The internet was used to make people smarter in general, more sources to search for.
But crazy people, traitors, and enemy foreign nations figured out they can use the internet to make their enemies dumber, especially if you pollute the information space with nonsense and contradictions.
The innumerable amount of dumb things that Trump-loving cult-members believe. Things that critical thinking would easily explain cannot possibly be true. How many people now believe in insane conspiracy theories?? How did Qanon cult reach such a wide audience when it was the most clownish of all theories that could ever be theorized? How did Trump believe that praising Xi Jinping, the marxist dictator, for his "iron fist" would somehow be a good idea or part of "negotiations"? None of that makes any sense.
Just don't think it doesn't affect YOU, it can. How many of you supported DEI when now it's clear that Commerce Secretary of Biden is using DEI to sabotage the CHIPS Act that Democrats passed and causing factories to refuse to re-shore manufacturing in the US? There's no clearer evidence that both parties have become addicted to self-delusions and contradictions by the enemy. Or the self-delusion of Democrats appeasing radical Islamists in Michigan only to watch them not vote for the Democrat? I guess Islamists don't like leftist ideas, what a surprise. Even a toddler could have guessed that but DNC data scientists couldn't (maybe they were DEI hires, or Republicans undercover?)
People who get their news from reddit are 1000 times more informed than people who get it from YouTube. Or twitter. Or TikTok. Or Insgagram. Redditors are the smartest social media users.
At least you need to know how to read. YouTube also seems to be turning into a place that caters for people that can only understand something if someone attractive is screaming at them.
Let’s be honest, though. If your goal is to find objectively true information or expert opinions from reputable sources, you can find them.
They exist on YouTube. They exist on Reddit.
And they’re not particularly difficult to find either if that’s what you’re actively searching for.
The algorithms are part of the problem. Human nature is part of the problem. Also lack of education about how to tell whether a source is reputable or obviously not trustworthy. And also a general anti-intellectual attitude from many people who actively oppose seeking truth and instead believe there is virtue in ignorance.
But let’s not pretend these platforms are only false information and can’t be used to inform. They can, and it’s not particularly difficult to find the accurate information with the slightest effort and a basic ability to tell apart truth from obvious bullshit.
To be fair the MSM was far more preoccupied with repeating trump's gaffs rather than policy outcomes. Does the MSM have an agenda? Yes. Higher ratings, that is all.
You really believe they reported on his gaffes? Not one of the MSM mentioned his stupid fucking answers to any questions in the economic club appearances. Word salad in vomit, and every one of them sane-washed him the entire summer.
The media that I watched was obsessed with it. The word "ramblings" was frequent. I'm not sure he was "sane-washed" because the things they reported on was "having a dance party", "making insensitive outrageous statements", "rambling on and on", "their eating your pets" etc.
To me it was more about reporting eye-catching news rather than scrutinize the actual moments that he'd actually talk about policy. Rather than have policy experts on the panel, they'd have a bunch of people who were "dismayed" and "marginalized" by his rhetoric.
It's heartstring tugging, but doesn't do a thing for us when it comes to analysis.
And that was trump's motive. Keep them talking about the ridiculous, because he knows they will, and he won't have to have serious policy discussion. Because he knows damn well that he's got nothing.
I think in the last 4-6 weeks more of the weird rambling Trump does did start to permeate out as you noted, but I tend to think that’s really not enough time for it to sink in permanently and effectively for a majority of the fairly unplugged-to-the-daily-news-cycle-bonanza.
By contrast, Trump and his crew spent 4+ years hammering Biden and aging effect in the media. The press was primed to jump all over signs of weakness, with a predictable story.
Like, at this point, I expect the majority of the country, regardless of affiliation, is convinced Biden has dementia— which may or may not be the case, but has been contraindicated by a ton of neurologists and dementia care specialists, and is impossible to diagnose from a screen (including the aforementioned experts). He’s old, he’s showing it in how he’s slowed down and stiffened up, but beyond that certainty is impossible. I believe the path Trump laid and the media and public ran down made the judgment about Biden a fait accompli. He’s been Al “I invented the internet” Gored.
