A conservative activist's chilling comments about truth and the election.

[Beet]

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http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/08/live-from-the-republicans-self-made-gehenna-wisconsin-wingnut-charles-sykes-notices-that-he-and-his-fellows-have-create.html

Here are his books.

[Bismarck]

Yeah I've talked to people like this before. I think most people are smarter than this but it certainly exists. It happens to a lesser extent on the left too.

[Lief 🗽]

Yeah I've talked to people like this before. I think most people are smarter than this but it certainly exists. It happens to a lesser extent on the left too.

Yup, this definitely exists on the left, though not to the same degree (probably because left-wing alternative media is nowhere near as large as conservative alternative media, plus trust in the mainstream media is not nearly as low among liberals as among conservatives).  It fueled the Bernie Sanders campaign to a great effect.  People so easily hole themselves up in echo chambers, only reading/watching what reinforces their opinion and rejecting anything to the contrary as corporate and/or establishment shills.  Not really sure what the solution to it is.

[Lyin' Steve]

Yeah I've talked to people like this before. I think most people are smarter than this but it certainly exists. It happens to a lesser extent on the left too.

Yup, this definitely exists on the left, though not to the same degree (probably because left-wing alternative media is nowhere near as large as conservative alternative media, plus trust in the mainstream media is not nearly as low among liberals as among conservatives).  It fueled the Bernie Sanders campaign to a great effect.  People so easily hole themselves up in echo chambers, only reading/watching what reinforces their opinion and rejecting anything to the contrary as corporate and/or establishment shills.  Not really sure what the solution to it is.

+1000

I listen to Sirius XM 124 (POTUS) on my morning commute to work, and sometimes if it's a commercial break I'll flip up to 125 (Patriot) out of some perverse curiosity.  Some of the stuff I hear on there just scares me.  The alternative reality is unreal.  Liberals who think the whole "Obama is a muslim who created ISIS" thing is just for some wingnuts, no.  Right-wing talk radio is the mainstream of the right and this stuff is repeated as fact uncritically by the hosts.

[Xing]

I made a post about this a while back. The internet indulges our confirmation bias in a terrible way. "Doing research" now means looking for information or evidence that supports ideas people already hold, while dismissing anything to the contrary as biased. People would rather be proven right than actually learn.

[Bismarck]

I made a post about this a while back. The internet indulges our confirmation bias in a terrible way. "Doing research" now means looking for information or evidence that supports ideas people already hold, while dismissing anything to the contrary as biased. People would rather be proven right than actually learn.

Yeah that's a big problem. I think it's also why we see both sides viewing politics more as right vs wrong rather than differences of opinion.

[Badger]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

[The Advocate]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

[Adam Griffin]

Yeah, it's bad on the Left, too. I really don't think it's as bad, but it's getting there bit-by-bit. Whereas you pretty much have to veer off into Sandersland or some specific variant of low-info leftist territory (vaccines, GMOs, etc) to find it truly rotting brains in mass quantity, it's pretty much saturated within the rank-and-file GOP at this point.

Even well-educated "mainstream" Republicans will believe an email forward over factual reporting from one of the most qualified media institutions in the world. It's actually pretty prevalent on the Left in that regard, too (the overall prevalence of click-bait websites and blogs churning out BS articles)...but the main difference is that when provided with legitimate sources that refute it, most will abandon their original position. Conservatives double-down, call your source "lieberal" and proceed to show you something from bigassconservativepatriot.blogspot.com to prove they're right.

It's worth noting that I completely blame social media. This is the first presidential primary/general election combo where both parties had contests and where social media was a truly universal concept. Even in 2008, many people didn't use Facebook et al. Now, even your grandparents use it.

[BlueSwan]

Yeah I've talked to people like this before. I think most people are smarter than this but it certainly exists. It happens to a lesser extent on the left too.

Yup, this definitely exists on the left, though not to the same degree (probably because left-wing alternative media is nowhere near as large as conservative alternative media, plus trust in the mainstream media is not nearly as low among liberals as among conservatives).  It fueled the Bernie Sanders campaign to a great effect.  People so easily hole themselves up in echo chambers, only reading/watching what reinforces their opinion and rejecting anything to the contrary as corporate and/or establishment shills.  Not really sure what the solution to it is.

I'm not sure what the solution is either, but I know what not to do.

