and 89% of the GOP views trump favorably. We are so horribly broken , I’ve given up trying to make sense of this. Are there really this many bad people in this country, they can’t all be gullible cult members?
It’s not gullibility; the reactionary right want to oppress the people they hate. It’s White Christian Supremacy.
It’s similar to the KKK: they weren’t tricked into being hateful pieces of shit, they just are. Sure, a but big part of that is that their culture is rotten with fundamentalism and anti-intelectualism, but those are cultivated and flourish because they’re helpful to the cause of being hateful pieces of shit.
I’d say it isn’t just similar to the KKK, it is the KKK. The Dems effectively kicked those losers out of their party by the early 1960s, but then oligarch Republicans who had been losing elections since the 1930s because the Great Depression so thoroughly discredited their laissez faire invited them in by running Barry “I think civil rights is a states rights issue” Goldwater for president, and that anti-social and destructive political coalition has been fucking shit up for everyone ever since.
Think of it less as bad people, than individuals drawn into self-reinforcing belief systems through algorithmically amplified echo chambers. Modern technology—primarily smartphones and platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but also cable news (Fox/NewsNation) and podcasts—systematically exploits cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and correlation neglect to isolate users from dissenting viewpoints. This creates environments where belief and exclusivity override rational discourse, mirroring historical patterns where economic distress fueled extremism.
Just as post-WWI Germany’s hyperinflation and reparations under the Treaty of Versailles bred widespread anger and desperation—enabling extremist movements like the Nazis to gain traction by scapegoating minorities—today’s algorithmic ecosystems channel similar frustrations into polarized identity politics. Users aren’t merely “gullible”; they’re trapped in feedback loops where platforms prioritize engagement over truth, reinforcing preexisting narratives while filtering out complexity. This isn’t unique to the U.S.: Brazil’s Bolsonaro movement, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s Brothers of Italy all leverage these dynamics to mobilize bases through emotional appeals to victimhood and exclusion.
The core issue isn’t malice but structural amplification. Social media’s profit-driven algorithms curate content that deepens ideological divides, making users perceive opposing views as existential threats. Fixing this requires confronting how technology reshapes human cognition—not blaming individuals for succumbing to systems designed to exploit their biases. As one study notes, these echo chambers don’t just reflect polarization; they manufacture it through recursive reinforcement of extreme content.
I think this is all just serving to amplify problems America already has had since the Civil War and reconstruction, and I really don’t think those problems are distributed evenly across the political spectrum, it really is a right wing problem,
But the basic dynamic you’re outlining definitely is real and definitely serves to make that underlying problem worse
and 89% of the GOP views trump favorably. We are so horribly broken , I’ve given up trying to make sense of this. Are there really this many bad people in this country, they can’t all be gullible cult members?
Yes, they are literal Nazis but don’t like being called that publicly
Behind closed doors who knows
It’s not gullibility; the reactionary right want to oppress the people they hate. It’s White Christian Supremacy.
It’s similar to the KKK: they weren’t tricked into being hateful pieces of shit, they just are. Sure, a but big part of that is that their culture is rotten with fundamentalism and anti-intelectualism, but those are cultivated and flourish because they’re helpful to the cause of being hateful pieces of shit.
I’d say it isn’t just similar to the KKK, it is the KKK. The Dems effectively kicked those losers out of their party by the early 1960s, but then oligarch Republicans who had been losing elections since the 1930s because the Great Depression so thoroughly discredited their laissez faire invited them in by running Barry “I think civil rights is a states rights issue” Goldwater for president, and that anti-social and destructive political coalition has been fucking shit up for everyone ever since.
Think of it less as bad people, than individuals drawn into self-reinforcing belief systems through algorithmically amplified echo chambers. Modern technology—primarily smartphones and platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but also cable news (Fox/NewsNation) and podcasts—systematically exploits cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and correlation neglect to isolate users from dissenting viewpoints. This creates environments where belief and exclusivity override rational discourse, mirroring historical patterns where economic distress fueled extremism.
Just as post-WWI Germany’s hyperinflation and reparations under the Treaty of Versailles bred widespread anger and desperation—enabling extremist movements like the Nazis to gain traction by scapegoating minorities—today’s algorithmic ecosystems channel similar frustrations into polarized identity politics. Users aren’t merely “gullible”; they’re trapped in feedback loops where platforms prioritize engagement over truth, reinforcing preexisting narratives while filtering out complexity. This isn’t unique to the U.S.: Brazil’s Bolsonaro movement, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s Brothers of Italy all leverage these dynamics to mobilize bases through emotional appeals to victimhood and exclusion.
The core issue isn’t malice but structural amplification. Social media’s profit-driven algorithms curate content that deepens ideological divides, making users perceive opposing views as existential threats. Fixing this requires confronting how technology reshapes human cognition—not blaming individuals for succumbing to systems designed to exploit their biases. As one study notes, these echo chambers don’t just reflect polarization; they manufacture it through recursive reinforcement of extreme content.
I think this is all just serving to amplify problems America already has had since the Civil War and reconstruction, and I really don’t think those problems are distributed evenly across the political spectrum, it really is a right wing problem,
But the basic dynamic you’re outlining definitely is real and definitely serves to make that underlying problem worse
The thread below is an interesting example of how anger can override rational discourse.
I think calling out specific comments is unnecessary and a bit counterproductive