• OpenPassageways
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    59
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    We’re talking about people that believe Joe Biden has “open border” policies and that Democrats are performing abortions after birth.

    I’d assume they believe every word.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      4 months ago

      Yeah, that’s a good point. I wasn’t even thinking in terms of conservatives because I sort of looked at them as a lost cause and who knows what they’re gonna do; I was looking at the contest as where things are going to shake out between “willing to vote” against “nah it’s not important enough to vote what’s the worst that could happen”. But yeah there probably is a contingent of Republican voters who think what Trump says about it is relevant and believable.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      They don’t actually believe it, in the sense that people usually mean when they say that. The pathology that’s going on may sort of tickle some of the same pathways that provide the “what exists in reality” context for the rest of the brain to make decisions, but mostly what they mean when they’re saying it out loud to other people is simply that it it were true, it would help their team. If you watch the way they behave, it’s very clear that it’s the second thing and not the first.

      The development of that pathway and feedback loop between the part of the brain that believes things, and the part of the brain that strategizes what would hurt the Democrats if it were true, is horrifyingly dangerous. It’s at the root of some of the worst and largest-scale atrocities of the 20th century. And now, there’s a whole network of conservative media in the US that can hook in with organized religion and they can work together to explicitly strengthen it, consistently and forcefully, every single day.

      If they just “believed” in in the sense that they had objectively arrived at the conclusion that it were true, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as dangerous as the somewhat more subtle thing which is actually what’s going on.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      Actually, we’re talking about fence sitters, nobody cares about the people whose minds are already made here.

      • Maestro@fedia.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        4 months ago

        I don’t believe there are very much fence sitters left. They are just republicans that are afraid to say out loud they will vote for Trump out of fear of being cancelled.