"People are saying"...

It's obvious that people are becoming more credible; more gullible; more inclined to believe nonsensical crap than ever before. We saw this recently when a 1,000-strong Russian troll farm managed to convince enough Americans that Hillary was an evil space alien from the planet Frabulon to cause her to lose the election. And of course, Trumptards now suck constantly at the ever-replenished lies tit.

I was wondering, though--is it just the bullshit itself--SOOOOO tempting when someone tells Cons something they want to believe--or is it how it's presented? In other words, is it the packaging or the package itself?

I looked at Google's "news" stories that they post for your amusement. The top stories--the ones you'll see first--are always trivial shit like what the Kardashians are doing or some new video game that's coming out. The first thing that resembles actual news is some Fox News excerpt--and sometimes, there's a New York Times article. The Fox article is always propaganda, not actual news. The Times articles are usually less biased--though not always free of it. But those news articles come about tenth or twelfth in the list.

One of the most dishonest lead-ins is "People are saying" or "Internet users are horrified" or "Viewers are outraged." Of course, such statements are never objectively wrong as long as there are, in fact, at least two human beings somewhere who are saying/outraged by/horrified by whatever trivial shit is being presented. But it's touted like it's some massive viral trend.

So I've been continually wondering just how the country turned so stupid. Sixty million Trumptards--how did we ever get there? I'm starting to blame the "news" we get and how we get it. When I was young, the way people got their news was from a newspaper. Now, it's from watching crap posted on Facebook and reading Twitter posts. There's no depth, no real content, and worst of all, no vetting of the "information" posted. People lap it all up, though.

Now, of course, we'll get the usual childish asshole screaming from Miller, Tom, etc.--that's inevitable, they can't help themselves, it's basically random noise--but for the adults on this forum, what do you think--why has the information provided to the public been so drastically dumbed down? Or has it actually always been that stupid? (I doubt the latter, because Trumpism is a new phenomenon.)

Look in the mirror and ask YOURSELF where you have gotten all of your lying information- you can therefore answer your own question.

It is called hyperbole, use of exaggeration to capture attention, not meant to be taken literally. 

"He destroyed my life."  Not really, since the speaker is still alive.  

"She broke my heart."  The speaker's heart is usually working OK.  And hearts don't break like bones anyway.

"My teacher is as old as the hills."  Not likely, as hills usually develop over centuries.

"That comedian killed the audience."  He got a lot of laughs, but everyone left the theater alive.

"Viewers are outraged."  As Kevin pointed out, this cannot be totally accurately generalized other than that the loudest voices in a room (or those who choose to tweet) get heard.   

Kevin wonders "how the country turned so stupid."  Another example of hyperbole, since a "country" has no brain with which to process thinking. 

Why information to the public has been so "dumbed down" I can't answer except to say I personally doubt that it has.   The 'what' has changed, of course, from what the cave man needed to know to what we need to know today.  Forms of communication have obviously changed.  Life for everyone has always turned on nature vs nurture.   Technology has advanced both.  Every human has one brain through which to process...GIGO...garbage in, garbage out.  If you had conservative parents or liberal parents you might have exited high school with those values.  Or not.   Your adult experience (starting around age 25 on the average, IMO) would begin to legitimately influence your thinking.  There are too many variables in life to say one's values are affected by this or that one certain thing.

As always, all of this is JMHO.

Candy, my underlying premise is that in a prior era, almost no one would have voted for Trump or anyone like him. They would have been repulsed by his history of fraud, his bullying, belligerent manner, his obvious unfitness for the job, or his childish habits of lying and pitching insults.

I meet someone who seems otherwise decent, rational, etc. and I learn they voted for Trump. I sometimes tell myself, well, they were rebelling against the system, or they were horrified at the thought of an uppity female becoming President, or they thought Trump would "grow into" the job--stupid, but understandable. But now, after three years of observing the Orange Asshole's behavior, they STILL support him. That, I find unfathomable.

The most alarming thing I observe is the complete, utter willingness of conservatives to cheerfully ignore facts. The second most alarming thing is their new willingness to abandon their morality and ethics. I never agreed with conservatives' worship of their standard deity but respected the attendant moral code they followed. Now...? What the $&%#@ happened? Mitt Romney votes his conscience and all the Cons call him a traitor.

I would actually be much more comfortable with the conclusion that the great unwashed masses have always been 50%+ morons. But would previous generations have tuned in to watch The Bachelor or Celebrity Wrestling?

Don't forget that Trump had a popular reality TV show prior to running for pres.  I didn't watch it much if at all, not on purpose but something else must have been on another channel.  Plus I don't like reality shows.  But I remember it, and him, and the contestants were mostly well known personalities.  There was a fun aspect to it, who got "fired" and who finally won.  It would be talked about at work the next day.  My guess is that this was the first that a lot of people really 'knew' of Trump.  Ronald Reagan was a movie star before his political career.  You don't think some voted for him for that reason?   Bill Clinton's good looks and personality got him elected governor and POTUS, and re-elected.  Ike was a military leader.  Those things register with people.   

And yes previous generations loved wrestling.  I lived in Memphis at one time.   Wrestling was huge, the wrestlers almost as popular as Elvis.   I had friends and co-workers who lived for the wrestling matches, and when you insult them you insult me.   And good people enjoy reality shows like The Bachelor, too.

You've made your position clear, and your insults are getting tiresome.

I am continually amazed when I say something critical about a person who happens to be left-handed, and somebody 2000 miles away thinks I'm insulting all left-handed people.

