• penquin@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    12 days ago

    Can someone please make me understand how people like Gaetz, MTG and all these very obviously either stupid as fuck, or evil as fuck people keep getting voted in? My brain can’t ever wrap around this. Am I crazy or is there more to elections in politics. Like how in the fuck does a man like Ted Cruz keep getting reelected over and over by people?

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      12 days ago

      Belief is largely social. This is true for all of us, to some extent. It doesn’t matter much when the social belief is “our baseball team is the best”. Unfortunately, the republican worldview is afactual and hateful. That’s really the bulk of it, I think. People identify with republicans, or with their neighbors that are republicans, and that’s the most important thing. More important than facts or truth.

      Also there’s a lot of authoritarians. They want a strong in-group and an out-group to hurt.

      So when someone says like “So-and-so Republican is a rapist, felon, and liar” that smashes right into the “my in-group is important, and if i reject my in-group I will die alone” part of the brain. So the facts bounce off and they write you off as an asshole.

      Fixing that seems difficult. Appealing to a shared group identity can work (eg: we’re all americans here and we want to make the best of our great country, together). You see this sometimes where someone hates some out-group, and then actually meets a member and spends time with them. Now that person might be part of the in-group, and things have to shift around.

      The other thing that changes minds is trauma. Horrible trauma. If your house gets blown apart by a hurricane, that might be enough for you to reevaluate your world view.

      Anyway, the oatmeal did a comic about belief: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe Here’s a free book about authoritarians: https://theauthoritarians.org/

    • d00phy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      12 days ago

      In their districts, they have the right letter next to their names on the ballot. Also, the “own the libtards.”

    • aredditimmigrant@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      12 days ago

      My Uber reductionist explanation.

      I get you scared. You vote for the cure to what I’m scaring you on.

      Most people, except the very scared, don’t vote.

      Republicans say “hell is coming unless you vote for me”, which gets people scared and thus voting

      Democrats, “well try our hardest to build helpful systems that make the middle class grow again” … People stop listening and don’t vote…

      That’s how

      Fuck. 2020 got more people voting than any other presidential election in recent history and it STILL didn’t break 50% of legal voters.

      • DeanFogg@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        11 days ago

        Maybe dems should say stuff in their ads like “we don’t want a fascist regime. This is America. Vote blue to fire these morherfuckers”

      • DeanFogg@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        11 days ago

        They are so fucking dumb it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking dumb

    • boreengreen@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      12 days ago

      One can only guess that there is a large and chronically uninformed body of people that only get their information from the bad guys’ personal propaganda machine.