• mozz
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    5 months ago

    I’ve talked at quite a bit of length with Trump supporters in person. I think the thing that people often miss, is that they have no idea what’s going on. A lot of them think Trump is a genius. They think it’s proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump won the election and Biden stole it. They think the cities are unlivable because of gang violence, like on the level of Somalia. The migrant invasion over the border, what’s really going on with Covid… the sources of news they consume are specifically designed to produce confusion and incapability to understand the world, except for certain very simple easy (and grossly untrue) messages which are sort of programmed into them. And, they accomplish that task really, really well. It’s honestly really difficult to even get a foothold talking to them, because they’re (a) totally wrong about basic facts of what’s going on and (b) incapable of critical reasoning to get themselves out of that.

    Something basic like “if a source says one thing and then clearly contradicts itself later, stop listening to that source,” is alien to them. It all just gets really big and confusing and they can’t process it and they get uncomfortable. It’s a hell of a problem, and I don’t really know what the solution is, other than to make it illegal to construct deliberate propaganda and then pump it into everyone’s brains, which, trying to regulate that brings its own host of issues…

    • partial_accumen
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      15 months ago

      This matches some of what I’ve seen of them too. The biggest indicator of a Trump supporter is the lack of travel. So many never leave their locality, much less their state. Its almost rare that they’ve ever been out of the country. It almost makes sense that their view of the world is the way it is because they’ve never seen it for themselves and just take other people’s word for it.

      I’ll be the first to say getting a passport isn’t cheap (when you don’t have extra money) and it is a moderately complicated process the first time through finding and filling the forms properly, getting a photograph taken that matches the requirements, two payments, etc. However, once you have it, renewals only occur every 10 years and are much much easier than that first time through. The first step of getting a passport, however, appears to be the largest barrier.