In Denmark, we seemingly don't have the info-bubble/alternative reality/postfactual problem - or at least it isn't a big problem yet. I feel that the main reason for this is that we have very strong public funded media which still dominates danish television and radio. These publically funded stations have a public service obligation, which means that we still have news shows of a decent (not great) quality that most people follow. However, there is a political push to abandon the publically funded media given that there are now so many private broadcasters around. For our democracy's sake I really hope that this effort fails.

[BlueSwan]

The travesty is that social media seemed like such a great opportunity for democracy, yet it has turned out to be one of the biggest threats to democracy furthering the postfactual society.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I also blame social media...

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Nietzsche was right: the Will-To-Truth has destroyed itself.

[Averroës Nix]

I don't think you need to be on the left or the right to be vulnerable to this. For every perspective, there's someone catering to it with stories that flatter its unique sensibilities and inflame the paranoias to which it is most vulnerable. It doesn't even need to be political: You get the same type of vapid, social media-driven, epistemic closure over just about every topic that inspires passionate opinions.

Still, I'll take today's more pluralistic media over the compliant and monolithic bloc that failed to hold the Bush administration accountable for much of anything in the aftermath of 9/11, up until Iraq was enough of a mess to make criticism of the president fashionable again. People who can't think critically about what they read, who lack the time to digest it fully, or who are totally closed off to perspectives other than their own are at a loss, sure, but those people have always been clueless and always will be.

[Averroës Nix]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

I don't think that putting more bloviating left-wing idiots on air would actually do much to counteract having so many bloviating right-wing idiots on air. You'd have to be pretty ignorant and lacking in understanding to enjoy any of that trash.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

I don't think that putting more bloviating left-wing idiots on air would actually do much to counteract having so many bloviating right-wing idiots on air. You'd have to be pretty ignorant and lacking in understanding to enjoy any of that trash.

Sadly, there are a lot.

The thing I find so sad across the board is that people actively avoid information that may challenge their views. I don't know what does that to people, but with more 'sources' of information, people pick and choose what they listen to and read because of what already lines up with their existing concepts, prejudices etc etc. I don't think this environment would have done anything to have changed the course on Iraq, if anything it would have hardened views, especially since convenient misinformation is the same in those forums.

(Not to harp on that issue) but I had a conversation with a friend of a friend in the states who was just flabbergasted when almost all of us in this group supported Clinton over Sanders. What shocked him wasn't the policy differences, but that we existed "literally everyone in my circle, on facebook is supporting Sanders, this is such an unfriendly environment". Frankly, when everyone around agrees with you on everything, usually to me that's a sign that I need to get out more, not double-down.

[HisGrace]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

That wouldn't have any effect on cable news, soocial media/internet, or even satellite radio. The FCC can't control things the way they used to. 

[Crumpets]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

I don't think that putting more bloviating left-wing idiots on air would actually do much to counteract having so many bloviating right-wing idiots on air. You'd have to be pretty ignorant and lacking in understanding to enjoy any of that trash.

Sadly, there are a lot.

The thing I find so sad across the board is that people actively avoid information that may challenge their views. I don't know what does that to people, but with more 'sources' of information, people pick and choose what they listen to and read because of what already lines up with their existing concepts, prejudices etc etc. I don't think this environment would have done anything to have changed the course on Iraq, if anything it would have hardened views, especially since convenient misinformation is the same in those forums.

(Not to harp on that issue) but I had a conversation with a friend of a friend in the states who was just flabbergasted when almost all of us in this group supported Clinton over Sanders. What shocked him wasn't the policy differences, but that we existed "literally everyone in my circle, on facebook is supporting Sanders, this is such an unfriendly environment". Frankly, when everyone around agrees with you on everything, usually to me that's a sign that I need to get out more, not double-down.

Just out of curiosity, did they mean to say that they equated Sanders support with friendliness and Clinton support with hostility?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Yeah, it's bad on the Left, too. I really don't think it's as bad, but it's getting there bit-by-bit. Whereas you pretty much have to veer off into Sandersland or some specific variant of low-info leftist territory (vaccines, GMOs, etc) to find it truly rotting brains in mass quantity, it's pretty much saturated within the rank-and-file GOP at this point. 