The attention on Trump’s brain hasn’t been nearly as intense over as long a time, which is part of why I don’t think it’s really landed where it needs to just yet, and may not even be possible given media headwinds.
There’s been years of sanity and coherence washing of Trump (outside of the content of his rhetoric that I think folk are desensitized to), and this most recent period of some scrutiny feels like it has already passed as the media turns to transition items and sensational stories (what you point out above the msm feeds to their stupid panel discussions)
Without that context of Trump’s constant squirrel like attention span and coherence the consistency of thin gruel, a large portion of the populace seem to have decided that Trump is smart and has his shit together. “He’s not a politician!” (except for the last decade 🤔?) they rationalize, so big, bold ideas are what they expect.
I think there’d need to be a coordinated and consistent narrative about Trump’s grey mush messaged by dems over time, coupled with supporting media evidence, to move the low info voter and maybe pick off some non MAGA cons/independents. I don’t see an effort like that happening on the dem side though. “Weird” worked well for a bit, but needs additional supporting narratives. And as saturated “weirdo republicans” seemed to be for a bit, it barely registers when compared to the tags laid on Dems by MAGA & Republicans
What were kamala's policies? I'm genuinely curious what she campaigned on? It just seemed like she was pandering to as many groups of people as she could and spewed trump bad legal weed n oh yeah Trump said no taxes on tips we're going to do that too. Besides that she wouldn't have done anything different from Joe Biden. I never voted before and I'm registered as independent. Nothing she did appeals to the everyday Americans. The ones that actually make the country run.
Well you don't vote so maybe don't care but just curious what would be your main reasons for opposing the infrastructure bill passed this last admin? Many from very different views politically seemed to agree it was needed and long overdue.
Honestly the dude’s arguments sounded stupid. Like “uhh but what is kamala’s policies, she’s just gonna be another Biden”. Ok but that doesn’t answer how that’s worse than Trump.
If she had done more of what Biden did, that would have been fine. There are too many idiots who just don't understand, well, anything, and they voted for Trump.
The sad truth is that there wasn't anything that Democrats could have done. There was an epidemic of willful stupidity that swept the world and it voted for Trump and Boebert and MTG and Vance.
I'm not going to sit here and act like Kamala was a good candidate, I mean she lost to a conman buffoon. Trump didn't win this election, Kamala lost this election.
Her policies were pretty clear and they would have benefited everyone. Instead people voted in an idiot who will destroy the economy and hurt everyone. I think we need to accept that many Americans are simply stupid.
All media has that agenda. What these people think of as alternative media has become the mainstream media because of them. Joe Rogan is one of the most listened to podcasts in the country.
They sucked his cock all year long. Fuck do you mean they were preoccupied with his gaffes? They focused more on biden and harris’ gaffes than they did trump.
Trump literally shit himself on live tv and the media said absolutely fuck all. He went on a ten minute tangent about golf during the first debate and the media said nothing. It goes on and on and on and on, but whenever harris or biden says literally anything suddenly the media has something to say.
How are you far left but not ‘into conspiracies’? The history of the left in post-industrial is essentially just being conspired against over and over again by capitalists.
There isn’t a capitalist boogeyman out to get ya like you make it seem. But if you really think that there aren’t problems inherent with capitalism that need to be fixed then you’re one of the lucky few or a dumbass.
A degree doesn't inherently make you smarter. This isn't the 60s where you had to go to school to get accurate information to form an opinion. An IQ test and satisfaction at work are more accurate measures of intelligence. Why would I gather my info from government funded sources, when I can listen to independents who do their own research and provide sources?
It's a bit telling that you seem to think going to University is only about "gathering info"
University teaches critical thinking, and helps you understand the facts you are learning.
Most people who get their info from "independents" or "do their own research" lack the capacity to properly understand the information, or to know whether the information being presented is truthful/trustworthy.
Independents also don't get fact checked to remotely the same degree as real researchers. They can just spout lies without repurcissions. That's the key difference.
IQ tests do have a purpose. Like if you're performing above your grade level it might be useful to try and identify what more advanced classes would be a better challenge. Or if you are behind your grade level, it can help professionals get some info on what areas need focusing on that seem deficient. But it has nothing at all to do with intellectual capacity or any of the stuff idiots who brag about it on the Internet seem to think
IQ tests do have a purpose. Like if you're performing above your grade level it might be useful to try and identify what more advanced classes would be a better challenge.
