TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2023
An anthropology lesson: Reading between the lines, we sense Kevin Drum's frustration:
What Republicans believe, 2023 edition
What false things do Republicans routinely believe these days? I'm not talking about wild-ass conspiracy theories like QAnon, or matters of opinion, like whether tax cuts produce higher revenue or CRT is wrecking our schools. No, I'm talking about simple, factual matters that are 100% contrary to expert opinion but are accepted routinely by most Republicans. Here are a few:
- Trump won the election.
- COVID came from a lab leak.
- Climate change is a hoax.
- Joe Biden took bribes from Hunter's clients.
- Masks don't affect COVID transmission.
- The FBI is engaged in a partisan war against Republicans.
Anything else?
It's true! Many Republican voters do believe those things. Anthropologically, one reason is this:
Such voters have heard those claims again and again—then again and again and again and again—from the "news sources" they've come to trust. Because they trust the sources in question, they assume that their statements are accurate.
Also, given the way our "news" is now delivered, many of those Republican voters have never heard a serious attempt to challenge such factual claims.
They only hear the claims which come from within the silo of the red tribe. The old Crossfire model, in which factual claims were delivered in pairs, is long since dead and gone.
For the record, widespread belief in unlikely claims predated the age of the silo. Back in the 1980s, many people believed an array of highly improbable claims claim about sexual abuse of children in various preschools.
As of 2002, many people believed the claim that 9/11 was an inside job.
We liberals are inclined to think that only the Others believe bogus claims. Also, why won't the Others listen to us? We're often inclined to voice some basic theories about that basic question.
We're often inclined to believe that the Others won't listen to us because the Others are racists (sexists / misogynists / homophobes / transphobes). Our question:
Could that be one of the darnedest things we humans are inclined to believe?
Bob needs to learn a new word; biphobe.
ReplyDeleteIt is not irrational to call someone a transphobe when they say bigoted things about transpeople. It is a factually true statement about that person’s beliefs, statements and actions. Such people do exist.
ReplyDeleteIt ultimately doesn’t matter that a Republican has learned disinformation from Fox or other freely chosen media sources. It is not the responsibility of the left to educate the right, especially when the right is actively making such education efforts illegal by banning books and courses.
Somerby addresses us as if we were forcing the right to do what it does. We aren’t doing that.
Somerby needs to repurpose his blog and start preaching to the ignorant right. They need his help. We don’t.
It is not irrational to criticize the practice of surgically mutilating children who are too young to be sure of their gender.
ReplyDeleteGod screws up the genes and sexual parts in about 2% of births. In the old days the doctor would sew up or cut off sexual organs based on what was was easier. Boys and girls can be born with an extra opposite sex gene. About 300 to 400 under 18 individuals have transformative gender care annually. These kids usually have years of counseling. They report being happier 80% of the time, and are less suicidal. The kids parents are heavily involved in the process. But you think it is icky & you know better than the kids, parents, and counselors and it must be stopped. Yeesh.
DeleteSome folks are neither male nor female.
Delete"God screws up the genes and sexual parts in about 2% of births."
DeleteDid you hear this from a priest living at the bottom of your silo? It's so cute.
Look at the bigot refusing to listen to anyone. Surprise! They are a right winger! What a shock.
DeleteWhen they’re adults.
DeleteWhat? You, inside your silo, believe that COVID did not come from a lab leak?
ReplyDeleteAnd inside your silo it's a 'simple factual matter'? How cute.
Anonymouse 4:08pm, I’m not in a silo. You don’t have to be either.
DeleteThat’s the point.
People in a silo don’t know they’re in a silo.
DeleteThat’s why Bob blogs.
DeleteYou have no idea why he blogs.
DeleteHe’s bogged for decades, but he’s an enigma.
DeleteSomerby agrees with some of the mistaken views held on the right. He knows the left disagrees. He wants us to tell him it is ok to hold his mistaken views, as long as he genuinely believes them, because couldn’t he actually be right after all. Just like it might be true that Trump won in 2020, if he genuinely believes he did win?
