It implies that either they themselves are even more reprehensible and irredeemable, or the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates. The latter is probably true, but why would they say that and then continue to run for elections? Why do they want the approval of morally bankrupt people who prefer reprehensible candidates?

Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see". Or perhaps their claims are not actually "obvious", and they ought to be... kinder to the other side.

> Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see".

Fox News. The folks who voted trump watch only Fox News, which has crafted an alternative and immersive world view that appears coherent if you only watch Fox News and reject conflicting information as lies.

There are more people who voted for Trump than there are people who only watch Fox News. So maybe you ought to re-consider the GP's point.

The OP is correct though. If the issue is that their statement is weak when its being reduced to just Fox News subscribers, then sure.

However the issue is about the kind of information ecosystems that drive polarization and misinformation.

Disinfo and misinformation campaigns target right wing / conservative viewers more than they do left wing / liberals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07942-8

But I can point to research and articles till the cows come home. The fact is that people reject everything negative about Trump and fill in the blanks with whatever they want to believe.

We’re basically playing whose line is it anyway

Who is defining what is misinformation? It would be easy to reframe such that the opposite can be just as “true, “ depending on your perspective. For example: Trump turned out not to be working with Russia, despite the media and politicians constantly saying they had evidence. Trump started zero wars, despite fear mongering that he would start World War 3. He ended the tensions with North Korea, despite pundits saying diplomacy doesn’t work with dictators. Arguably all of that was misinformation, so one could argue the opposite of what you said is also true. Whomever defines “misinformation” can make that statement with full confidence and be correct in their own mind every time.

> Who is defining what is misinformation?

Reality

> It would be easy to reframe such that the opposite can be just as “true, “ depending on your perspective.

No it isn't. Facts still matter.

> Trump turned out not to be working with Russia,

He was and still is. Not only has he privately talked to Putin while outside office breaking foreign law policy. But before his election multiple events happened, from his son admitting to Russian funding, to some of the initial findings of the Steele Dossier being proven to the findings of the Muller report which concluded without hesitation that there was coordination betwen Trump campagin officials and Russian officials and known spies for the Kremlin.

Reality does not stop existing because the Congress decided to not impeach someone who had inexcusable evidence against them

> Trump started zero wars, despite fear mongering that he would start World War 3

Trump exacerbated drone strikes in the middle east (with more in 2 years under him, until he stopped reporting the numbers) than in 8 years under Obama. He also gave Iran causus belli which no american goverment had done in decades to a foregin nation despite them not retaliating for Soulameni death. He allowed the expansion of Russian troops in the western front which later became the invasion of Ukraine and he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem one of the many reasons cited by Hamas in regards to their Oct 7th attack.

So all in all a pretty succesful military record of losing geopolitcal importance for america left and right and causing conflicts everywhere he touched.

> He ended the tensions with North Korea, despite pundits saying diplomacy doesn’t work with dictators.

He saluted their generals, thats not diplomacy its ass kissing. And no tensions where ended. They launched multiple missilies over Japan while he was president...

> Arguably all of that was misinformation

None of that is misinformation, you just deny reality

This is my domain of work, so - Me. If that’s not good enough you can look at the research paper I linked.

If you haven’t looked at the article - this is directly in the summary:

> sers who were pro-Trump/conservative also shared far more links to various sets of low-quality news sites—even when news quality was determined by politically balanced groups of laypeople, or groups of only Republican laypeople—and had higher estimated likelihoods of being bots

If you want more - The original fake news, the Romanian ad farm sites, had greater success and traction when they targeted conservative viewers.

To save us both trouble - this is not some cockamamie argument about crud like “he who defines it can be correct.”,or conflation of bad reporting and hyperbole.

This is straight up conservatives being the victims and consistent targets of mis and disinformation.

I also know that this will have 0 impact on changing minds. I know it wont.

