Conservatives and misinformation

All of them. They all do this. I recommend finding the reasonable among them and rationalize with them.

If you want to go for the more outlandish types. The best way is to steel man their position. I recommend watching Jordan Peterson make arguments he's real good at being gracious.

I'm sorry I can't think of a more left wing commentator for the example but I'm sure they exist. The strategy is the same.

 

I'm just using the real numbers. You can call it what ever makes you feel better but the numbers don't change.
80% of their viewers have left those networks. The numbers speak for themselves

 

"There was a concern that Trump was colluding with the Russians." Yes, it was the concern of conspiracy theorists, however in this case, the conspiracy theorists were the main stream news media and since it was politically helpful, most Democrats.

Based on your comments, it seems the kicker for turning you into a true believer was that Putin (according to you anyway) preferred Trump. I don't know how you go from that to buying into the conspiracy since Russia has a favorite for every US Presidential election. That doesn't mean their favorite is a Russkie spy, unless you think Obama was one? And unlike Trump, Obama actually delivered for the Russians.

As far as "Obama being a Kenyan muslim sleeper agent for Islam" that was never more than an extreme minority position on the right-I never bought it- unlike your "Russia Russia Russia" nuttery.

You didn't really refute my post or position, you just seemed to confirm it by doubling down on Russia. I wonder what other crazy things you believe? Do you think Trump called Nazi's and White Supremacists "fine people?"

 

I was never a believer, but I fully acknowledge I despise Trump and hoped it would be true. I thought it needed to be investigated, and the investigation didn't find sufficient evidence to proceed further. And that's the end of it in terms of Trump. Putin went further to help Trump than previous elections, and most presidents don't ingratiate themselves quite so much to foreign dictators such as Putin. There was smoke, but no fire.

In a similar vein, I might think somebody is a racist for easily thinking the hypothesis of the birther conspiracy was plausible, but wouldn't call them delusional or misinformed until they continue to assert the birther theory after the birth certificate was produced.

The nuttery is in your mind. We don't believe what you think we do. Over half of republicans thought Obama was a muslim in 2015.

I didn't double down on Russia. I said an investigation was called for and it was completed without evidence to proceed. End of story. I do not assert he colluded with Russia, nor did I ever, though my suspicion was high before the investigation was done and I am glad it was investigated to help ensure election integrity.

 

So in other words, you believed misinformation? You were misinformed?

Now we're getting somewhere!

If you don't believe it now, that makes one of the few on this forum who has managed to grow past this, so I guess I have to offer congratulations, but I shouldn't have had to pull that out of you.

Now, I still want to know this: Do you think Trump called Nazi's and White Supremacists "fine people?"

As for Obama/Muslim:

No, a majority of Republicans don’t think President Obama is a Muslim

 

It could be that MSNBC watchers have diversified their news consumption - as everyone should. I used to watch it, but now want my news to come without any spin. I can't speak to CNN as it has never been something I watched.

 

We don't learn anything by judging one another or making assumptions about them or their beliefs. I try to read and understand the views of those with whom I disagree here at PF, but there is an awful lot of labeling and judging - making it very difficult to understand those views.

I am accused of being woke - and I'll happily accept that label. While the name might be used as a criticism, I choose to mean that I am 'awake' - I'm paying attention to what's going on around me and I am assessing each situation individually. I am liberal - and proud of it. I like to see change and advancement in laws and views. I don't want to live in a country stagnant in ways of the past. I seek to elevate those who have been repressed, even if that means they get a leg up - or what some would call affirmative action. I don't see helping one as stepping on others. I will continue to fight for the rights of the LGBT community and for the rights of transgender folks to be treated as the human beings they are and worthy of the same rights and freedoms we all enjoy.

I have voted Democrat my entire life. Generally, I am voting for the person as opposed to the party. I recognize weakness and mistakes in those for whom I've voted just as much as I see it in those for whom I have not. But I will also champion them, mistakes and all, if their views are aligned with my own. I don't turn a blind eye, I simply focus on the path they are carving out rather than the stumbles along the way. If they veer off path, I will comment upon it and criticize it.

