cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31730469
To redirect revolutionary energy from destroying to the system to just criticizing Trump. It is a way for them to gain popular support and show themselves as anti-establishment instead of the bourgeoisie that they are who need to be overthrown
A good rule of thumb is to assume that your average American is Mac from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in that the fact that science makes you look like a bitch sometimes is evidence that it doesn't actually know things. Or they are Dennis in that they assume that the science is right because that makes them feel superior to others, not because they are actually interested in the truth-value, or why and how we understand the science.
Pretty accurate. I've known both types of people. I just found out my best friend from childhood is posting screeds of blueanon type shit on Facebook. Like I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a visit from the feds for fedposting. When we were kids, he was too smart for his own good, but swallowed state department talking points hook, line and sinker. It was kind of weird when we were teenagers and I got totally radicalized. We had the same upbringing and he got a totally different message from it. He's definitely the Dennis type where his "knowledge" was his weapon and his entire goal was to steamroll your argument and "shut you down". If he couldn't "shut you down" he would "write you off".
There's a reason we aren't really friends anymore. it was weird seeing him be so rabid when above all, he always valued a civil tone and a level head.
Yeah I had many similar experiences when some o my acquaintances in high school started an 'atheist club' and asked me to join because I was one of the more vocal non-believers in school (in that I would actively discuss and push back against faith-based narratives in class, but just within what was being discussed) but was still friendly with the more liberal evangelicals. I think I attended two meetings before I realized that most of them were just "Science as the superior faith" people and not really all that interested in the philosophy of knowledge or how to know things. It was a really eye opening moment for me that there needs to be more to this whole skeptic thing than just contrarianism, and felt that it was doomed to online obscurity.
I don't think much has changed, if anything there are more conservative Dennis's than there ever were before.
I feel like a lot of us calibrated on the atheism scale. I was an out loud atheist when I was a teenager too, but I realized after a year or so that it's not cool to go out and pick fights. I feel like it was part of my over all radicalization in the way that I learned that just because you're right, doesn't mean you get to be a dick about it.
Liberals have a hard time dealing with that reality and won't even think about how their messaging hurts them. Not that the message is any good in the first place...