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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

RuPaul's American



I'm not above this.

1 comment:

jimf said...

> [Not] RuPaul's American

http://archive.courierpress.com/news/politics/trump-supporter-brings-anti-heroin-message-to-evansville--318bb8ca-5fde-5108-e053-0100007f1f5c-377427171.html
--------------
April 28, 2016

Supporting Trump because of his strong border policy, Craig Moss
from Owego, New York, who lost his son to heroin, now travels the
country following Trump singing and selling his Trump themed
country music. . .
====


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiTgKYv_78Q
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Tragic Reason This Man Stopped Supporting Trump
The Young Turks
Mar 22, 2017

[Craig Moss] was an enormous Trump fan but that has changed. . .
====


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/upshot/why-objectively-false-things-continue-to-be-believed.html
--------------
Wishful Thinking
Why People Continue to Believe Objectively False Things
By AMANDA TAUB and BRENDAN NYHAN
MARCH 22, 2017

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,”
goes the saying — one that now seems like a relic of simpler times. . .

Partisan polarization is now so extreme in the United States
that it affects the way that people consume and understand information —
the facts they believe, and what events they think are important.
The wiretapping allegations could well become part of a partisan
narrative that is too powerful to be dispelled.

Mr. Trump, perhaps unconsciously, has grasped a core truth of modern
politics: that voters tend to seek out information that fits the story
they want to believe, usually one in which members of the other party
are the bad guys.

Since the 1980s, Americans have been reporting increasingly negative
opinions about the opposing party. Partisanship, and particularly
“negative partisanship,” the rejection of the opposing party, has
now become a kind of tribal identity that shapes how people define
themselves and others. . . It drives people to support their team
at any cost, and oppose the opposing team at any cost. . .” . . .

This partisan polarization affects the way Americans of all political
stripes consume information. People are more likely to believe stories
that come from their side of the political divide, particularly if an
authority figure vouches for them. And they are more likely to share
news with their preferred slant as a way of showing they are good members
of their political tribe. . .
====


"Partisan polarization is now so extreme in the United States. . ." -- I wonder
if that's really true. My parents, and my extended family, certainly lived
in their own right-wing "filter bubble" back in the 50s and 60s (though that
terminology hadn't been invented). The years of the Kennedy (J. and R.)
and Martin Luther King assassinations, the civil rights and Vietnam protests,
burning cities and shooting of (white) college students, the Nixon presidency,
certainly seem (in my memory, though I was paying more attention to
Star Trek in those days :-/ ) to be as "polarized" as anything going on
today. More so, in fact -- apart from the outrage of the intellectual class
over Trump's antics, folks seem to be pretty tepidly engaged these days.
Global warming? The "Forever War" in the Middle East? Transgender bathrooms,
for cryin' out loud? Ehh. . .