 

Chef kiss. Delicious.

Is the bot self aware? Not likely. It will tell you it is. It's certain it is. But how can it know what it doesn't know? What the bot sees is fact. What the bot can't see must be lies.

Maybe one day the bot will come to recognize that it possesses the same limitations of perception it continues to point out in others. Maybe then it can be self aware.

 

For full disclosure, this is the bot: JOHN EHRENREICH

Author of: Third Wave Capitalism: How Money, Politics, and the Pursuit of Self-Interest have Imperiled the American Dream.

Apparently the pursuit of self-interest imperils individualism. This problem clearly can be solved by figuring out why people who disagree with me choose to be wrong.

 

The whole leftist political fact checking machine all of it joined and as phony as a three dollar bill wouldn't know the truth if it was written in six inch block letters on a three by six meter granite slab. Believing anything those leftist slime mer hands have to say is like taking geology lesson from a flat earther.

 

What makes you think you can find solutions that apply to a tribe? Who defines the tribe? You?

The human brain simplifies the world by sorting data into patterns. This simplification is required in order to act in the world. If the brain was forced to process all the input it encountered it would run out of resources because our environment is analog, and the input is infinite. This process is not immune to error. We quite often find patterns where none exist, and worse, find the wrong pattern where a different one does exist. We are not gods, we are flawed, but in order to act in the world we must trust our input as if we are.

You are subject to this process. You simplify, just as you have done in your premise. This is what causes your inability to agree with others on things you perceive to be facts.

When you change your mind, do you assume you were wrong about the facts or can it be the other way around? Can being wrong change the facts? Would you have any ability to know if the Mandela effect was a flaw in human perception, or simply a feature of reality?

 

Apparently a lot of people left MSNBC and CNN for the same spin reasons

 

"Data suggests vaccinated people don't carry the virus, don't get sick" - CDC director 3-29-21
"The vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person" - Maddow 3-29-21
"Fully vaccinated people are at a very low risk of getting covid-19. Therefore if you are fully vaccinated you no longer need to wear a mask" - Joe Biden 3-13-21
"When people are vaccinated they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected" - Dr Fauci 3-17-21

How would you have reasoned with these people?

 

No. It was a reasonable suspicion that didn't pan out. Wanting an investigation is not being misinformed, it's seeking information.

I don't think I cared enough to verify that one. From what I recall he said there were fine and bad people on both sides of a protest about confederate monuments. Some liberals got upset that he would treat the groups as morally equivalent and would not condemn the whole group of white nationalists. But per Trump there were people who care about history and are not racists. I think most liberals are skeptical if that's true or if he really believes that, but it's not important to how I think of Trump.

Well I was referring to a 2015 poll cited in the op article. Haven't seen current data.

 

Well we clearly disagree on what's reasonable, but that suspicion paralyzed the country for years while this was being investigated.

OK. You are going to take a pass, which tells me that you probably did believe it but figure I wouldn't mention it unless I already knew that it was fake news and was prepared to prove it.

Others would fall right into that, since I've done that drill many times on this forum, so good on you for recognizing it. But it also proves my point I think.

The article was an analysis of that poll. That's why I posted it.

 

Slate lies a lot. For example, look at all their lies about the Second Amendment.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/slate-lies-about-second-amendment/

Most of what you call "Right" are simply Constitutionalists.
Remember, what Conservatives are conserving is American Constitutional Liberal Democracy.

The Key Belief is this. We have certain rights that predate government and that the legitimate role of government is to secure them:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.​

• Governments have no inherent power, only derived power, that we grant via consent.
• The only Legitimate power exercise by government is just power.
• Unjust power is always illegitimate.

Look at all the lies Slate swallowed on Russia Collusion. Why were Lefties, generally, so susceptible to believing all those lies?

What can or should be done about it?