That said, I do hope we can agree that people deserve respect for their efforts to understand a topic, subject or field of work. Do read the article, and when I say that conservative / republican information diets are more vulnerable and exposed to low quality information and conspiracy theories, I’d appreciate the honor of at least having your opinion on the abstract and matter of the paper.

I don’t disagree with your points, as they tend to align with my personal experience. Given that most of the people I interact with are conservative, I can’t really compare to the sources used by progressives, but I suspect it would consist more of links to mainstream media. Jumping on a plane, so won’t be able to respond quickly, but I will read the article you linked.

My point wasn’t necessarily that conservatives aren’t exposed to more misinformation, but rather that misinformation is very difficult to define, since the general public lacks so much information. Very few people actually know the truth. Many people fill in the gaps with their biases and then believe they’ve consumed “the truth.” Without an objective view of all facts, it’s difficult to ascertain the truth, therefore it’s also difficult to ascertain what is misinformation.

Thank you, I will come back and engage with your response.

My apologies for writing my response in a piecemeal fashion as I read through the paper. I’m on a phone, which makes it difficult for me to take proper notes and to write a response of proper length.

My initial reaction is that this study seems to delegate the classification of misinformation to a set of fact checkers and journalists. It then uses this to classify links as being either misinformation or disinformation, based on a trustworthiness score. Unfortunately, I can’t open the table of exact fact checkers and journalists because none of the links work on my mobile browser, so I’ll have to just guess at the contents for now.

Delegating classification of truth to these third parties allows for significant bias in the results. Most conservatives consider main stream media and fact checkers to have a significant progressive bias. If correct, this would explain at least some of the results of this study. I haven’t done a thorough analysis myself, so I can’t say either way, but it would be worth investigating.

The study also mentions that many users could have been bots. I suspect this could also have skewed the results. This is mentioned in the abstract, so I suspect it’s addressed later in the paper.

Either way, continuing to read… very interesting study.

Take your time, please.

As for your objection and concern - the study deals with that issue by letting participants decide themselves, what counts as high quality and low quality.

This holds if you look at outright conspiracy theories. Globally, conservative users are the most susceptible to such campaigns.

I will add "at this moment in time". I expect that sufficiently virulent disinfo which targets the left will evolve eventually.

For additional reading, not directly related to lib / con disinfo efficacy - The spreading of misinformation online. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517441113

This is one of the first papers on this topic I ever read, and will help in the consideration of misinfo / disinfo traffic patterns in a network.

uhh - not that you asked for additional reading.

The "fine people" and "drinking bleach" hoaxes objectively showed us what side of yesterday's election is for the large part egregiously gullible.

Less hoaxes and more the least-charitable interpretation of what he said. It's easy to find the exact quotes, in video, with context---different people disagree on what those statements from him mean.

Trump tends to talk in word-salad. It makes it very possible for two reasonable individuals to reach different conclusions about what was communicated.

The "fine people" hoax and "drink bleach" hoax are not open to interpretation, not by a long shot.

Even Snopes, fucking Snopes, confirmed the "fine people" thing is false.

Obama, Kamala, and Joe Biden all pushed "Trump said Nazis were fine people" with complete confidence, this is the literal definition of a hoax.

The original video credited with "drinking bleach", was Trump openly speculating on disinfection approaches. And, the approach he verbalized out loud, disinfecting lungs with UV light, was at the time a relatively new and completely valid medical treatment. Trump was ahead of the curve on that one.

Anyone who interprets his open questions about the UV light treatment as "drink bleach" is either a victim of a hoax (and an irresponsible moron) or has no qualms pushing hoaxes.

Also, his remarks during the Jan6th meandering are indiscernable from MLK's or others, but had the "violent" (no broken statues, no fires, no fatalities...?) "insurrection" been any less "welcomed", then his plagiarism would had likely been spotlighted instead.

Six fatalities, depending on who you ask and who's doing the causality calculus: three natural causes (overstress), one drug overdose, one natural causes next-day (suspected undiagnosed trauma during event), and one gunshot wound fatality.

