You're partially right. We have at least two sides. One side is CLEARLY delusional. Fueled by conspiracy theories and lies. We also have other sides, but the two sides that get the most attention are the only sides that matter. We have one side that is most definitely delusional, other sides maybe have members who might be, but one side is DOMINATED by delusion.
I just wanted to note that the "other side" that I'm not on, also believes basically the same thing with regards to my side.
The republicans have espoused a dangerous ideology that not just allows but welcomes factual untruths and a worrying disconnect from rational thought.
There is a need for political parties of various philosophical bents to push and pull in different directions based on reasoned and informed decisions.
Once you give up that core grounding you basically invite fanatism and I don’t see what possible positive outcome we can expect from this.
Of course it isn't enough. That's why the media outlets in question will make up facts, or really slant things to appear to carry sufficient factual weight, and then the reasoning from there comes out to the desired conclusion. Not that there is usually much reasoning going on, it is mostly emotional arguments.
As if the dems didn't do the same? Let's be honest with ourselves, both extremes are very dangerous, and polarization is continuing. The far left will kill people if left to their accord: https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...
In fact, doing so is probably harmful.
Calling a huge portion of the country delusional with no basis or fact is precisely what is driving this division. Both sides have a lot more in common than you might imagine. Far more than what they disagree on.
But today we're not really arguing over the margins; the question before us today is "should we live in a democracy where the people decide the outcome of elections?" 90% of Democrats and Republicans will agree that yes! We should!
Let's secure our democracy, then we can go back to arguing over the tax rate.
For them, "group strength" and tribalism is more important, so their behaviour is not is not delusional within that paradigm.
Thats what no one understands
1. I'm a Republican because of policy X.
2. I'm a person that thinks carefully about facts and reason.
3. Trump is the Republican candidate -> President.
4. I voted for the Republican. I must have done that because of #2 (and not just #1.)
5. Trump speaks the truth - he speaks for the people, people like me.
6. Trump believes election fraud is a problem. Combine #4 and #2 and the linked perceptual flaws of selective focus, imagining that election fraud could happen, allowing myths/stories to guide my responses to the things I read... plus I'm carefully thinking about facts and reason, and I voted for Trump, and most of the people in my social network also voted for Trump... it must be the plurality of the nation. My peers are also carefully thinking about facts and reason, and I'm sure the news networks I follow do as well...
This is super simplified and skipping about a thousand steps, and yet, it's really not hard to see almost anyone getting somewhere they never thought they'd end up after years of reading and listening to mostly facts that agree with what Trump tells his believers.
That's probably easier to believe happened than "I want to be an extremist and I want to violently attack Congress when they attempt to certify an election, even though it was a legitimate election."
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pieces-mind/201208/f...
There may or may not have been fraud in any of the states. But once they certify their Electors, that's it as far as I can see. I honestly don't know if there is a remedy even for clear fraud if the state goes ahead and certifies the results. In theory a state doesn't even need to hold a public vote. The legislature could just appoint the Electors. The founding fathers clearly wrote the constition to give the power of electing the president to the states. Allowing any level of the federal government to override that seems to be a conflict of interest.
Which set of conspiracy theories? The crazy ones that Trump was a Russian asset and everything surrounding that nutbaggery for four years?
How about the current nutbaggery from the other extreme that this election was stollen through voting machine manipulation, ballot stuffing, discarded Trump ballots by postal workers, etc.
It's hard for me to get upset at either side when it all looks so insane.
[1]: Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, Volume V.
[2]: Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I.
> The Senate Intelligence Committee assessed that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's "high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services" was a "grave counterintelligence threat".[15] The foremost individual was Manafort's employee Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian.[15] The committee identified Kilimnik as a "Russian intelligence officer"; describing that Manafort and Kilimnik had a "close and lasting relationship" even through the 2016 election.[18] Manafort repeatedly tried to "secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik", including "sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy".[18]
> The Senate Intelligence Committee introduced a new allegation regarding Kilimnik, that he "may have been connected" to the Russian military intelligence's hack and leak of Democratic Party material. However, the report's discussions on this topic are redacted.[19] Manafort's connection with the Russian hack and leak operation is "largely unknown", but possible, given "two pieces of information" the committee found; the details of such information were also redacted.[18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...
