texastough

Cottonmouth thinking about chilling for the winter

I made a super long post the other day in the "Active Measures . . . Propaganda" thread that I won't copy here, but I agre 100% that propaganda is at work. What I think people aren't comprehending is that it is not disinformation per se, it is the pervasive demonization of liberals since the 1990's beginning with conservative talk radio to Fox News to today with all of that plus podcasts and a proliferation of information sources that, as noted above, are coordinated to amplify eachother and to enforce echo chambers. I'm a former conservative/republican voter and still run in a lot of those circles. We have gone from a time of good faith debate to today when every attempt to talk about it ends at "yeah but liberals are trying to destroy the country." No amount of insanity, stupidity, racism, hate, crime, and treason from Trump could break through that simple message that has been pushed for decades and has poisoned more than half the electorate. I think one solution would be to try to make propaganda a topic in the conversation. HIghlight studies like the one mentioned above showing conservatives favor democrat policies when they are presented without , put out documentaries about propaganda affecting americans, keep spreading the word. If enough people realize they are being conned, they won't go back to voting that way. If we don't, democrats will end up trying to change in ways and fix things that aren't really the problem, and voters will keep ping ponging back and forth when they get pissed enough.

This actually proves my point. No amount of sounding of the alarms about Trump -- not just by the mainstream media, but by almost everyone that served in his first term -- could break the spell against the headwinds of inflation etc. Fox (I mention them so much because its the most watched network) talked about J6 but downplayed it to the point that more than half of voters said "ho-hum" and elected him again. A president who tried to stay in the White House based on nothing but fraud and lies, and against the will of the American people, should have been immediately shot into the sun by the entire country (he should be shot into the sun for a lot of other reasons too but I digress). Because fuck the libs