The Snopes article you reference (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/) contains in itself a clarification from the editor, to whit:

""" Editors' Note: Some readers have raised the objection that this fact check appears to assume Trump was correct in stating that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville incident. That is not the case. This fact check aimed to confirm what Trump actually said, not whether what he said was true or false. For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong. """

Given that the Unite the Right rally was organized by overt white supremacists, white-supremacist-adjacent organizations, and people comfortable with rallying with those groups, it is an understandable inference a person could draw that when Trump claims a set of people is "fine people" and the set is as above described, there is no daylight between what he said and a claim that white supremacists are "fine people" (because excluding the people he overtly says he isn't talking about leaves the empty set... i.e. he either meant to say Nazis were fine people or he made a statement that is a logical contradiction, so if one's benefit of the doubt comes down on the side of "he isn't a befuddled man who contradicts himself with three sentences," one assumes the non-illogical statement supporting Nazis as fine people).

This train of thought is predicated upon how much one buys into the old saw that "everyone sitting comfortably at a table with one Nazi is called Nazis." But if you wish to understand the train of thought that leads to an alternate interpretation of his words, that is the train of thought.

(Similar logic applies to the "drink bleach" comment. He didn't literally suggest people drink bleach. In addition to his comments on UV therapy, he also opined on how effective bleach is as a cleansing agent and whether it would be possible to somehow apply it inside the human body... Which anyone who knows basic chemistry knows is mad. He just says things, which are open to being interpreted in the worst possible light.)

With respect, you seem to be trying to tell people that words aren't open to interpretation when they do not share your interpretation of the literal words they heard, and that's probably a non-starter argument. It is probably not an optimal way to "converse curiously."

Voters everywhere are stupid but in the country of exceptionalism, they lately seem to have become exceptionally stu... tolerant!

> or the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates

Correct, yes.

Maybe 4th time is the charm with this kind of divisive messaging?

something can be true but not politically advantageous to mention

So you expect progressive voters to simply politely ignore the awful things Trump has done, and the fact that his supporters don't seem to care?

Short list: Trump has been adjudicated in court as having sexually assaulted a woman, and has admitted to doing more. Nearly every person who has worked with him has described him in the worst possible terms. Stories of him celebrating Nazis [1], sexually fixating on his own daughter[2], horrifying things like that.

The man is a convicted felon, and has only escaped punishment for various other crime by virtue of his own appointees in the court system.

If a reader accepts these well-supported items as facts, what should they think about somebody who votes for that?

Should they lie and say "a reasonable person would support this"?

Or should they tell the truth even when it is "divisive"?

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trumps-lewd-talk-a...

Yes. I think having a healthy community and successful future political campaign will require reframing this rhetoric.

this is pathetic and embarassing

No. That would be being unable and unwilling to build a theory of mind to understand 80 million people from all walks of life.

So we can't call a rapist a rapist because it upsets conservatives too much?

We can't call a failed businessman what he is? Or correctly point out that he idolizes dictators and Hitler specifically? Or that he is so fucking stupid he said he wanted Hitler's generals even though they were 1) Not very good 2) several tried to assassinate him and 3) fought like middle school girls?

Why do we have to abandon reality? Why do we have to treat conservatives with kid gloves?

I seem to remember something along the lines of "Facts don't care about your feelings" and "Fragile Snowflakes"

Did I say any of that?

> rapist

Source?

Trump was found in court to have sexually assaulted a woman in a fashion that would fit the layman's definition of "rape", although not the legal definition thereof in that venue.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump...

> Kaplan had already outlined why it was not defamation for Carroll to say Trump raped her.

> “As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [in the New York case] … based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.”

> civil trial

So not a criminal case than? Trump didn’t even attend.

The article says the jury did not find enough evidence of the rape claim even at the lower requirement of the civil court.