BTW, this report was released by Senate Republicans. As soon as this matter is cleared up, you can call it nutbaggery.
There is a point in which a particular group is no longer acting in good faith, and is taking advantage of the tolerance and ability to have discourse.
It's cult like. I can't imagine supporting any side or politician like these people do.
Side a: 2016 US election was stolen. 2020 was fair and square. Side b: 2020 US election was stolen. 2016 election was fair and square.
Seems that there are a small number of people who think a) both elections were stolen or b) both elections were fair and square. They are being drowned out by sides a and b.
If you fit side a or b above, you might want to some logical thinking. Pretty simple to see the two sides are simply opposite sides of the same coin, both deeped in hypocrisy.
2016 US election had foreign propaganda interference (damn our algos weren't good enough!)
2021 Open violent attack on democratic process to certify president election.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2147684/violence-erupts-across...
Or to fulfill this "promise"?
Pompeo Promises 'A Smooth Transition To A Second Trump Administration'
https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/1...
---
In 2016, side A was arguing that the inputs to the election (voter opinions) were manipulated by foreign agents. This claim was 100% proven true by the Mueller report. Whether this actually changed the results of the election is impossible to say (I am of the opinion it was Comey's announcement 11 days before the election which tipped a close election toward Trump). But an effort was made, and that effort was for the benefit of the Trump campaign, and was explicitly supported by the Trump campaign. See: Mueller report Vol I, or Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election (5 volumes).
In 2020, side B was (and still is) arguing that the output of the election (the actual vote total) was changed. This has been shown to be false by repeated recounts, audits, investigations, court cases, etc.
If you think these two scenarios are identical, look a little closer.
You can try to spin it or rationalize it all you want, both sides are behaving the same.
Literally only one side stormed the capitol during a joint session of congress in an attempt to overthrow the election, so "behaving the same" is stretched pretty far here. By pretending both sides are the same, it would appear you are the one spinning and rationalizing.
I mean, let's not forget that Donald Trump of all people called into question the results of his own win in 2016 by claiming that 3 million people voted illegally, and that people were being bussed to New Hampshire to vote against him. He even formed a commission to investigate this "fraud"! So any impressions that the vote was illegitimate were flamed by the winner himself!
If 50% of US population, apparently, thinks that hashtag is valid, you can rest assured it will either surface in some cloaked form ( say, bunnies for adoption ), or worse, it will disappear from the radar where LEOs will not be able to easily track it ( and boy can they easily track it now ).
I may be coming across as a free speech fundamentalist, but that is the problem with actual rights. You tend to defend assholes since they are the ones who tend to push the envelope.
I don't want to dance this dance. Its trajectory tends to end somewhere around Xi banning Winnie and number 8 ( ie. shit getting ridiculous ). It is not fun in the meantime.
No, we don't have two sides.
We've got, to reduce the complexity quite a bit but identify some factions with very distinct (though overlapping in various combinations) current interests: progressive Democrats and corporate neoliberal Democrats and moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans unequivocally appalled at the MAGA insurrection and those overtly supportive of the MAGA insurrection and mostly-conservative Republicans overtly opposed to the MAGA insurrection but eager to push it off the radar.
It's worse than this. Even just presenting facts that are inconvenient or go against the desires of beliefs is enough to make you an enemy / part of the other side, no questions asked.
That's just not true.
There are good statistics on the number of deaths and positive tests for Covid.
There is a reliable and agreed upon process for counting votes in the states, and plenty of avenues to dispute those counts, and a court system that has heard every single complaint from the losing Presidential candidate and made clear rulings based on the evidence.