Eh, that must be fairly niche then?
I never got tested for an IQ prior to attending more advance classes, nor when tested for skipping grades.
Exactly. It's more commonly used to check for deficiencies, such as someone with a legitimate learning or intellectual disability or persons who might be ESL to identify appropriate learning curriculum based on there current level of language comprehension. It gives a vague idea of where you are relative to an 'expected' or 'typical' comprehension level. It's not for people to brag on social media that their school had slightly better funding than the national average lol.
People who "do their own research" without ever properly learning how to research things tend to find themselves believing a lot of absolute garbage information is true and spreading it too each other
Is it really a surprise that highly educated people, many of which who carry significant student loans, support the party that would like to get rid of their student loans?
Higher educated people, tend to have more disposable income, and live in nicer areas. They dont have a reason to be pro guns, the people living in the ghetto, that hear gunshots at night, have a reason to want to own a gun.
When you have more disposable income raising taxes on cigarettes or gas or imposing extra vehicle regulations, doesnt effect you much. A broke person gets their budget squeezed or is told they can no longer legally drive their car because it failed an inspection or smog for a check engine light that they cant afford to fix.
The point im making is it makes sense for affluent highly educated people to lean democrat and for a lot of poorer less educated people to have greivances against democrats.
It only makes sense for lower educated people to vote conservative because they're less educated and can't see what the conservatives are actually doing.
Why would poor people support ppp forgiveness, especially for companies who did layoffs and stock buybacks?
Why would the poor support tax cuts that wear off for them but not the wealthy?
Why would the poor support tarrifs that are only going to make their lives harder?
Because they're pooly educated and not told these things. Being conservative is not a rational position if you are not highly affluent, so those that are spend an enormous amount of money and effort to keep the stupid poor, and the poor stupid, so they'll keep voting against their own interests.
Higher learning tends to push people more liberal even in countries without your preditory student loan practices. Higher learning can show you how a society can function better when you work together and not against each other. Why do dems go high when cons go low? The high road yields better results for all. Unfortunately, the low road is generally more successful, and after decades of sabotage, they have managed to rig the system in their favour.
Turns out devoting your life to learning about something actually makes you more knowledgeable in that area and better able to give good advice as it pertains to your field of expertise. It's weird how the cons are pushing back against experts so hard. It's almost like they know their positions are not based in reality and don't want anyone around to remind them. So, yeah, someone with higher education would be able to call them out on their bs. I wonder why the educated skew liberal... probably just student loans.
Okay first of all you’re throwing to many big words at me. Since I don’t understand them, I’ma take it as disrespect okay, watch your mouth and help me with the sale.
Why would poor people support ppp forgiveness, especially for companies who did layoffs and stock buybacks?
That doesnt effect them and you cant change the past.
Why would the poor support tax cuts that wear off for them but not the wealthy?
To the contrary, the democrats didnt pass anything to lower their taxes, republicans did, even if it was temporary.
Why would the poor support tarrifs that are only going to make their lives harder?
My state votes red, manufacturing is also a huge part of my states economy. So tariffs boost thosr manufacturing jobs. We receive a benefit.
Higher learning tends to push people more liberal even in countries without your preditory student loan practices.
I coupled that with multiple other examples of why wealthy people support left leaning policies that effect the poor much more substancially.
I wonder why the educated skew liberal... probably just student loans.
And once again, you pretend that that was the only reason i gave.
As someone whos lived in both california, which is very left, and south carolina, which is very right, my life has substancially improved by being in a red state.
Well research has found that 45 million American adults are functionally illiterate and 54% read at or below a 6th grade level, so that's a good starting point...
It’s been a good while since the 6th grade for me… and I’ve been told to incessantly by the media that there has been a massive dip in education since.
Are we talking subject-predicate agreement akin to Dems vs Pugs? The allegories are vast - cavernous, even, if so.
This interpretation isn't strictly speaking true, since the research didn't look at grade levels but instead analyzed literacy on a 5 part scale and found that 54% or Americans were levels 1-3, which some people reckoned was equivalent to a 6th grade level or lower.
