this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024

607 points (97.8% liked)

News

23153 readers

3165 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

rjc@lemmy.world

Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world

gedaliyah@lemmy.world

Blackbeard@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

jeffw@lemmy.world

607

I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is | What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis. (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 5 days ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/news@lemmy.world

127 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This runs in parallel to tribalism and being part of an "in" crowd. Some people are so bound by their tribalism that they'll stare at facts and cry that it's not true because their tribe told them differently; they will reject the facts to continue to be a part of the tribe.

To them, being "in" is more important than being right, or even being logical.

Tribalism can take all sorts of different forms, from politics, to your local sports ball team. Even religion is a form of tribalism.

When everyone you know is a part of the conservative/republican/christian/whatever tribe, even if you don't agree with any of it, it's difficult to face the consequences of being ostracized or excluded from the only tribe you've ever really been a part of, by following what your mind and heart actually believe. In time, you might actually convince yourself of the bullshit you have to say you believe, in order to maintain your status in the tribe.

Tribalism is a survival trait. It's what has divided us into nations, countries, states, provinces, cities, towns, etc. Looking back, if we need to do something that will screw over the survivability of the neighboring village, so that we can ensure the continued prosperity of our village, then the answer is yes, do it. It's rewarded to be greedy and selfish in those circumstances.

Tribalism in the form of villages and towns like that is basically non-existent today, so instead we divide ourselves along other boundaries for what tribes we partake in. Whether that's religion, sports teams, political ideologies, conspiracy bullshit..... It doesn't really matter, the tribes are all still present, they've just taken a very different, more abstract form.

All of the MAGA hats, Trump flags, big trucks rolling coal on "hapless" EV drivers.... It's all just parading around your tribes colors, announcing your affiliations so others will know (the same way that marine vessels sail under a countries flag, or an army marches carrying the flag/colors of a country or whatever). All this showboating is the same as a peacock trying to attract a mate. All these fancy colors, and not a hell of a lot more going on.

They're baboons waving their big red buttocks around so everyone knows their butt is more red than yours.

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

That's why the Kremlin uses tribalism to divide people through its social media disinformation (aka fucking up people's cultures)

[–] Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world 75 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own.

Oh, you mean like how the orange turd's administration in 2020 was ~~legitimately~~ very literally seizing shipments of critical PPE in 2020 at the height of COVID and selling it to fellow grifters for them to auction off to hospitals?

[–] blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 days ago

Your use of "legitimately" might be construed by some as "acceptably"

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Only because he sold off all the emergency reserves (and never replaced it) when he took office

Well, and also to enrichen himself, too. Obviously.

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 7 points 4 days ago

Don't forget about tossing paper towel rolls to people, while restricting actual emergency supplies.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 72 points 4 days ago (2 children)

First they politicized a pandemic, now they're politicizing a hurricane.

When will it end?

[–] Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago

"Never let a good catastrophe go to waste"

[–] desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

when the deep state turns off the chemtrail plants and stop pumping microchip vaccines into the air.

[–] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 232 points 5 days ago (47 children)

The last time Donald Trump was President of The United States of America, a viral pandemic emerged out of China, he did not stop flights coming in, he did not enact the war powers to manufacture PPE for our first responders, health workers, or public, he eschewed the use of ventilators, and openly mocked those who wore masks.

A Million fucking Americans perished from COVID during his Presidency, the largest per capital, and total of any nation on gods green earth.

What's happening is not the result of misinformation, it's informed self immolation.

Republicans realized they cannot win on their arguments, so they wish to burn it all down, themselves and their children included.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 89 points 5 days ago

Yep. Per the article:

But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not.

[–] Myxomatosis@lemmy.world 38 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah but at least he was able to send free COVID tests to his Daddy Vlad when supplies were short and Americans were dying.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 60 points 5 days ago

Free COVID testing machines. Not just disposable tests. It's way worse than what was initially reported.

[–] tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

You forgot the part where they were literally given a pandemic playbook and they choose to actively ignore its existence, with some republicans even claiming it didn't exist.

load more comments (44 replies)

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 72 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

What is the common thread that links almost all of these crazies? I mean, even more than religion.

Conservatism. Almost all of them vote for, or are elected representatives of, conservative parties.

And conservatism encourages divisiveness and bigotries like this. To be suspicious of and actively hate others, to find “evil” where none exist. To believe in falsehoods even when they have been demonstrably debunked.