What is abundantly plain from this week, is there is a very large number of people who clearly just wanted to bash some heads and break a lot of stuff and threaten more violence. They felt untouchable and that no rules applied to them.
These people have zero interest in finding objective truths about the world. They just enjoy the feeling of power over other people and they use words in whatever way thinks will increase that power, regardless of any connection to the truth.
> There are good statistics on the number of deaths and positive tests for Covid.
There is a significant segment of the population that believes the virus is a hoax, or not nearly as bad as the media says. Some of these people, even while dying from the virus, are still in denial, and yell at the medical staff about it.
Go watch some interviews with doctors and nurses. It will make you very sad and disappointed in humanity.
At least some, maybe most of those challenges were dismissed on procedural grounds, lack of standing, etc. They never got to the point of examining the "evidence." Maybe the retort to that is the challengers should have foreseen that. But the people filing these challenges were not unhinged randos from Twitter. They were elected officials, lawyers, educated people. They aren't going to go into court with something they know is frivolous.
Given that a sizable minority (and likely unprecedented number) of the voting public thinks there was fraud in the 2020 election, maybe it would have been better to have rebutted the evidence rather than the process.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
I'm not sure what you are trying to imply. Yes, they were going to have to present evidence. They didn't have any, and that's also why they didn't actually allege fraud. And that is why the cases were thrown out.
If you're asking why anyone paid them to file unwinnable cases: So there would be lawsuits to point to, and for the (minuscule) opportunity to have a (Trump-appointed) judge create some kind of win (again to point to it).
I get the sense that people are reading it to mean that the rioters at the capital hadn't been radicalized like this. Or that dehumanizing people in that way is somehow okay. Perhaps you can clarify.
I tend to believe that, thankfully, most people don't have the capacity for extreme violence at a moment's notice. It takes intense conditioning. The US military started to emphasize this [1](paywalled) after it was discovered that even during combat, while people were shooting at them, most soldiers didn't try to kill their enemy or even fire their weapon [2].
So it seems like the highest priority is to re-humanize the "normies" and "communist antifa spies" or whatever nonsense phrase these extremists are using. I have *absolutely* no idea how to do that, but it must be done.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/killing-does-not-com...
[2] https://www.historynet.com/men-against-fire-how-many-soldier...
1) Dehumanize the enemy
2) Kill/eliminate the inhuman enemy (no longer considered to be people)
3) Trump designated target
as well.
Doesn't matter which side you think you're on then. At some point they come for you:
Must-see new video shows Capitol riot was way worse than we thought
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-99178053752
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/09/media/reliable-sources-ja...
Then again I would also say you’re correct as the people engaging with that violent and vitriolic content probably don’t consider them actual humans.
It would also be nice, albeit maybe very hard, to encourage even the less balanced media to try to speak to everyone and to write critically and honestly. For example, I personally lean left, but I find the New York Times to be increasingly vapid and unthinking.
In general, if you’re reading news (or Twitter!) just to find people who agree with you, you’re doing it wrong. This is true regardless of political party.
It doesn't really mean that automatically makes their views or policies inherently better than those who disagree with them. It's important to analyze things people say and and investigate their claims for yourself, and not just tribally agree with them on everything they say just because they use an adjective that sounds nice to describe themselves.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...
"This story was updated on Sept. 1, 2020. The original version of this story, which is an interview with an author who holds strong political views and ideas, did not provide readers enough context for them to fully assess some of the controversial opinions discussed."
So they are clearly cognizant of the fact that the content is very controversial. I think it's a sensitive and important subject, and one that doesn't really get addressed in a serious, scholarly way. In some ways, it's a perfect example of the kind of heterodox research that conservatives have advocated for in universities and public forums. And it is the job of the media to try to communicate what ideas are out there.
Nothing you're saying disputes that, editorially, they have a strong progressive bent.