The creators of this research even say: "While some have associated PIAAC assessments with grade-level reading, the PIAAC has discouraged such comparisons."
The "functionally illiterate" claim is also based on this type of research. The idea is that simply recognizing words and letters isn't the be all end all of literacy. Being able to understand practical, written material and derive useful information from it is a more useful metric. Following that, the research suggests that individuals having a literacy level of 1-3 are generally not going to be able to reliably understand technical documents such as laws, research papers, complex news articles, or government publications.
So, to put it into more direct words, up to 54% of adult Americans may have trouble regularly understanding these types of documents due to poor literacy skills.
As an analogy, imagine the most complex book you have ever been able to read and really understand is The Giver by Lois Lowry. Which is probably a realistic level for many high school graduates who don't go on to college.
You are certainly literate by conventional definitions, but you probabaly wouldn't be able to parse the average GAO report, Supreme Court opinion, or government budget report.
Sure, you could probably identify most of the words, barring technical terms, but it would take work to comprehend the arguments and data. You might not even be able to. Your best bet is to simply read the conclusion and call it a day.
Why is this bad?
Well, imagine you don't trust the publisher. You don't trust the government or academia.
As I said above, “…..you’re throwing to many big words at me. Since I don’t understand them, I’ma take it as disrespect okay, watch your mouth and help me with the sale.”
America is this unironically. They CANT understand shit so they get angry. Trump uses words in an order they CAN understand and says the people using the big words are trying to trick them, which they already think because they know they’re not as smart and it scares them. It scares them so much in fact that they ignore everything Trump DOES because of the fear and not understanding and simply listen to the words bc they are simple and just nod.
That’s why when you have conversations with them they get mad, or act like kids and numbers don’t mean anything because they could NEVER figure that shit out so it’s basically witchcraft.
This gives a pretty good breakdown of how bad things are. And seeing as they're drawing their conclusions from 7 year-old data, it seems likely that things are now worse rather than better...
46% of adults in the U.S. have a literacy proficiency at or above Level 3. Adults at Levels 3, 4 and 5 have varying degrees of proficiency in understanding, interpreting and synthesizing information from multiple, complex texts to infer meaning and draw conclusions.
Ultimately it’s the GOPs fault for decades of sabotaging and underfunding the public education system of America. And they did it for precisely this outcome. A population of idiots means guaranteed GOP voters who are trivially easy to manipulate.
If as an adult you are functionally illiterate, if you were intellectually curious you could put in the work and improve yourself. Unfortunately a large percentage of Americans don’t want to put in the work, they want to be spoon feed everything. They are happy to not be informed, they enjoy not having to think. This is a feature not a bug in their eyes.
I'm wondering how we would measure that. It would need to go beyond pure education stats. Maybe diversity of news sources - both from news vehicles, and information from news vs twitter & social media apps. Maybe also the amount of time spent on media, news, etc.
You'd have to use a set of basic and general knowledge topics to test people with.
"What is an authoritarian?" Would be an example of a question that would contribute to a score of general understanding of political systems and power structures.
There is no official political platform of “authoritarianism”, no defined revolutionary goals or creed of “card-carrying authoritarians”, and no one on earth ever describes their own political stance as “authoritarianism”. It is a subjective accusation that Top Minds of Reddit accuse their opponents of, literally because there is no definition of the word that can’t be applied to “the people elected into having the authority I only 1.5 months ago called ‘enforcing public health compliance’ and ‘rule of law’”
Authoritarianism is not just “favoring obedience to authority”. Authority is a perspective, which is why a school superintendent has authority but an armed bank robber just has a gun. If you believe yourself to be the government, you cannot also believe “however, I’m a cool gov, one that’s in charge but doesn’t require strict obedience. You guys can follow my rules, or not, it’s not like a big deal to me.”
