Re: If MAGA is against fake news

Oculus Spirit [97634]

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Be careful who/what you call stupid.

May 11, 2021, 9:01 AM [ in reply to In summary... ]

Now the question is....is the entertainment stupid, or the people being entertained? Is MSNBC pandering to liberals any more or less stupid than Tucker/Fox pandering to conservatives? Give people what they want to hear, you get paid. Who are the stupid people, the entertainers...excuse me "journalists", or the people who consume their enter...."journalism"?

If you're a liberal and love watching CNN/MSNBC slam Trump and conservatives, are you any more intelligent than the conservatives who love watching Tucker and Fox News slamming Joe Biden, and liberals? The misinformation and lies flow both ways.

I would argue there is fundamentally no difference in the stupidity. The only "smart" people are the people making money/power off the idiots, and that's a bipartisan thing.

AND THAT is the reason for the disconnect between the people and our government. You can't govern a nation as large and diverse as our own by pandering to a base and being an ideologue. Sure, you can garnish your votes from whichever sect you have compartmentalized, and win power. But when you get that power, you are confronted with the reality your constituents don't want to see or hear. You have to govern EVERYONE. So a liberal elects a liberal, and there's no $15 minimum wage, free government health care, or whatever else is promised. A conservative votes for Trump and there is no end to illegal immigration, no lowered taxes, no elimination or even reduction in our trade deficit, or a reduction in our federal deficit or debt. It still goes up. And the unhappiness continues among the divided "masses". They are locked in their political and ideological ecosystem, and as such, nothing beyond that will satisfy them. BUT, as long as you keep the economy humming, and money in their pockets, peace, and food on their tables, you can keep the game going and going.

The truth lies in the omissions. When you're buying a car, what happens? A salesman tells you all the wonderful things about the vehicle. That's their job. They're the smart one in the room. You know nothing, they have money to make off you telling you what you want to hear. BUT, what do they NOT tell you about the car? If I'm being sold a car by a salesman I pay total and complete attention to what he's saying. All of the good points. THEN, from that, I know what is bad about the car from what was NOT mentioned. I then ask about those things. Gas mileage? Safety? Roll over risk? Resale value? Then you watch the salesman carefully. Most will divert, change the subject, downplay, whatever. And then you know the problems with the vehicle. You see the SAME back and forth among talking heads on TV. Especially when you have three+ talking heads in boxes talking over each other. Who is the idiot, the person paying attention to them and taking a side, or the guy WATCHING them argue, who gets wrapped up in one side versus the other, which is what they are there for anyway. Keep you tuned in for that commercial break. Then they make bank on you and you have no clue. The viewer is the idiot. The newsroom is also populated by fellow ideologues and idiots. But the smart people are the executives at the network, deciding the menu of food to feed the hungry ideologues out there each day to keep them watching. The social media liaison at the network who's job it is to find controversies to fuel social media posts, and further "arguments" with talking heads the next day. Those are the smart people.

Voting for what we want to hear, and not paying attention to what we don't hear, or what is not addressed, is how democracies fail. It's how you get a $30 trillion debt, and deficits for decades on end. No one wants to hear "We're broke". "We ARE cutting spending". No one ever will hear that. Omissions. The truth lies there.

Smart people know. Lawyers, they're paid to take a side, and stick it to the BIG corporation, or defend the little man. And they're ostensibly supposed to HATE the other side. Most good lawyers are not like that at all. They eat dinner with, socialize with, and are often personal friends with opposing counsel. Politicians are much the same. Campaigning they're ideologues just like the lawyer is an advocate for his client in the courtroom. When they get reelected, they're actually buddies with the other side. Not all politicians or lawyers, but the ones who are successful and make a career out of their profession, yes, they're really like that because they know it's all a game, and they are the "smart" ones. They're just making money, or are enjoying power. Same thing, same game played both ways. Might as well get along outside the courtroom or legislative chamber. And they do. Each side NEEDS the other, to create their value.

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If you're a liberal and love watching CNN/MSNBC slam Trump and conservatives, are you any more intelligent than the conservatives who love watching Tucker and Fox News slamming Joe Biden, and liberals? The misinformation and lies flow both ways.

Definitely not, especially if you consider those CNN/MSNBC talk shows "news". I know liberals who lap up whatever Don Lemon says as well. It's the same situation.

Benjamin Day learned long ago how to rein in the dumb masses with sensationalism. He took it to new levels with the Moon People hoax. I think smart people (Fox execs and Tucker Carlson) know how to con dumb people.

I think we can point to the ratings of many reality TV shows and make the same argument. Somewhere, smart people know how to throw enough stupidity on the TV to attract dumb people.

I would argue there is fundamentally no difference in the stupidity. The only "smart" people are the people making money/power off the idiots, and that's a bipartisan thing.

Agreed.

As for the rest of your post, I think you touch upon some key fundamentals, especially when you say "voting for what we want to hear and not paying attention to what we don't hear". That--right there--may be the biggest threat to our democracy that we're facing because intelligent, bad people in power know how to manipulate those echo chambers.

We have people on this board who shut out any viewpoint or source that they think goes against their world view. We literally have some on this board who have called anything they perceive as the other side of their political worldview as "evil" or "a threat to America" and refuse to have civil, open discussions about it.

As you said, that's a bipartisan problem. I have liberal friends who think they're very open-minded, but they're deleting people off Facebook for disagreeing with them or becoming enraged when they find out a friend doesn't share their views.

I have a very leftist friend like that. One day last year, she got mad at me when I said I voted third party in 2016.

"You're why Trump won!"

Well, we all know that's a pretty dumb statement. My sole vote in SC didn't give Trump the presidency. But even more importantly, even if you took all those Gary Johnson votes and gave them to Hillary, Trump still would have won. I explained this to her, but she didn't want to hear it. Like a few individuals on this board, she was too weak minded to grasp that not every American (most, in fact) gravitates to GOP or Dem.

This same mentality makes people boycott businesses because of political positions of their CEOs or call for speakers to get banned from college campuses. Instead of listening and trying to understand viewpoints, it's easier to shut them out.

That's a big threat to our First Amendment. That's a big threat to our nation. The refusal by people on both sides of politics to open up discussion and have civil debates, if it continues, could really threaten our way of life.

Finally, my best friend and I often disagree on political issues. We've debated many times. We've never once raised our voices, or gotten mad, or insulted each other, or refused to talk. We walk away sometimes still disagreeing, but we at least have a better understanding of where the other person is coming from. That's how it should be.

If MAGA is against fake news

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