Of course she has her cheap-o fake-news Wordpress sites as her "sources" about her "knowledge", and she's convinced they're telling the truth. I end up seeing the equivalance, why do I believe the network of MSM sites are telling the truth when she can believe the same thing of the network of fake-news sites? One thing is, MSM sites fact-check each other, but a lot of things she thinks are fake news aren't being "fact-checked" by MSM...
A funny thing though, she's a "Bill Gates wants to kill Africans through vaccinations", and she said "Search for this theory, but don't use Google, they're paid off by big pharma, use Duck Duck Go.". Then I had to tell her, "You do know Duck Duck Go uses results from Bing... which is owned by Microsoft?" (I think she knows the BG/Microsoft connection).
Haha, you realize that the right considers NPR Marxist propaganda?
I do believe that the arguing, the battle... it's a distraction, in a sense. It's an amplifier. It's a self-reinforcing polarization engine.
Maybe I'm just saying what you said, but I think it's important to break down the concept of "two sides" if you want to have any hope of finding common ground.
How many of you (in the U.S. if not abroad) want the best for the United States? Who among us want it to be a strong nation full of employed, educated, healthy citizens? Who wants to revisit the tenants of our founding fathers, learn lessons from the past while being willing to try new things and accept changes? Who wants this stark divide to be behind us?
Who wants to deescalate from violent rhetoric and focus on proven methods of finding and sharing truth?
I think we can avoid another major war, but I don't think we can avoid one ideology winning and one losing.
Due to the election results, it is now Democrats' turn to see how they can start to heal the nation. It is imperative that they see that the reason for Trump's success is not racism or misogyny of Trump's supporters. The real reason is that there are lots of people who think that their life is not good. And that needs to be fixed. Bad news again is that it is not easy. Even worse is that if you fail, escalation continues and at some point you are looking at breaking the country or even civil war.
What you're seeing is that the amount of yelling is roughly equally balanced, but you can't extrapolate from that to what all people actually believe. Obviously you won't find common ground for every single person, but there is common ground for 80-90% of them.
A few more bits of information:
- There's Mike Pence himself, the actual vice president of the United States, and his unwillingness to go along with the worldviews of those who have by now concluded he needs to be hanged.
- Mitt Romney, the actual Republican presidential candidate in 2012 (who won 47% of the popular vote), has been pretty strongly opposed to the idea that Trump secretly won / would have won, to the coup, etc. Previously he marched in Black Lives Matter protests and voted to convict the President in the impeachment trial last year. (Romney also created Romneycare, the model for Obamacare, even though if you listen to how loudly people yell, it seems like half the country opposes it.)
- Georgia elected two Democratic Senators. More generally, the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013 and several states are actively engaged in gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. The fact that you see Republicans roughly tied with Democrats doesn't indicate that Republican policies are equally popular.
And, again, the "side" that advocates for "hang Mike Pence" is hardly the totality of the Republican Party.
So what can be done?
I think the highest-impact thing is to help out efforts to re-enfranchise Americans and end gerrymandering. The work coordinated by Stacey Abrams in Georgia is a good place to start, for instance. Regardless of what party or policies you support, if you believe in democracy, getting elections to be more representative can only be a good thing. And in particular, if you're right-leaning but worry that the Republican Party is going too far, making it so that the party has to compete by convincing centrists instead of being able to rely on extremists will be good for the party.
[1] https://electionscience.org/library/the-center-squeeze-effec...
More directly, if you're polling well in 40% of districts, poorly in 40% of districts, and competitively in the rest, it's worth focusing your attention only on the competitive districts, until you get to 50%. It's not worth paying any attention to the ones you're not competitive in.
Other voting methods (approval or ranked-choice) will reduce this effect and make political parties more representative of what people actually believe, instead of designing the system such that we have two parties that do the worst possible job of each representing 50% of the people.
If you find this odd, you should read some far-right forums. I read these social media circles (as well as far-left ones of various sorts), not because I agree with them, but because I think it's useful to understand what the "other side" thinks. The one I was reading today had multiple memes of him as a traitor - one had him photoshopped as Brutus assassinating Trump-as-Caesar surrounded by Romney and others, one had him next to Benedict Arnold, etc.