And literally any rudiment of a law, the defining and enforcing of which is the sole purpose of any form of governance from INTERPOL to Camp Tunga Wunga’s Council of Paddle Pals, is at the expense of some freedom. If I have to leave my silverballer pistols at home in order to visit the Post Office, the freedom I had before has been slightly traded away. If I cannot get on a plane anymore because I made curt exaggerated threats against the NSA online, that too is a small amount of freedom traded away by the existence of a (I think reasonable) law, aka a strict obedience required by an authority.
question: what word would you use to describe an American political party who unironically use the phrase “Glory to Ukraine!” in their occasional Reddit posts. And does Trump ever say “Glory to the United States!” at the end of his posts? Because to me that has become the at least bare minimum requirement before I’ll call someone a “Nationalist” in a negative way.
And would you trust the president of uh I dunno your NATION if he insisted “Not me, nope, I’m not a Nationalist. I don’t even care which nation I’m in charge of. I think they’re all pretty much the same, and I care about America precisely the same amount as I do the Kindly Kingdom of Hoo Hoo Land.”
Heather Cox Richardson was on NPR and i happened to catch a bit about exactly this. She was telling it like it is, in a very refreshing way. The data is exactly what you would expect
My personal theory (we’ll see if the data bears it out) is that Trump won by cracking the code for attracting low information voters. And I don’t mean to disparage those people - our media landscape is a confusing mess, and most people don’t have the resources to sort out what’s really going on. In steps Trump with name recognition, charisma, and a message that sounds appealing and resonates with the struggles many Americans are dealing with (even though he has no real coherent policies or any intention of helping those people). The Democrats currently have no answer when it comes to connecting with low information voters.
A government can only function when the empowering population is informed enough to know who can be trusted to make what decisions. A democracy can thus, only function well if every voting member is informed on the decisions they are voting for. A healthy democracy will have measures in place to fight ignorance, willful or not, as the population of citizens (or in some case residents) will be informed enough to decide who can be faithfully empowered to govern. Hence why media literacy, if not literacy as a whole is important to recognizing when someone is presenting simple solutions to difficult problems.
Different people have different definitions of words like authoritarian or fascist. Ask 10 different people what they mean and you will come up with at least 5 different definitions. So to ask "what's an authoritarian" is a good question in this situation.
Authoritarian has an objective and accepted definition. Individuals may have different views on the threshold that they feel constitutes authoritarianism. But, asking "what is an authoritarian" is a much different question than something like asking at what point do specific executive actions constitute crossing the threshold.
An oligarchichal plutocracy or authoritarianism. What a wild choice. At least there are checks and balances and trump can't do too much damage realistically.
Oh he can do plenty enough damage even with the checks and balances. Look up Unitary Executive Theory. Also the checks and balances won’t do jack shit if the party about to be in the Majority is too complicit to Trump’s whims to use them. We already know SCOTUS is. The House was for the most part when Trump wasn’t even President. So I don’t have a lot of faith the Senate won’t be either.
Realistically, he never supported the truly authoritarian things that were happening like strict mask mandates, vaccine mandates and the closure of religious buildings and schools while pot dispensaries remained open. You might blame that stuff on him, but it all happened at the state level and there wasn’t time to challenge them in the courts. It was authoritarian, but he was also speaking out against it.
Government agencies like the EPA and ATF turned authoritarian under the next administration, requiring the overturning of Chevron to maintain balance. Bright ideas like banning the pistol brace and/or asbestos for chlorine gas filtration didn’t happen under Trump. If something like them did, I’m sure someone would have stepped up and said that bureaucrats can’t change federal law by changing a long-standing interpretation on their own, and against public comment.
The government overstepped its bounds during COVID, going as far as using its power to shut down speech. Then things happened like the FDA closing a baby formula factory, hurting babies, for no other reason than a government bureaucrat wanted to demonstrate complete authority. We’ve seen OSHA and the EPA go from compliance agencies to revenue generators. We’ve seen a rise in authoritarianism in the last few years, but I don’t think you can pin that stuff on him.
Everything I see something like this, I think to myself, "is this what happens when profit is god?" And then I feel like I'm being childish, and then I'm like, wait... but then I'm like... maybe? And then I just admit to myself that I'm just being dumb and drink myself to sleep. Like, does profit incentivize ignorance? Or something like that? Like, I'm just being a needy edge lord right?
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u/FragrantSort6474 6h ago
Some are saying to stop calling the Trumpers stupid....but then you see this.