> Carroll “cannot produce any objective evidence to back up her claim because it didn’t happen,” he told jurors.

You're quoting Tacopina, who is Trump's lawyer.

I'm pretty sure OJ's lawyer also said he didn't do it.

Yep. And the Jury seemed to agree, even in the CIVIL TRIAL.

But I’m not here to be trumps lawyer. I’m here to tell you that you that this scapegoating and conspiring is giving you nothing but anger and not helping you understand the events this week.

But the jury found him liable

Of a lower charge. Not rape (and reminding you for the 3rd time of preponderance of evidence standard)

The "grab them by the pussies" comment should have been enough to show everyone that he's a morally reprehensive little clown. I originally typed out a long comment to further elucidate why he is despicable, but it actually takes away from the message. An SA advocate shouldn't be president in the 21st century.

My goal isn't to sway trump voters, they've already demonstrated time and time again, and again, and again, and again, that they have no intention of meeting liberals anywhere, let alone "in the middle", and that there's nothing, ever, ever that anyone could ever do to pry them away from their GEOTUS, so there's no real reason to try to appease them. So I'm left with just calling it like I see it.

Trump supporters blaming liberals' rhetoric for their decisions is a troll tactic: It's a way of trying to bait liberals into paying more positive lip service to Trump. And it works, all up and down the media organizations are terrified to say things that offend trump supporters. All for some vague belief that if they coddle his supporters enough they get some "centrist credibility" or something.

One side has good marketing and the other has bad marketing. That simple really.

You are asking why they would say true things.

No, I am asking why they would knowingly desire the approval of those who prefer "irredeemable" candidates. They would either have to lie a lot to get it, or pull themselves down to be more reprehensible. So, what's their strategy? Lieing a lot after telling the "one truth", or becoming more reprehensible themselves? Probably both.

Seeking votes is not like seeking approval in a social context. Someone trying to win a contested election desires votes for the purpose of winning.

You did: "The latter is probably true, but why would they say that" The implication of your comment is that politicians shouldn't tell the truth because that offends voters.

Or educate and persuade?

> Or educate and persuade?

There's a lot of people around me who are actively against education, or attack facts because they don't believe them, or vomit opinions as "facts".

It's practically impossible to persuade people like that.

> why would they say that and then continue to run for elections?

Are you suggesting that the USA should have a single political party? Anyone that cares for democracy would be against that, regardless of their other political views.

My guess would be what they meant was that they should quit. Ie either you respect the intelligence/morallity of the people who you want to vote for you, or maybe you shouldn't be trying to represent them.

And not quit as in leave only a single party, but quit as in leave a vacuum for another party/candidate/etc to step in.

Note these aren't necessarily my personal views, just trying to help clarify what I believe the commentator meant.

So your opinion is that elections are a referendum on the moral virtue of the candidate, or that you shouldn't run for office if you think the electorate is morally bankrupt?

I'm sorry, but I have to be blunt. That is an extremely narrow view, and a single second of critical thinking should present a million other possibilities. The former is obviously untrue, considering Trump's long list of vices. The latter is a complete non sequitur. Power is power; the electorate's morals only matter insofar as they're willing to check the box next to my name.

Trump can be reprehensible and irredemable, and still win if he's more believable on the issues Americans care the most about. He could be a fraud, a cheat, even a traitor, so long as he's persuasive. That's how democracy works, how it should work.

> Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see".

I think this is the correct options.

I mean, look at the people who worked for him in the last administration:

> So how do we explain this near-universal rejection of Trump by the people who worked with him most closely? I guess one explanation is that they’ve all been infected with the dreaded Woke Mind Virus. But it’s unclear why working for Donald Trump would cause almost everyone to be exposed to the Woke Mind Virus, when working for, say, JD Vance, or Ron DeSantis, or any other prominent right-wing figure does not seem to produce such an infection.

