Well, maybe we should stop teaching people that everyone’s opinions are valid. That, and that there are people out there who want you to be uninformed/misinformed.
I just don’t understand how not stopping people from easily preventing deadly diseases helps Republicans. It’s their people getting the diseases and dying.
Reality is a threat to conservatives. Denying reality, in any form, weakens the arguments against conservativism. Claiming untruths is a quick and dirty way to determining who is in and who is out.
Anyone out is the enemy, and therefore evil. Anything they do, say, or believe is evil because they did, said, or believed it.
Anyone who is in is good. Anything they do, say, or believe is good because they did, said, or believed it.
Some may die of preventable diseases, but that’s a sacrifice the conservative doesn’t even acknowledge because fuck anyone who isn’t me.
Yeah, but it’s a loss in terms of votes. You aren’t going to win elections if the people who vote for you are dying out because of what you are telling them to avoid doing.
If you’re being nice, you’d say they’re contrarians.
If you’re being not nice, you’d say they all suffer from oppositional-defiance disorder from decades of right-wing propaganda rotting their brains. Democrats say vaccines are good, therefore they must really be tools of the satanic child molesting one world government globalist cabal to steal our vital fluids and turn all of us into gay transgendered purple-haired soy-latte-drinking they/thems.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’"
It is as true today as it was then. The only difference is that since the '80s, the Republican party has weaponized this cult and is using it to undermine our democratic institutions and they have been astonishingly successful of late. Their goal isn’t to get their base to get sick and die. The goal is to convince their base that the intellectual elite, the people trying to give them healthcare and lift them out of poverty, are really their enemy. If the GOP base starts respecting intellectualism and, God forbid, educating themselves, then the GOP would be doomed. An educated base would eventually notice that the GOP is curtailing their rights, ruining their environment, shortening their lives, and all but enslaving them and their children. If a small fraction of the base should die and fall off the voter rolls, then that is a sacrifice the GOP is willing to make.
Personally, I had always assumed that such wilful ignorance would result in shorter lifespans for those cultists, and that a sort of unnatural selection would, if not end, at east manage the problem in the long run. But Trump and the pandemic have shown me that the cultists are able to out-breed even the most deadly effects of their ignorance.
All the more reason to teach people more reliable ways of evaluating claims and information. Then, when an expert—or more likely, a politician—spreads bullshit, people will be better equipped to detect it.
Well, maybe we should stop teaching people that everyone’s opinions are valid. That, and that there are people out there who want you to be uninformed/misinformed.
I just don’t understand how not stopping people from easily preventing deadly diseases helps Republicans. It’s their people getting the diseases and dying.
I really don’t get them sometimes.
Reality is a threat to conservatives. Denying reality, in any form, weakens the arguments against conservativism. Claiming untruths is a quick and dirty way to determining who is in and who is out.
Anyone out is the enemy, and therefore evil. Anything they do, say, or believe is evil because they did, said, or believed it.
Anyone who is in is good. Anything they do, say, or believe is good because they did, said, or believed it.
Some may die of preventable diseases, but that’s a sacrifice the conservative doesn’t even acknowledge because fuck anyone who isn’t me.
Yeah, but it’s a loss in terms of votes. You aren’t going to win elections if the people who vote for you are dying out because of what you are telling them to avoid doing.
Short term vs long term gain
If you’re being nice, you’d say they’re contrarians.
If you’re being not nice, you’d say they all suffer from oppositional-defiance disorder from decades of right-wing propaganda rotting their brains. Democrats say vaccines are good, therefore they must really be tools of the satanic child molesting one world government globalist cabal to steal our vital fluids and turn all of us into gay transgendered purple-haired soy-latte-drinking they/thems.
Sad and bonkers how all of this is actually completely true.
Back in 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote:
It is as true today as it was then. The only difference is that since the '80s, the Republican party has weaponized this cult and is using it to undermine our democratic institutions and they have been astonishingly successful of late. Their goal isn’t to get their base to get sick and die. The goal is to convince their base that the intellectual elite, the people trying to give them healthcare and lift them out of poverty, are really their enemy. If the GOP base starts respecting intellectualism and, God forbid, educating themselves, then the GOP would be doomed. An educated base would eventually notice that the GOP is curtailing their rights, ruining their environment, shortening their lives, and all but enslaving them and their children. If a small fraction of the base should die and fall off the voter rolls, then that is a sacrifice the GOP is willing to make.
Personally, I had always assumed that such wilful ignorance would result in shorter lifespans for those cultists, and that a sort of unnatural selection would, if not end, at east manage the problem in the long run. But Trump and the pandemic have shown me that the cultists are able to out-breed even the most deadly effects of their ignorance.
If experts were always right, you’d have a point.
But history has shown that experts will routinely abuse their position of authority to exploit those who do not know any better.
All the more reason to teach people more reliable ways of evaluating claims and information. Then, when an expert—or more likely, a politician—spreads bullshit, people will be better equipped to detect it.
Definitely.