Trump was a Russian asset, new ... - Slate Magazine
https://slate.com › news-and-politics › 2021 › 03 › trump-russian-asset-election-intelligence-community-report.html
A New Report Adds Evidence That Trump Was a Russian Asset He helped Putin manipulate the U.S. election in 2020, as he did in 2016. By William Saletan March 18, 202112:07 PM Russian President...

www.slate.com › articles › news_and_politics › cover_story › 2016 › 10 › was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
Then Trump announced in an interview with the New York Times his unwillingness to spring to the defense of NATO allies in the face of a Russian invasion. Trump even invited Russian hackers to go...

https://slate.com › news-and-politics › 2016 › 11 › the-trump-server-evaluating-new-evidence-and-countertheories.html
The underlying context for the piece is that Donald Trump has cultivated a troubling relationship with Russia, and the U.S. government has identified Russia as trying to meddle in this election....

Why would anyone consider Slate a trustworthy source?

 

Disagree. You have Far left, and all the way to Far Right. Between the two extremes, you probably have a thousand steps. But this is the thing about American politics, they see you as Left Wing or Right Wing. They view it as all guns or no guns. They never grasp the middle ground and how wide it is. So it's a poor thread.

 

I didn't investigate this, but I will say that if the founders had wanted individuals to have an absolute right to own rifles, they should have ****ing said so instead of talking cryptically about a "well-regulated militia." It is absolutely open for debate, other than the fact that SCOTUS has decided what they think it means. Though they also did that with Roe.

I am not against gun rights at all though. I think it's a logical right generally. I wish the founders had done a better job on that amendment if they think as the right does.

I get that's what you tell yourselves. Kind of like how you lie to yourselves or others stating there's widespread voter fraud to justify making it harder for your opponents to vote. It's undemocratic per the facts, unless you can convince yourself or others that it's justified by the threat of fraud. So it comes down to the "stupid or nefarious" conundrum.

Well I don't worship what deists say for its own sake. The fact that they had a constitution with countervailing powers, and some rights recognized, already put them above their status quo. It doesn't mean its a perfect document from inception. And they knew it, hence they allowed amendments. Rights are logically derived in reality, having nothing to do with the supernatural. Rights inherently come into conflict with one another and must be weighed, and rights inherently change by the situation. An example is healthcare. There was no good healthcare when they wrote the constitution, so of course they wouldn't include it, but now it is easy to argue it is a fundamental right because no other rights can be enjoyed without equal access to health care. Equality of opportunity (note this is not the same as equality of outcomes, i.e. communism) is facilitated by equality under the law, as well as with healthcare and education opportunities.

If there was a lie, which I am not aware of (mostly strawmen from the likes of fox news) it was pretty useful one because the investigation showed how Russia was trying to undermine our democratic process. In contrast, the whole thing about voting rights is Republicans trying to make it harder for their opponents to vote.

You don't appear to know what an asset is in espionage. An asset only means somebody who can be useful. It doesn't mean they are colluding with you, or even necessarily want to be an asset or even know they are one. It's a somewhat click-baitish title, but I didn't find an overt lie skimming the article.

I don't think I believe in trustworthy sources, or trust in general really - just odds. I read every article for its own sake. Hitler could declare 2+2=4, and he wouldn't be wrong. Being bad doesn't mean you're always wrong. I read the article, and found it persuasive. Has nothing to do with the source or any other articles they may have written. The only element trustworthiness has is in how likely I am to follow each link to the original source of information to see if it's being misrepresented.

 

Paralyzed? That was covid and the shutdown. It's good we investigated it because it helped us to understand the threats to democracy that Russia causes. And had it been true, it would have been important to correct it and prevent it from recurring.

Oh okay missed that. It's not a persuasive article. The alternative data he showed was from 2008 and 2012. During that time, the percentage of republicans thinking he was a muslim went from 16% to 30%. If the trend continued (almost doubling in 4 years), the PPP poll would have been approximately correct, as it was in 2015.

Then his explanation that conservatives were intentionally lying on the survey just to say something "bad" about Obama. I mean, I hope surveys aren't that useless, but if so he should do a better job of proving that's likely. And if he's right, it kind of proves the point of the OP. They don't care about the truth, only about their team.