ReplyDeleteSomerby is in this bind because he doesn’t understand or will not admit that there are experts who know things who help decide what is true or not. It isn’t a matter of personal opinion but of fact, science, knowledge, expertise, history, election vote counting, whether Trump won, whether being transexual is a legitimate phenomenon, whether black people can improve their reading scores on NAEP in MS (Somerby resisted that one for 6-1/2 weeks).
There are actual ways to determine what is real, true, factual, besides Republicans coercing Democrats into agreeing that it is ok to mistreat transpeople.
Robert Heinlein wrote a short story in which the TN legislature passed a law making pi equal to 3.14. It was meant to be funny, not simething to emulate. Somerby’s attack on knowledge appears to be motivated by a desire to place all claims on an equal foiting so that the right need not admit to being wrong about its mountains of disinformation.
Reality is what it is and wishing won’t change that, nor will tantrums nor repressive laws.
When it comes to global pandemics, some people listen to the CDC, others listen to Sean Hannity. What are you going to do?
DeleteA sincere question: All you folks who constantly attack Somerby - why do you continue to read him?
ReplyDeleteIt's not "folks". It's just one troll. Extremely prolific one.
DeleteIf that's true, is there some way to ban the troll? It seems rude to come to a blog just for the purpose of attacking the author relentlessly.
DeleteI guess Mr Somerby might be one of the very few remaining old-fashioned liberals (diehards from mid 20th c.) who are not into censorship. A conservative of sorts. Imagine that.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:45pm, that’s true to point. Bob occasionally exchanges censor for the comfier sounding “gatekeeper”.
DeleteWell, obviously he wasn't lying in a coma since the 60s, so some deterioration is inevitable. Understandably.
DeleteBob’s not deteriorating, he’s merely being a liberal.
DeleteYes, Bob deteriorating. Long ago, this was one of best blogs.
DeleteHe didn't change, you did.
DeleteIt's one weird, sad, lonely, troll. Or maybe two. It's hard to know for sure but probably not more than that. It's very sad, they are really damaged and really suffering. You can see from how they write that their existence is pure hell.
DeleteThe other troll is my sock.
Delete@4:13 wrote a serious response to Somerby and there is not one responsive comment to it. Just trolls arguing about how many of you there are.
DeleteReminds me of the Ronald Reagan quote:
Delete"I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me standing by this 'whites only' water fountain."
4:17,
DeleteI only criticize (attack) Bob when he repeats Right-wing nonsense. It only seems like i do it constantly, because it's most times he posts.
mh criticized the policies of the Republican Party. I salute mh for acknowledging that policies are more important than personalities.
ReplyDeleteIf one takes the further step of looking at the actual results of the policies, the Democrats would not look so good. People are fleeing Democratic states like CA and flocking to Republican states. Democratic cities like San Francisco. Baltimore, Minneapolis and Chicago are turning into Hell holes.
David in Cal
I hear it's gotten so bad, you can buy a 2 bedroom house in San Francisco for $100.
DeleteHoly shit. Can you even imagine the corporate-owned, Right-wing media talking about the effects of policy?
DeleteThat would be insane. The only effect policy has that the mainstream media reports on is how policy effects the horse-race of elections.
"Sure Candidate X's policy allows the eating of living children, but how will that play with rural (white) voters?"
Why pay $100 is you can be a squatter?
Delete7:54,
DeleteThat makes them smart.
Anything else?”
ReplyDeleteEpstein did NOT kill himself.
Epstein was no Einstein.
DeletePeople do kill themselves in prison. Why not Epstein?
DeleteA bit too convenient for many in the upper class.
DeleteDead is dead.
Delete6:36,
DeleteTrump passed a HUGE tax break for the corporations and rich for the same reason.
