A case study in current events changing people from normal, empathetic people into Qanon cult members in just 90 days.

[VRAMdemon]

Believing Qanon is just a symptom of the disease...and expected

Most conservatives will vote Republican, regardless of it’s Donald Trump, Abe Lincoln, or Foghorn Leghorn on the ballot.

I see this when I spend time out in rural SC and FLA with my in laws and their neighbors. Most of them of them are old, working class to middle class income, never travel more than 25 miles and all are white. The more affluent ones may have gone to state schools, but most are nth tier college educated at best. And they’re all kinds of casually racist. If this is representative of small rural towns across the US, I can tell you why these people will vote for Trump - based on their conversations:

1. They are kind of racist. They don’t care about BLM or immigration rights. What they see are violent anarchists torching storefronts and future sales clerks who will frustrate them with their foreign accents.
2. They associate Democrats and Liberals with high taxes, ineffectual government, wealth redistribution, Marxism, anarchists, crime, corruption, bureaucracy, appeasement, political correctness, cancel culture, gun control, religious persecution, and elitism.
3. They associate Republicans and Conservatives with hard work, limited government, success, Capitalism, order, law enforcement, business, support for the troops, American exceptionalism, free speech, gun rights, good Christian values, and the greatness that is America.
4. They are kind of dumb, uneducated, and unsophisticated. I mean good luck explaining economic theory to my mother in law.
5. They are extremely proud and defensive. Sure, you could explain to them point by point how everything they know about points 2 and 3 is wrong, or at least more nuanced. But they would just view it as a personal attack on their beliefs and just dig their heels in further. It’s why Fox News is so effective. It creates a reasonable doubt so that conservatives can reconcile the horrible things Republican leaders do with their own values by saying Democrats are worse.

Or it’s even simpler than this explanation - Many Trump supporters are just selfish assholes who emulate Trump and think he’s doing a great job pissing off people they hate.

They love him because he hates the same people that they do.

 

[Jaskalas]

I mean good luck explaining economic theory to my mother in law.

We desperately need economic courses throughout high school. Our voters cannot make informed decisions while completely ignorant about the dominant forces in their lives.

Anyone who thinks trickle down will help them... is the mathematical equivalent of not knowing 3x3=9.

It is simple, fundamental, and you NEED to know this. Though you will need a few building blocks to reach the conclusion. It is extremely dangerous that half our population does not have the correct answer. Or that they have no clue how much wealth is in our nation, or how it is distributed... or what the people at the top are actually doing with the vast majority of our society's wealth and liquidity. Anyone opposing minimum wage and the like, simply does not understand economics and the dire need to increase liquidity among consumers in order to maintain a floor of stable economic function.

If they actually had that goal, economic security... AND had a basic understanding of economics... I believe support for Universal Basic Income would skyrocket.

 

[uallas5]

We desperately need economic courses throughout high school. Our voters cannot make informed decisions while completely ignorant about the dominant forces in their lives.

Most people in this country have had at least a year or two of high school civics but look that has worked out. They fully believe that their "side" (particularly Trump supporters) has the "right" to do as they wish, because their pols are doing the stuff those people agree with.

 

[Moonbeam]

Most people in this country have had at least a year or two of high school civics but look that has worked out. They fully believe that their "side" (particularly Trump supporters) has the "right" to do as they wish, because their pols are doing the stuff those people agree with.

I think the problem is that for billions of years 'me first' was a survival advantage. With the simultaneous emergence of intelligence and primate socialization in particular, the survival of the group became more important. As social interactions became more and more complex, the ability to navigate socially complicated dynamics gave apes with the ability to empathize a social advantage. Empathy, I believe was built on mammalian offspring nurturing and perhaps sexual pair bonding. At any rate I think this is the foundational origins of Divine love. As above so below as some mystics say. When this natural inclination to identify with others is shattered or damaged by violence and betrayal, when childhood is a torture rather than the joy it should be, the old 'me first' takes over. I think then that when we say that the pols are doing the stuff those people agree with they are talking about things that they feel put them first rather than the welfare of everyone. In short, the kind of evolutionary advantage that comes with survival of the whole group rather than the takers group is lost when ego needs are destroyed by contempt for others.

Contempt as all forms of hatred is learned personally, when we learn what it is we are when we are hated. And what we are is divine. Metaphorically, some of us prefer darkness over light. Theoretical perhaps but my opinion.

 

[Moonbeam]

People are people. Most are susceptible to such extremism if conditions are right. See: Stanford Prison Experiment.

And you know why I think that is true. Self hate confuses real morality, in my opinion, by preventing the thing it is based on, the real love of self that manifests as the will to love others the same. The ego is the self that pretends to be us so we won't know how we really feel and that ego will rationalize anything depending on the level of fear at self confrontation.

 

[Jaskalas]

Most people in this country have had at least a year or two of high school civics but look that has worked out. They fully believe that their "side" (particularly Trump supporters) has the "right" to do as they wish, because their pols are doing the stuff those people agree with.

Civics, aka law and order, stand between them and wielding the power to smite their enemies and help themselves.
And what happens when you break it? Well... right away... nothing.

Do you think those civic classes teach of the consequences of lawlessness? Do they demonstrate at all what mob rule means? How might making right and eliminating the rule of law leads to tyranny, dictators, warlords and slavery?

I doubt a single word of that was uttered. So why should they surrender the power to "win" the war, when they cannot comprehend the consequences of their actions? They think they are winning. They are too ignorant and or uneducated to know that they have already lost when they resort to damaging our institutions. They relish the power trip on the way to the gallows.

If they had a civics class, it failed them.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Most people in this country have had at least a year or two of high school civics but look that has worked out. They fully believe that their "side" (particularly Trump supporters) has the "right" to do as they wish, because their pols are doing the stuff those people agree with.

I'm not sure this is true, the education piece at least. My private Christian education had NO civics. Anything I've learned has been on my own.

IMO, unbiased extensive civics couple with economics should be part of all high school education.

 

[Muse]

...

 

[Franz316]

Wow looking at that lady's posts is really a trip down insanity lane. If that is the mindset we're up against there is no reaching them. The only hope is reaching them before they get to that level of crazy.

 

[ch33zw1z]

People are stupid. Social media gave stupid wings.

Same goes for the willfully ignorant