Right now everyone is postgaming WTF happened. But I think most of the reasons being thrown out there are at best non-productive and many are counterproductive. Candidate quality, democrat platform or ineffective messaging, racism, misogyny, half of Americans are stupid, etc. There is undoubtedly truth to some of that, but to me it misses the big reason we are here: propaganda and the demonization of liberals by right wing media. Harris was a really strong candidate but was sunk by being in an administration blamed for the inflation of the last few years. Its not just racism, see Obama. Saying half of Americans are abject morons may make us feel better, but it is truly unhelpful. Thats just the human condition and its been the same for our whole history. The real problem is people being told what to think, and being intellectually lazy and/or disengaged enough not to realize their opinions are being fed to them based on bullshit. The consistent message from right-wing media for decades is that librul=bad, and it has so permeated a majority of the electorate that no amount of Trump insanity, hate and bullshit could break through. The conditions that lead us here started about 40 years ago. First it was Limbaugh who conditioned many Americans to infotainment and talking heads spouting opinions masquerading as news. It also revealed Americans' appetite for it. That eventually led to Fox News who perfected the formula. Anything bad, blame on the liberals. Downplay, spin, or ignore anything bad done by republicans. Technology compounded it by splintering the information environment, which lets people seek out the info/news they want and reinforces echo chambers. And of course right-wing power brokers realized how effective that kind of propaganda can be at setting public opinion. Over about the same period of time, corporations amassed fantastic wealth and became truly multinational. That plus things like Citizens United and superpacs gave corporations, billionaires, and special interests a lot more control over the levers of power. Republicans were apparently easier to buy off than Democrats, so over that time the Republican party became the party of the oligarch class almost exclusively. But obviously in a democracy, the 1% can't outvote the rest of the population. So, in order to win elections Republicans were able to put together a coalition of basically single issue voters (pro life, pro gun, anti immigration, and the people who still think the GOP is better for the economy despite all the evidence to the contrary). But here's the kicker: today's GOP doesn't really stand for any of those things except abortion and gun rights. I believe that until the last 20 years or so, there was a good-faith argument whether the conservative or liberal policies of the day were best for the country. (There used to be conservative posters in here, I was one of them, that would argue policy in good faith, now it is just drive by shit talking). Its because Republican policies are mostly indefensible today. Today, all the GOP basically does is cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and kill democratic bills -- or even kill conservative legislation like the immigration bill when they think it will help politically. They have a really hard time actually passing legislation. In other words, Republicans have conned their electorate into voting blatantly against their best interests. The overwhelming reason is effective propaganda. Over the same period of time I have been talking about, the biggest demographic shift between parties has been more educated voters to the left and less educated voters to the right. This is the biggest piece of evidence that it is propaganda to blame, not candidate quality or any of those other things. The more educated tended to see through the Fox News bullshit, the less educated believe what they are told to believe. Fox News has spent a couple decades demonizing democrats/liberals, and it has worked. More people blame Biden for inflation when it was actually kicked into high gear by the guy they just reelected, and brought under control by Biden. I know Trumpers who are normal people in a larger sense. When I talk to them about this stuff, thats what it always comes down to. No actual discussion anymore, they just can't be on the side of the libruls. You have to correctly diagnose a problem to properly fix it. I think if all democrats do is try to tweak their platform, find better candidates, outreach certain demographics, we will keep ending up here in the same place wondering what went wrong. This election has made me want to get more involved, but I don't want to spin my wheels. So, how to neutralize the conservative media and demonization of liberals? Say it with me, its far easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled. I don't have great answers and would love Surly input. Democrats are facing an uphill battle due to the education gap, in other words the voters they need to win back are the gullible ones now under the librul=bad spell. I don't think laws dealing with disinformation would be that effective. First, you'd run up against free speech/freedom of the press before you got too far. But more than that, most of the propaganda isn't true disinformation anyway. For instance, Fox doesn't air the obviously false stuff -- rather it mentions the real news, but then spend 99% of its airtime spinning and telling people how to think about the it (libruls bad). Its that constant, pervasive, simple message that is driving this. I do think we have an opportunity in the next two years (hopefully not four) to help try to lift the veil for some voters. Thats because conservative media bitching about democrats isn't that compelling when republicans control all the branches of government. In fact, to keep viewers tuned in, Fox will probably spend plenty of time crapping on republicans and far less time reinforcing the bad librul message. The first way I can come up with to fight back is to try to make propaganda part of the conversation. For instance, do some studies of americans that demonstrate how effective propaganda is. Make some documentaries featuring those studies, showing how effective propaganda is today in places like Russia and China, drawing parallels to things like Germany 100 years ago to show what can happen, and showing clearly how the GOP's actions today doesn't match most of its purported policies or the right-wing media narrative. And get everyone involved trying to keep it front and center in the national conversation. Enough to where people have to think about and question whether they have been duped. MAYBE that can start to break the spell on just enough voters. I think that Americans will get fed up with Trump again and for that reason alone and regardless of conservative media, democrats will win back the White House in 2028. But to keep winning consistently enough going forward, enough people are going to have to realize they have been conned. Those people that do won't flip back to republican -- at least until it becomes a party operating in good faith again and not just trying to represent 1% of its constituents. My only other thoughts are that even getting rid of right wing media and lifting the veil on the electorate probably would not solve the biggest impediments we have to a better functioning democracy/society. Stuff like overturning Citizens United, changing the electoral college, etc. are not going to happen in our current system under business as usual. Its going to take a major event that causes a lot of hardship/privation. A world war, a pandemic worse than covid, climate change causing famine/supply chain disruption, giant meteor hitting the earth. In other words, we have to face a large enough problem or threat collectively for politicians of all stripes to truly work together to solve it and not just try to score points -- or a problem so big we throw out the government who won't solve it and start over. Sorry for the long post but it is my way of making sense of what just happened and to start trying to take more positive proactive steps to make a difference. First being diagnosing the real problem!!

They've already been bought by Russia

This has been done (I heard an NPR segment based on some studies), and the nutshell version is . . . republicans in the last few cycles made a concerted push to latinos with a faith/family/economy message. While latinos are not a homogenous block, this message resonated with a lot of them. Like a lot of republican messaging, thats all it is -- messaging with no substance -- but once again we are finding that propaganda works.

BBC has election coverage

Nah, it will be underwater by then just from the rising sea level

I've been around since shaggy. In fact I joined after lurking so I could post the Roman "both tacos" conversation (if you remember that). So I know who posts in here thank you very much. And I'm not just talking about cloak room, but across the board I've gotten news/info here earlier and more accurately than anywhere else for years and years now.

I personally think Trump defectors + Dobbs voters will decide it. There will be a lot of breakdowns of how many percentage points each age, gender, race, geographical area etc moved, but what I think they will all have in common is a portion of each of those groups ditching Trump or showing up for the first time to vote for reproductive rights. At least I hope. I'm assuming the analysis of the early voting trends is based on the assumption that people are voting the way they are registered? Which would not pick up any trend of past Trump voters switching sides? Is this all wishful thinking?