I have four formerly very good friends. They caught the Trump virus in 2016. They each, one by one, said that they couldn't associate with me any more because I was a liberal. You want to talk about insults, Candy? The things these people, who I had known for decades, said about me...because they had drunk the Trump Kool-aid.

But you have, inadvertently, given me a clue. On Trump's nasty reality show, he insulted and belittled the contestants. He acted like a total asshole. And yes, the show was on for several seasons. Why? Because as you observed, many people LIKED his behavior. They ADMIRED it. So in 2016, they saw the same behavior---and they wetted their panties again.

Maybe that's all there really is to it. Some folks---more than I would have thought---admire and like assholes and bullies.

I won't retract my stance that TV fake wrestling (surely you realize, it's all staged) is only for the feebleminded. You can take offense if you want.

No offense.  Everyone knew the wrestling was staged.  Almost like an opera, the verbal bravado hurled at the opponent, the choreographed moves, the garb, the hairstyles, the names (e.g. Gorgeous George is one I recall), fouls not called by the ref.  All part of the act.   Low brow comical stuff.  Think the Three Stooges.  Same principle.

I don't dispute what you say about the TV show (what was the name?).  At the time people were in the "clean the swamp", get rid of all of 'em, both sides of the aisle type of mood.  Trump's loudness, decisive bravado no doubt added to his appeal in that regard.  Like, "maybe this guy can get something done."   Whatever that "something" meant to the individual.

Kevin, to answer your question, propaganda works so well because it affirms what people are predisposed to believe. I am in my early 50s now. If some twentysomething attractive female came up to me and said you are the most handsome man I have ever seen, I wouldn't take what she said at face value. I would think she wants something, is playing a joke or maybe "selling" herself. 

Now suppose it didn't stop with just that one girl. Suppose every day that I go out several twentysomething women approach me and tell me how attractive I am and want to spend time with me. Now say this goes on for a year or more. Even though I am a logical person and I can always look in the mirror for a reality check, all of the attention feels good and more importantly I want to believe it. 

Fox News, conservative talk radio, and other conservative media have been working on instilling false beliefs into people for decades now tax cuts pay for themselves, greed is good, you can't get a high paying job because minorities are given special preference, crime is up because of illegal immigrants and so on. Over time the propaganda has become even more extreme illegal immigrants are raping masses of white women, white women are no longer interested in dating white men because they are hedonistic sluts, there is a Jewish conspircy to replace white working men with minorities, the first minority President wasn't born in America, there is a deep state working against Trump the honest humble man that is trying to save your way of life and on and on.

Just like in the example I gave of attractive young women telling me I am handsome. Conservatives want to believe this stuff because it makes them feel good about themselves.  

If the factory that a 45-year-old conservative had been working at since he was 20 gets shut down it is a lot easier and more palatable for him to believe them damn Mexicans "stole" my job rather than trying to accept that automation and global economics ended his job and it is not coming back.  It is appealing to him when someone comes along and says we are going to get rid of all those "bad hombres" that hurt you and bring your job back to America. 

Yes, he could do research, educate himself about global economic trends and so forth but why bother? Deep down, he knows if he goes to all that trouble, the conclusion will be that his job isn't coming back. It is much easier to believe the lie that Trump is going to bring back his good-paying job rather than deal with the reality of working 60 hours a week at two part-time jobs to earn half as much as he did before. When Trump lies it gives him hope that his life isn't going to keep following its current trajectory.  False hope is better than no hope at all. 

Mark, I think you're spot on. I think I'm so appalled and disgusted by people's credulousness because I, personally, have never been good at all at fooling myself--about anything. That includes some pretty awful realities that I've had to face and disasters I've had to accept. But yeah, I've been well aware of the urge that forms to construct some kind of mental scenario, no matter how implausible, where those realities don't exist.

So definitely, when Tucky Buckford loses his coal mining job, it's easier for him to blame it on those damn Messkins or them no-good liburruls (with their goldurn environmentical regulashuns), or whatever--when the sad, harsh truth is that his livelihood was obsolescing all around him as he worked away happily, and he never thought he would have to retrain for another, entirely different career.

Parenthetically, I don't have a lot of sympathy for all those Rust Belt types who bought and drove around $50,000 pickup trucks when times were good but never put any money in the bank as a cushion against hard times. And yeah, it feels better to drive that truck to a MAGA rally and scream about Hillary than it does to spend that day researching a new profession or how to acquire additional job skills. Human nature.

I guess I would like to see more respect for objective truth. Frankly, some of the approaches that the media--liberal and conservative--take exacerbate the problem. The ostensible need to be "fair and balanced" means that both sides of an argument are presented even when one side is utter tommyrot. Someone comes on a show and demonstrates that when you hold an egg in your hand and drop it, it shatters on the floor and makes a mess--and moments later, someone is demanding equal time for the "eggs go upward" point of view.

We should, for example, not even give any airtime to climate change deniers, and being one should be, socially and societally, taken as proof that you are unfit to hold any position of responsibility. Instead, we continue to allow such people to function at the highest levels of government--even Head Asshole.

Actually Kevin the $50k pickup concept is not so easy if YOU are the one making that BIG money. When you are in business you either “invest in yourself or your business” or you will pay all your profits to the government in taxes! Many of the farmers are encouraged by their bankers to buy more land or equipment. It is simply a Catch 22 for them.

Farmers have huge and I man huge investments, the equipment required for an average farmer is $3 million dollars and up! They risk a lot to make an average living.