on the country shouldn’t change overnight.

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:slight_smile: I’m less worried that they will stop going to college, and more worried that they will string up the professors ala Cultural Revolution.

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Yeah, that seems unlikely. We can’t make all journalists perfect. Fact-providers (of any sort) are fallible.

There’s a couple ‘reason’ arguments, if you want to try them.

  1. You used to trust the MSM just fine, for decades, what exactly changed?

  2. There is no alternative to Media.

You have to pay a (journalist, scientist, teacher, doctor, actuary, mechanic, actuary) to tell you (true facts) even though they might lie because of (mistake, greed, bias) or else you just swallow lies from a celebrity quack.

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Republicans think that colleges are full of liberal professors that stifle conservative views and that is further brainwashing the population. I am not making this up - this is form an actual Republican explaining the view when I presented him this same information on the dramatic opinion shift.

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On Number 1 - the lies of MSM around the BLM movement, hands up don’t shoot was a lie, the media presents only information to support BLM and won’t point out how George Floyd had fentanyl in his system or wont show the erratic behavior prior to being killed all prove the media bias and storytelling, and they have learned in can’t be trusted.

Maybe I am not following where you are going on number 2, but the general point is because of #1, they can now smell the BS in the MSM, they are free thinking, not brainwashed assuming it is all true.

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Yeah, I suppose “reasoning” with brainwashed people is already missing the point.

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I think on social media it is important to immediately point out lies with a simple, this thing you stated here is not true and here is an article showing that is not the case. The link should be a very neutral source such as the AP or Reuters or a conservative source such as Fox News.

We should do a better job speaking commentary from news. Newspapers should not have headlines like this “Trump Spurns On Capitol Riot”. That is not a fact it is an opinion. The headline should be totally fact based. Examples include:

“Rioters Storm The Capitol”
“Trump Supporters Storm The Capitol”

The nuance is small but important.

You might be surprised that many conservatives consume media constantly but never consume actual news. What they tend to consume is almost exclusively commentary. The commentators all consume each others commentary as well so the message around each news cycle coalesces pretty uniformly.

Generally the message gets refined pretty quickly down to the point where it is just an exaggeration of what is real and most normal people just roll their eyes instead of engaging with it when they see it. Maybe we need to stop letting them exaggerate?

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ITA . . . but would also point out the need to take care (at least in the headlines) that what is presented are objective facts as well.

For example:
Using “Rioters” would be objective. The actions taken by that mob would fit that definition by anyone’s standard.

However, is it true that everyone at a Trump rally actually support Trump? That is, isn’t it possible that bad actors looking for a reason to (further) discredit Trump that don’t actually intend on supporting him?

Social media has only ushered in a new Golden Age of Yellow Journalism in America. And it has an impact across the board.

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“I believe it goes hand-in-hand with distrusting the “MSM”, scientists, newspapers, educators, judges, doctors, basically all the people (like actuaries) that are paid to provide the truth and be accountable for our lies.”

I follow the logic of the OP pretty well with one exception. Newpapers are included here with accountable professions. I would argue that the ‘news’ has tied all of the good accountable professions to a left/right political agenda. You almost cannot read about a study or event without the reporting outlet adding in their spin to tie that event to political outcomes. This forces the reader to often enact judgment based on prior political views. Which creates the horrible American logic train that every option they have about everything is somehow tied to their pollical view.

take away this infatuation with connecting everything to politics. Need to get people’s minds off of politics for 5 seconds so they can make a non-biased informed decision about matters that should not be pollical. political views should follow your beliefs, but in todays culture people’s beliefs follow their political views.

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As Nick noted, people tend to confuse facts and opinions, largely because they want their own opinions to be facts. Still it’s not entirely off from other how other professionals present-- every professional does have biases and agendas and it does influence how they present their information. Most commonly all professionals tend to exaggerate the severity of whatever problems they diagnose (A mechanic will find something to fix. A therapist will diagnose you something. A dentist will talk as though your teeth are about to fall out.)

All that said, when I say, “accountable” I don’t really mean unbiased. I mean they have a reputation (and possibly legal or professional penalties) for presenting facts. Journalists aren’t perfect, but they typically run some risk losing something when they repeat a lie. When you reject them, you replace them with people (like Trump’s twitter) who lose nothing for repeating a lie.

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I think we need some new version of the fairness doctrine that covers all the new outlets of disinformation we have today. Seems like everything started going downhill when they repealed it.

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I was a fairly reliable Republican voter. I even voted for Trump in 2016. The one thing I cam to realize though is that at the heart of Trump’s message is the Republicans want a country that continues to be great for them. Democrats want a country that is great for everyone. That nuance is a big one, but it is hard to see when you’re the person the party is fighting for, especially out in rural America when you and your kind are the only people around.

Pointedly there will always be people who just don’t want things to change and are small minded. I don’t think that can be fixed. What I do think has to happen is for inclusion to include rural American lifestyles. I don’t think white supremacist will ever vote Democratic, but there are a lot of good people out there among those folks who want America to better for everyone and who America is not working for now.

A lot of this thread has been unkind to Christianity. The answer is not to attack religious groups. Yes white Christians mostly vote Republican but that has a lot to do with abortion and not a lot to do with white supremacy. I know those people are not against many of the policies Democrats want to enact. I believe the number one issue in America is making healthcare affordable for everyone. Medicare For All will take the biggest political fight to get done but will enact something that would truly make life better for all Americans.

I think this is the fight to fight right now and this fight will carry Democrats into a bigger majority at the mid term elections IMO.

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I dunno, the whole repeal and replace movement seemed to be a huge rallying cry against a Democratic congress, even so far as many Senators were willing to repeal and not replace.