...so 45% are totally chill with this. Great.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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I was about to say. Like "only" 55% ? GL America.
Wow, we are so genuinely hosed. How did we end up with so many stupid citizens?
Propaganda works.
We've been saying it since the 70s at least. It's a giant conspiracy by - media corporations - to not reveal how powerful media corporations are.
Not a secret conspiracy mind you - anyone can see it quite plainly - but it will never be spoken of, at least, on popular corporate media. Not in any useful way. Why they would lose money if they did that.
It wouldn't even matter if it was spoken of. 60 Minutes could do a ground breaking show based off the entire thing, that goes viral. But at best viewership might drop for a month or so before everyone forgets about it or dismisses it entirely.
You cannot allow blatant propoganda like Fox. Maybe not ban them, but make laws to hold all media to a much higher standard and then sue the shit out of them when they lie. If they lie, they have to lead with a segment that retracts the lie, apologizes and then tells the truth for a couple days.
You could use the fines to fund independent media that has no or less bias.
First of all, countering propaganda doesn't happen in one-offs. But you're right about everything there.
And, as it happens, all of those ideas have been floated for many decades now. Unless someone gets through to literally everyone we'll be floating them into the watershed of history and nothing will ever get better.
Theres a reason republicans always want to defund education. Theres a reason why there is a correlation between red states and blue states and their test scores. Theres a reason why universities/higher education has been branded "liberal brainwashing."
Theyve been attacking education so that people can stay ignorant to their true motives
Abbreviated version:
- 1980s: AM Radio right-wing talk shows, like Rush Limbaugh, start focusing right-wing propaganda on rural areas (who are only able to receive AM radio). Conspiracy-minded people are targeted and radicalized, but the effect is mostly contained to AM radio.
- 1990s: Telecommunications Act of 1996 allows consolidation of rural stations, leading to propaganda standardization. Major media companies shrink from 50 in the 1980s to 10 in 1996. Fox News is created in 1996, and Rupert Murdoch gives control to Roger Ailes. Ailes internally explicitly positions it as a right counterbalance to "left" (i.e., truthful) media, with the "Fair and Balanced" tagline cheekily containing that double meaning. Murdoch and Ailes begin to mainstream AM radio right propaganda by blurring the line between news and entertainment, with high production-value graphics and sound effects. They focus on addictive stories that also instill fear and distrust of each other, government and other media - violence, sex scandals, "what the mainstream isn't telling you," etc. Fox News spreads.
- 2000s: G.W. Bush "elected" by Supreme Court. 9/11 happens, and Bush reaps the last real national, monocultural unifying event, with approval ratings hitting 90% shortly after. In 2000 election, Fox News reaches nearly 1/3rd of the US and Fox News' attacks on mainstream media petrify into dogma in rural areas, and a new radicalized Tea Party faction of the GOP emerges as a successful astroturf effort from the Koch brothers. Fox News normalizes it, and also becomes the only "reliable" news station in rural areas. Rural citizens start to lose visibility to reliable fact-based news and reporting. Media consolidation continues, leaving only six media companies in 2005. Fox News' entertainment-based propaganda reaches national political elections, with Sarah Palin being chosen as McCain's VP nominee (but loses).
- 2010s: Rural areas begin to fully detach from reality based on Fox News' steady propaganda, convinced minorities and immigrants are taking their jobs and democrats are "elite" aristocrats who don't care. Obama reelected but rural democratic union strongholds decay nationwide. Widespread distrust of government settles in. Social media begins to be weaponized by early propaganda adopters. Trump enters, and builds on the foundation Fox News created to accelerate distrust and propaganda. Readership of actual journalism declines, spurring self-feeding cycles of paywalls, lower readership, and factionalized information culture. Fox News settles in as the most popular news station without a challenger. In 2015, Russia begins active misinformation and election interference. Obama tells Putin to "knock it off." Putin stops all propaganda efforts (just kidding).
- 2020s: [Gestures broadly]
39%
JFC, why is this only 55%. This country has so many clueless people.
The clueless are powered by propaganda
16% of Republicans
These are the remnants of the party of law and order and small government.
I'd meet one of those from time and time and hear them reel off the typical narrative about "law and order" and "small government" and just chuckle to myself at how deluded they were about their own party's makeup and ambitions even decades ago.
Almost always "law and order" is a fig leaf for racism, xenophobia, etc. Not always, but usually. The people that honestly adhere to a Libertarian style thing in the Republican party are very few, but there are some that are probably actually under the impression, even still, that the goal of the Republican Party is about the core Libertarian type of thing.
The party is really about the likes of fElon and Bronzo the Clown enriching themselves, while fooling a whole lot of racists and misogynists that they are going to do anything for those people besides just make their economic lives much harder. Oh, and also red meat is thrown to xtians that think everyone else needs to participate in their little book club, too.
Apropos of nothing, but I LOVE the nicknames you've been using (created?) for the Orange Utan.
Thanks. I think I can take credit for none of them. :)
Or just immigrant haters.
55%?
Why not 100%? Seriously, what's wrong with the other 45%?
Brainwashing
Simple minded
Seriously, what's wrong with the other 45%?
Remember the apathetic non-voters who don't pay attention to news, politics, current affairs or anything beyond their immediate surroundings....
They voted for Trump.
Doge = a shadow government who has the power to delegate & remove authority of the Gov offices and elected officials and decide how tax money is spent without the consent of the people.
Isn't this why the second amendment is a thing?
Turns out that too was a bunch of bullshit.
That's just so the death squads can be pre-armed.
A dodgy spot in the swamp.
The swamp is flooding and soon all of us will be standing in a puddle of shit. God, I can’t believe we’re still in the first 100 days of this administration
Can't complain about a swamp if you live in one.
He should have ZERO power. Saying he has “too much” indicates that it’s acceptable that he has any power at all.
Agreed 100%. He is not an elected official. He is appointed to a made-up position with unwarranted authority.
45% would cut their own throats if they were told to.
As a filthy leftist, it would certainly pwn me if they did. I would be very pwned.
Like I would cry so many tears, which are incidentally fucking delicious, if anyone were so inclined to want to drink them.
Omg yes I'd drink SO much soy milk. Like, my already puny muscles would shrivel in the wake of such based alpha wolf assertion of dominance.
President Musk shouldn't have any power whatsoever on decisions affecting US
The other 45 percent were not asked.
Even if he weren't the admin's Chief Divorced Officer, he would have too much influence in the government on the account that he's a billionaire
yay more polls