 

The reason it was investigated is because there was a media push that there was actually something behind this. One could make the same argument about Biden and China via his taking Hunter to China and Hunter coming back with a Chinese private equity fund. There were no calls for the DoJ to have a special prosecutor, or even a regular prosecutor, to investigate that. There are unlimited things that could be investigated but the media push to investigate things is very narrow and mostly aimed at the GOP.

OK the article said nothing about about "conservatives were intentionally lying on the survey just to say something "bad" about Obama." you either didn't read the article or are just making up your own spin to it. But the poll, which you brought up, has nothing to do with your thread. Obama being a Muslim is just crazy conspiracy, not based on misinformation. There were not Conservative news sources saying that, not Fox, not Rush, not anyone important. Just like there was nothing on MSNBC or CNN that most Democrats thought Bush was either involved in or knew about 9/11. But at one time that was the case.

You should be arguing from news sources, not weird conspiracies, unless you have given up on your topic. Speaking of, did you believe the media when they told you about the hate crime attack on Jussie Smollett?

 

Lol. "My perspectives are better because I believe them and my echo chamber says I'm right"


Here's your participation trophy.

 

It is a completely uncontroversial point that if the States believed that the Federal Government would have the power to disarm law abiding Americans that the Constitution would have never been ratified.

Fake News. We are ensuring that it's Easy to Vote but Hard to Cheat. There is widespread agreement among voters that voters need to be positively identified before they cast a vote. Oddly enough, the same folks who are against this loudly support requiring vaccine cards to eat at restaurants even though Black Americans are less likely to have vaccine cards, the exact same argument that they make against voter ID, even though, even Black Americans don't buy their argument.

White Lefties Amazed When Black Man Produces ID.​

80% Of Americans Support Voter ID Rules—But Fewer Worried ...
https://www.forbes.com › sites › alisondurkee › 2021 › 06 › 21 › 80-of-americans-support-voter-id-rules-but-fewer-worried-about-fraud-poll-finds
Jun 21, 2021 "americans adults overwhelmingly support both making in-person early voting easier and voter id laws that critics say are unfairly discriminatory, a new monmouth poll finds, suggesting the public..."

We don't mind showing ID to ensure an accurate vote count.

The point is that our rights are bestowed by Government; the legitimate purpose of government is to secure our rights. That's the very point of our government.

• Straw Dog Alert - No one claimed the constitution was perfect. The Amendment process is precisely because more perfectly securing our rights is a task we inherent from our parents and pass to our children.
• Straw Dog Alert - Government has a legitimate role in regulating the interactions of free people in close proximity.

The F in FISA stands for Foreign. The only justification for subjecting Americans to these highly invasive spying powers is if they are knowingly engaging in espionage on behalf of a foreign power. The FBI and DOJ repeatedly lied to the FISA court claiming to have verified trustworthy information that Carter Page was such a person, when actually all they had was a pile of crap thrown together by the crooked Hillary campaign and the DNC. They knew this without a doubt by December of 2016, yet renewed the warrant two more times. It is apparent that you are not particularly knowledgeable of when the US government has a legitimate power to spy on an American citizen and it damn sure isn't met be repeatedly lying to the FISC so that they can spy on a Political Campaign, Transition Team and Administration because they are political opponents that they want to drive from office.

I personally know of no one with a brain that views Slate as a reliable source, given their record.

 

And what path is that? The one that you align with?

 

Of course. Why would I focus on a path with which I disagree? Isn't that what most people do?

 

You cited: No, a majority of Republicans don’t think President Obama is a Muslim - The Washington Post (archive.org)

It says: "So when Republicans — and this PPP poll asked only Republicans the Muslim question — are given the chance to say something negative (or even untrue) about Obama, they will take it." emphasis mine

You then show an article trying to compare the birther conspiracy to the truther conspiracy. Also a dumb conspiracy theory, but not similar because it's not something we have straightforward evidence on like the birth certificate. And not something specific to liberals.

Didn't even recall who that is without looking it up. I don't recall how the media portrayed it because I never went past the headlines on those irrelevant stories.