There's an ideological continuum of "information averse" people who refuse to believe facts because they might have been somehow "tainted" by hostile, self-serving sources.  This runs from the far-left, to the radical center, to the far right.  "Big Pharma" is pushing for mandatory vaccines.  "Big Ag / Monsanto" is suppressing the health dangers of GMOs.  "Global banking elites / Rothschilds" run the Fed and the IMF.  "Hollywood elites" are pushing the gay agenda on us.  "Atheist intellectuals" are out to discredit God through faulty science.  "Big government" wants to disarm us by taking away our guns and making us easier to control.  And BLM is a plot to create racial problems when none exist.

You can actually find individuals who hold all of these baffling ideas in their head simultaneously.  Antivax, anti-GMO, end-the-Fed, religious liberty, #alllivesmatter people.  They're out there.   Almost all of them are either Trump supporters or former Bernie Sanders supporters (some of whom now support Trump).

[SteveRogers]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

No. That's not the right way to report facts either.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The closest parallel to this is the first half of the 19th century and the partisan press. We live in an era that keeps comparing back to a time when there was a universally accepted truth (basically whatever Walter Cronkite said) and so this era seems alien. However, that was a product of a collective decision on the part of many papers (and later the other mediums that followed) to move away from partisanship and more towards independent journalism.

This degraded over the last half of the 20th century and now we are in a situation that I was describing a few years back regarding the media and "fact checking". Now each side has their own press and their own "facts" and therefore there is no universally accepted truth teller anymore.

Charlie Sykes is a small fish in a big pond. Rush is the patron saint of talk Radio and he has been partial to Donald Trump from the start because he knows him. Rush entertained the birtherism as did Hannity. Beck did not. Beck said Trump was colluding with Soros to discredit the right, back in 2011. The reaction was hostility because Beck was challenging Rush, who assured his audience that Trump was genuine. The only one who could change this course would be Rush himself and that is not going to happen. Only once Rush is gone will other talkers have the opening to lead their audience in a different direction from what he says. They will listen to Sykes, but Rush is gospel.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

I don't think that putting more bloviating left-wing idiots on air would actually do much to counteract having so many bloviating right-wing idiots on air. You'd have to be pretty ignorant and lacking in understanding to enjoy any of that trash.

Plus the Fairness Doctrine would do nothing about cable TV or the Internet. It's pretty toothless today.

[Wisconsin+17]

Believing that Walter Cronkite was the universal source of truth is the entire problem here. I am baffled when conservatives say that 'finding truth' is the issue here. Truth is pretty simple. You don't have to go to Rush, or to the New York Times to find it.

Rush is an entertainer - he caters to his audience and that is why he's successful. All of the bedrock principles of conservatives, you can find in something foreign... a book.

One - there is not going to be one 'universal truth teller', because bias exists everywhere.

Two - trust in principles, not people. This is why the #nevertrumps are not having an issue over truth in this election. We don't look to Rush, or to politicians for the answers, we have the answers already.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was ending the Fairness doctrine.

I don't think that putting more bloviating left-wing idiots on air would actually do much to counteract having so many bloviating right-wing idiots on air. You'd have to be pretty ignorant and lacking in understanding to enjoy any of that trash.

Sadly, there are a lot.

The thing I find so sad across the board is that people actively avoid information that may challenge their views. I don't know what does that to people, but with more 'sources' of information, people pick and choose what they listen to and read because of what already lines up with their existing concepts, prejudices etc etc. I don't think this environment would have done anything to have changed the course on Iraq, if anything it would have hardened views, especially since convenient misinformation is the same in those forums.

(Not to harp on that issue) but I had a conversation with a friend of a friend in the states who was just flabbergasted when almost all of us in this group supported Clinton over Sanders. What shocked him wasn't the policy differences, but that we existed "literally everyone in my circle, on facebook is supporting Sanders, this is such an unfriendly environment". Frankly, when everyone around agrees with you on everything, usually to me that's a sign that I need to get out more, not double-down.

Just out of curiosity, did they mean to say that they equated Sanders support with friendliness and Clinton support with hostility?

No, because he was spouting anti-Clinton conspiracy theories (from sites like Observer and USUNCUT) like they were facts. We tried to explain to him background and context and why it wasn't correct. He considered the environment in which he was disagreed with hostile. Because bubbles of any kind cause this self-affirmation cycles - oh, hey I agree with you on x, that's cool here's some information, omg it's so true isn't it, such a pity the MSM isn't covering this!