Conservatism of all stripes is fundamentally evil. Conservatism is what will destroy civilization, and eventually, humanity.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 29 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I think it can be further boiled down to a belief that hierarchies are either necessary or good. All of the evil are cases where those higher up in the hierarchy impose their will on those lower.

Under those beliefs, the meaning of things like "respect" and "good/bad" are different than when one believes that everyone should be considered equal. The politeness version of respect is for equals, when they aren't equal, respect only needs to go one way and if it's sent the other way, it's more "effective management" and not giving respect "downwards" then boils down to a different management philosophy rather than simply being an asshole. They can even acknowledge that it is an asshole way to treat people, but there's an underlying belief that it's ok to be an asshole to lessers.

It also makes the whole "they believe in things that hurt themselves" make more sense. They just believe that those higher than them in the hierarchy deserve better treatment. Maybe there's an element of hoping to get there themselves one day, or maybe there's an element of just feeling like they are inferior to those they agree are their betters.

This is why they don't really care if Trump is consistent or if he'll help them directly. It's also why his support is wavering, because if he's not strong enough to win, then he isn't really their better and is just fooling them, which also helps explain why the ones who have tried to take his life seem to be former followers because they can't be neutral about him, it's either gotta be love or hate.

It makes sense that those who believe in it and those who don't would be at odds with each other because the two beliefs are very incompatible. I'm not sure there is a resolution. It used to be "just don't talk about politics, keep it private", but that wasn't sustainable as each side of the divide wanted to push for improvements under their belief system.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

People shit on religion, but it's rarely a problem until it's conservative.

You've hit the nail on the head.

Conservatism is the mistake of assuming outright that people are evil, and therefore need to be punished and conquered into being good, or at least restricted. Where the reality is people aren't quite good or evil, they're more marbled, and if you buy the conservative misunderstanding, the punishing and the conquering are morally good, whereas stopping them is bad. What conservatism won't acknowledge or doesn't see is that when you grow, encourage, support, and develop the good parts, you can safely drop a large portion of the punishment and conquering stuff.

Most of what conservatism is defending itself against is its own way of doing things.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Conservatism is "outgroups to bind, in groups to protect". It's pretty bad.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Conservatism

Have you ever met conservative atheists? I have and SOME of them have been the most hateful and vile people I ever met. It's like without any form of religion holding them back, you obtain the "purest form" of conservationism.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 days ago

Some people think with no god, that means it's actually on humanity to take care of each other.

Other people think that with no heaven, better make this life count and fuck all y'all bitches, carpe deez nuts. Every man for himself. (Not women though because those aren't people).

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 75 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

yeah its called capital accumulation, here's how it works:

A ~~cabal~~ conservative institution of international rich people don't want to pay taxes on their enormous wealth so they're spending some of their money to prop up nazis, religious freaks, and insane conspiracy theorists to drown out common sense economic policy and pin the blame on minorities and a departure from religious orthodoxy.

Obviously persecuting people on these grounds makes the situation worse and people don't want to be the next scapegoat so they fall in line (face eating leopard logic, etc.) but because we're removing the most exploitable workers from the economy the economy spirals, creating the need for more scapegoats. Fascism in a nutshell.

In the long term its self destructive to every society that allows it but in the short term they get another hour of power.

[–] sakodak@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The slightest bit of material analysis exposes the whole thing, but the minute you add "Marxist" to that sentence everyone shuts their brain off because of over a century of red scare nonsense. As designed.

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

the minute you add "Marxist" to that sentence everyone shuts their brain off because of over a century of red scare nonsense. As designed.

Which is a real shame, because collectivist systems are the only way we can survive long-term on this planet. Collectivist systems allow us to pool resources and consumption, allowing more people to subsist at the same level of comfort while using far less.

One of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on humanity (other than religion, that is) is the adoption of an economic system that demands infinite growth on a finite planet. In the real world, such as when looking at population dynamics, these systems always lead to catastrophic collapses that eviscerate that population and frequently produces long-term damage to the local ecosystem that prevents said population from easily recovering. Or recovering at all, if we’re talking about a species of megafauna (over 45Kg, on average).

Most megafauna that significantly overshoot go extinct, and humanity entered overshoot at the 2B population point early last century. With how we have damaged the ecosystem, the planet’s natural carrying capacity has probably declined to less than 1B humans. This is particularly concerning because any end-stage economic crash (via the chaotic weather of climate change) will lead to a population crash (with the failure of agriculture at scale and the international trade that supplies us with 90+% of all food), and will also destroy any ability to produce and maintain the technology that allows us to artificially exceed the planet’s carrying capacity via agriculture at scale. I would be very surprised if humanity still exceeds 2B people by the end of this century.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] socsa@piefed.social 69 points 5 days ago (7 children)

We were watching Rings of Power and my wife kept being like "How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense."