> Of course, not everyone who worked for Trump has abandoned and denounced him. Rudy Giuliani, who is now under indictment in several different states, is still among the faithful. Michael Flynn, who was fired by Obama for insubordination and then removed by Trump for improper personal dealings with the Russian government, is still on board, and is now threatening to unleash the “gates of Hell” on Trump’s political enemies. Peter Navarro, the economist1 who served four months in prison for defying a Congressional subpoena, is still a Trump fan. And so on.

> You may perhaps notice a pattern among the relatively few people who are still on board the Trump Train from his first term. They are all very shady people. I don’t think this is a coincidence; I think it’s something systematic about Donald Trump’s personality and his method of rule.

* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumpism-is-kakistocracy

The GOP party has changed:

> As many people have noted, Trump’s movement is a cult of personality. Since Trump took over the Republican party in 2016, essentially every tenet of modern conservatism has been replaced with belief in a single leader. Trump appointed the judges that killed Roe v. Wade, but he constantly goes back and forth on the topic of abortion rights. Trump didn’t cut entitlement spending, but whether he wants to do that in his second term or not depends on which day you ask him. Trump has flip-flopped on the TikTok bill, on marijuana legalization, on the filibuster, on SALT caps, and so on.

> But these flip-flops do not matter to his support at all. His supporters are sure that whichever decision Trump makes, it will be the right one, and if he changes it the following week, that will be the right decision as well. If tomorrow Trump declared that tariffs are terrible and illegal immigration is great, this would immediately become the essence of Trumpism. Trump’s followers put their trust not in principled ideas, but in a man — or, to be more accurate, in the idea of a man. That is what Trumpism requires of its adherents.

* Idid.

> the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates.

Well, to make this non political.

Look at how many sports players have a history of domestic abuse; the character of a player is secondary to their ability to play the sport.

> It implies that either they themselves are even more reprehensible and irredeemable > or the majority of US voters are so morally bankrupt that they prefer reprehensible and irredeemable candidates

You dont need to go that far. You just need to create an information environment that is beyond the ability of the average person to navigate.

At that point, the other side is just evil, and your team, even if they are convicted for crimes, have ties to Epstein or anything - doesn’t matter.

——

I mean, you can have privatized thought policing, there aren’t any laws or regulations to prevent. Everyone reads about Big Brother and worries about government control.

So you can create enough of FUD shared till it’s believed.

Don’t forget - we had to deal with Creationism, and that was wildly successful for a completely unscientific argument.

I have another take, the democratic party is incompetent.

If they can't convince voters to vote for them given how bad the other side looks then they must be really incompetent.

What's the point of having all the feel good rallies in cities with famous people if you can't reach people in rural areas.

The democratic party is too elitist, too far from regular people.

It's like being a pastry chef and mocking someone's cake as if it's the worst cake ever, but you can't even make a better one even though it's your profession.

It's more like making an edible cake but the customers preferring the one containing rat entrails because they'd rather eat rat entrails than let anyone else eat an edible cake.

You're saying "the Turd Sandwich is inedible. Everyone should order the Shit Burger instead."

Maybe you could leave the Poop Cafe and have something that's food instead lmao

No, it isn't. And the fact that you think it is, is the problem.

This kinda of argument is the crux of your issue. "no it isn't" vs "this is why I disagree:"

User above hasn't really given any points to disagree about.

Or you do make a better one but still lose because people did not actually care about the cake but about the messaging.

Or in meme form:

https://i.redd.it/g0r0x1ldi0e71.jpg

I think it’s more about taste being subjective. So if my “better” cake is actually less preferred, then it’s not actually better.

Making an objective statement about subjectivity is kind of silly in the first place. Then losing shows it to be stupid.

So the election was about nothing objective?

Definitely not. It’s the weighing of the population’s subjective preferences. It’s quite literally each voter’s perspective and choice that matters.

Hopefully, subjective preferences are based on objective facts and reality. But who can really know.

The median person is pretty dumb and half of the population is dumber