I posted this on Sept. 20 back on page (checks notes) 733 of the main thread: "Calling my shot = she gets 325. All the swing states + Iowa. The trends are clear and the GOP is self destructing. The Walz effect puts her over the top in Iowa. I want to think FL could flip but Trump just seems like the perfect FloridaMan " I made a similar prediction earlier in this thread. NGL, now I'm feeling slightly more optimistic, that another couple of red states could flip. But, I get nearly 100% of my info from the Surl. Don't watch TV. Haven't been on FB or IG in years. Only signed up for Twitter when clips started coming out of Russian war machines exploding, but never check it anymore. So, beyond the part about saving the republic, for me today is also a referendum on this site. In the age of a splintered media environment and increasingly shoddy or biased journalism, nobody has time to a) seek out info on every topic/issue or b) check the veracity of all the info. Here on the Surl, the news comes to me -- typically quicker than traditional media -- and it is almost instantly fact-checked. So, in other words I have come to rely on you assholes for almost everything . . . but even though individually we don't know shit about fuck, it seems that collectively we do know shit about all kinds of shit, including fuck. Artificial intelligence can only reflect back whats out on the internet, much of which is nonsense, whereas the sum-of-parts hive-mind here adds up to ACTUAL intelligence. So if I'm right on the prediction, all credit goes to the Surl. And even if its wrong -- many thanks to (most of) you fuckers. LFG!

Interesting humblebrag

Compared to less than 5 million in 2020? Seems good?

Let me see if I understand Huck's chart. Ignoring 2020, at this point we have record EV turnout both in raw numbers and as a % of registered voters (looks like we are around 7% ahead of 2016?). So thats good. But, historically red counties have been leading the EV charge. So thats bad. But, they are starting to plateau and blue counties are catching up. So thats good. But an unexpected surge of trash bag costumes last night signals continued silent/hidden Trump support. So thats bad. On the other hand, apparently schoolchildren and illegal alien criminals are getting taxpayer funded sex changes without their consent. Before I decide whether thats good or bad for my 401k, can you tell me whether Ted Cruz had one? Finally, Kamala refuses to do Rogan so she's basically signing a death warrant for the republic. Bad But, it could be looking really close for Allred?

Weren't the 18-29 segment something like 1/3 of new early voters? Do we know the typical vote share (of new voters) from that age group? edit to clarify share of new voters

Last night watched Get Out for the first time. Loved it. Its probably been discussed upthread - its not scary in a prototypical horror movie way. Really well done wrt race/racism

How much $ would it take to run an ad on Fox News featuring a few things like this as a message from Trump telling MAGA to "Boycott the Rigged election!"

Enough early electronic votes triggers a security software program that protects against election day voter fraud

The clip was posted earlier -- When Hannity started spewing the bullshit about Trump's knowledge and hours long in-depth conversations with him about complex topics, Smith should have jumped in with "About WHAT? About ELECTROCUTION SHARKS? About CANCER WINDMILLS? About MEN'S JUNK????

They probably want to wait until the latest possible moment for security reasons. With Beyonce on top of the existing Kamala enthusiasm she won't have trouble filling it on short notice.

Did you ride any rides while you were there?

Here's how I see it. I've been guilty of koolaid flavored optimism in the past, but . . . We see all this evidence of huge momentum for Harris, from anecdotal to fundraising/spending, while at the same time Trump is flailing. The polls tell us its a dead heat. But we also know the polls are seriously being gamed, both for media clicks/eyeballs and to lay the groundwork for Trump to claim the election was stolen. There's a lot of cautious optimism around here, but cautious is an understatement. Buttholes are clenched. In other words, we want to believe what we see with our own eyes, but the bogus polls are having their effect, even on this crowd. So fuck it, I'm ignoring the polls. The tea leaves in early voting seem to be good signs, with women considerably outpacing men, etc. I think she wins all the swing states plus wins or makes it very close in a state or two thought to be safe red. 319 or better.

I was leaning towards voting Allred but I just can't in good conscience now that I know he wants to sterilize my kids

I heard that Mum Foods on Manor Rd is getting some kind of recognition. Its owned/operated by my neighbor, mainly smoked meats with creative sides. Awesome spot.

He won't run in '28 because he'll be in prison