Meanwhile, at some point in the NYC Women's March four years ago, when folks were chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go," I tried to lead a "Michael Pence has got to go." Nobody really joined in.
And in any case, my original point is that there is a large number of folks, Democrat and Republican and everything in between, who do not agree with "hang Mike Pence," and it is on those people's beliefs that we can build common ground. I don't deny that there are protestors with megaphones who shout extreme positions, but my exact point was that you should not extrapolate based on who shouts the loudest.
I think that's the important thing right there. Echo chambers and identity politics have divided the USA greatly.
The way forward is not to divide more. For example Biden inferring that Trump is hitler and calling Senator Cruz Goebbels the nazi propaganda minister is not going to heal the divide.
>Now I of course have my own very strong opinions and I'm sure I have a good comprehension of the truth. But that isn't going to convince anyone on the other side anymore. To people on one side, the other side's minds appear to be just poisoned.
Imagine this for a second. Say you are going to spend all your waking hours reading the news. You could read every major source. You could review videos, pictures, you could have a good knowledge of what's going on in a small part of the world. You wont know what's going in 90%+ of the world.
The problem is that you cant do that. You dont have the time to do that and so you only look at a few sources. We then have the problem that the news cant be trusted. It's beyond clear that they publish outright lies.
That's why we have these delusion vs reality issues. To fix this problem isn't to give people more time. It certainly isn't to remove opposing viewpoints.
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. -George RR Martin
Anyways, whatever he says, he's got zero credibility, follows the most pathological path of psychopathy, though is expert in massively duping people for his own crimes and frauds. Though, he's so bad and incompetent in everything else, he relies on enablers around him that he later can backstab for his own mistakes.
2. He's always lying.
3) He implies nothing, at least nothing predictable.
4) True, he still keeps lying about fraud even though he alleged fraud long before the election process even (before summer). He used anchors and primed his base for months on this. Even got underlings to sabotage effectiveness of the US Postal Service.
What he did agree to was "orderly transition" of power, and he most probably has this in mind (another prime):
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pompeo+%22to+second+Trump+administ...
This is the core problem. Who do you trust? Fox news or CNN.
The answer for me is I trust no one. They are all liars. I verify for myself. All governance (government, legal, media, military, education, etc) is there to foster a divisive situation as that makes us easier to rule. When people are divided they will not see the plans that are being executed and how they are pawns in a larger game.
You can call it delusional or conspiracy, but there are plans - you can very easily see these on the WEF's website, or read about them in Klaus Schwabb's book. If you don't want to see what is in store for you, what can I say? Switch the news back on, and have a good life.
The truth is that there are a controlling group of people that are entirely unaccountable - governments and voting provide them with a buffer from people - they enact their plans regardless of all that. And further to that, most of us are in an impossible situation that we can do very little about. BLM or MAGA protests - its all the same.
If you want to talk about solutions, the only answers are disengagement from the system. And if you go deep into that, the only answer is disengagement from the legal system. If there is one thing that causes the issues we have, its that we believe we are the legal name that we have a birth certificate of. And on it, it says 'this certificate cannot be used as proof of ID'.
The only law 'they' are happy for us to break, is the one where we use the legal name. You are not the legal name. You may not know who you are, but you are not that..
It is illegal to use the legal name. When we do so, we are acting with dishonour. And that is where our problems begin. And also where they can end.
Taking a step back...
We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced.
How can we have a meaningful discussion as a nation, when there is no apparent common ground? No set of agreed-upon facts?
Now I of course have my own very strong opinions and I'm sure I have a good comprehension of the truth. But that isn't going to convince anyone on the other side anymore. To people on one side, the other side's minds appear to be just poisoned.
A common tactic to try to get through to the other side is to just yell louder. But that isn't working.
What's left? What can be done?