I legitimately cannot even. These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago, and that is just the version on my TV today. The danger of populism, the deception of the demagogue... It's all fucking right there... Impossible to ignore. Yet here we are, dealing with the same shit in a different age.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 54 points 5 days ago (1 children)

These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago

Just a nitpick: Rings of Power uses Tolkien's characters but its story is almost entirely the work of the show's modern script-writers. They don't have the rights to use anything Tolkien wrote about that period of Middle Earth's history beyond what is mentioned in LOTR and its appendices (which is very little).

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 55 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (10 children)

The article mentions people are willing to suspend their belief in understandingthe truth in order to further their "team" or party objective, but I think this whole thing is simply foreign adversaries vying to destroy us from within by sowing contempt and spreading lies on social media and news outlets.

Occam's Razor.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 44 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Occam's Razor would suggest this is largely a domestic problem, perhaps exacerbated by foreign adversaries but far from being all their work.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago

Por que no los dos?

A meek, terrified populace is ripe fruit for the picking for actors both internal & external.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I think it's been foreign adversaries meddling with our politics. Our whole country knows we need to be spending a lot more on public education. It's not a mystery. Ask anybody who's been in a public school.

And then with the grip that social media has on our masses, The ease with which social media silos us into a weird kind of social affirmation tunnel vision platform that essentially brainwashes us.

If you're a foreign adversary that's already meddling in the United States politics, it's a hop skip and a jump to start meddling in their private sector. In fact it's quite a lot easier id imagine.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (7 replies)

[–] GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca 38 points 5 days ago (1 children)

While riding home with my son this evening, I found myself apologizing to him. This world today--the people--are a profoundly unbelievable mess. He brought up things he's read in the news and I hardly know what to say. We both understand how insane it all is, but people still believe it... truly...

I get it. The world has always been a mess. This mess today is simply uniquely ours at this time in history.

But...

My gods...

What...

The...

sighs

[–] leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 51 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I'm approaching my sixties now. I've been through a lot of the messes of recent history. The world today (and it is the world, its not just the US although that is the most flagrant example) feels genuinely different. Just the sheer amount of misinformed hate and self-destructive uber capitalism feels like its reaching a crescendo. What comes after that is worrying to think about.

[–] Redredme@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago (7 children)

50 something also chiming in.

I think the nutcases have always just been there. Hiding in plain sight. They just never had a platform. It was always "uncle jerry in the back, spilling nonsense while drinking his beer. Dont mind him."

And that was the end of it.

Uncle Jerry now has twitter , facebook and all those other bullshit channels for furthering his bullshit. And some of us just eat it up.

I work in IT, which is more then anything else, a business of truths. Its binary. It works or it don't. 0 or 1. Yes or no. A lot of highly trained and educated people work in IT, which is a field which only exists because of science... and blatantly ignore that same science about society, environment, immigration, economy, chem trails and god knows what else.

It's baffling. There are a lot, i would say 1 in 10, who will spout the most insane bullshit after a few beers. About stuff "the government doesn't want you to know." what exactly is the government ? I work for the government but apparently I'm excluded. Im good government?

we haven't been on the moon. Chem trails are real. Climate change is just a fad, covid is a way to control us, vaccines give cancer, polio isn't a real disease, its made up.

Da fuq.

I truly believe that social media, and I mean all social media should be banned. People should not be allowed to spew their bullshit. We as a people are really not ready for this. Maybe China is right with their "social score" system. Maybe stuff like the bilderberg group is really needed. We seem to need guidance. We, the normal civvies, seemingly are too hell bend on watching it all burn. And are too stupid to stop it. People like trump, inciting hate, spraying unlimited bullshit, should be thrown in jail. That's not politics. That's rage baiting.

The path we're on leads to 2 things: the capitalist dystopia, think blade runner and a total melt down of our ecosystem which, ultimately, will lead to our dinosaur moment.

We are living, this moment, in a great filter event. I truly believe that. Wanna know why we don't see, hear other planet wide civilisations? Look around you. See where this leads. Connect the dots. "do your own research." ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

load more comments (7 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] nutsack@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago

we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging

yea

load more comments