Don't you remember when he did so, and economically anxious Right-wingers, who aren't just a shit-pile of bigots (hat tip, corporate-owned, Right-wing, mainstream media) stormed the United States Capitol in disgust?
Oops, my mistake. The economically anxious Right-wingers didn't storm the U.S. Capitol when Tump gave that HUGE tax break to corporations in the rich. I had mixed it up with the time black peoples votes counted in the 2020 Presidential election.
My apologies for the error.
Do you believe that climate change is a a hoax? Interesting question.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, what does "believe in climate change" means in this context. The words suggest that it merely means believing that the climate is changing. But, it isn't used that way. People use the phrase as if it means more than that.
How can people claim to "believe (or not believe) in climate change" when they don't even know what the phrase means?
David in Cal - you skipped over the word hoax, missing the point of the question. The question is asking if you believe the folks saying we need to stop burning carbon fuel are full of sh!t or not.
DeleteWhat we have come to expect from DIC, A completely puerile interpretation of a term commonly applied to the phenomenon known as global warming.
Delete"I took out the garbage"
DIC "I have no idea about what you are talking since what you call garbage might be useful to someone else and therefore the term is relative. Also, you have not defined the term " out".
OK, I will spell it out. By garbage I mean the ludicrous post at 6:50, and by the phrase "take it out" , I mean "identify as ludicrous ".
David is quite correct.
DeleteMr Drum and like-minded comrades in his silo are hysterical climate alarmists, preventing poor countries from obtaining reliable electrical power, thus casing countless unnecessary deaths and sufferings.
...all the while enjoying the feeling of being virtuous, righteous, and superior -- the unfortunate dwellers of Mr Drum's silo, that is.
Drum has science on his side. What does David have?
Delete5:36am. Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries produce cheaper and more reliable power than fueled generators.
DeleteBatteries don’t produce energy, they store it.
DeleteThe Wuhan leak probably did come from the lab, speaking of Stewart's perspicacity and boldness.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, Drum is wrong and the Republicans are right. It could have come from a lab. There's no reason to think it's strange to believe that it did.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html
Lab leak was deemed the most likely by the Energy Department back then. Other departments disagreed! The most recent consensus by experts in virology found the initial outbreak centered around the Wuhan Seafood Market, more than 10 miles from the lab, so most likely the lab did not leak it.
DeleteThe point is it's not crazy to believe that it came from the lab. It's not a simple, factual matter that is 100% contrary to expert opinion. Drum is wrong to put it that way.
DeleteExperts in virology don't know for sure and they could have motives for it &*not* to come from a lab leak. So some people may believe it did. No one knows for sure and Kevin fucking Drum isn't one to try to tell the world what the truth is about it.
DeleteIf experts in virology said it didn't come from the lab, they are the first people that should be investigated. No journalist would ever take their word for it!! Would they??
DeleteWell, these new young trust fund reporters excepted.
I was working in the lab. I drank a lot of tea. I had to take a leak.
DeleteThe Wuhan respiratory coronavirus came from a market. Just ask the lab that studies respiratory coronaviruses ... located right there in Wuhan down the street from the market.
DeleteWhat I was trying to say is if you think Fauci funded a lab in China to sick Covid on the world is u r in the idiots silo. If you think it could come from either source, and who cares as we have to deal with what we have... then you are acting outside of a silo.
DeleteThe Wuhan respiratory coronavirus didn't come from the Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab!
DeleteIt came from the seafood market 45 minutes away.
https://prnt.sc/DkUbfGOgt8c9
Explain how the Spanish flu came from a lab when no labs existed then. Obviously viruses mutate and become transmissible from animal hosts as occurred in a market selling live animals (not seafood because covid is a respiratory virus asshole). It has happened that way over and over with swine and bird flus. Your belief that you know anything about this is YOUR problem.
DeleteExperts weren’t sure initially but they are now. Keep up.
Delete"Experts weren’t sure initially but they are now. "
DeleteExperts knew all the time. Everyone outside Drum's silo knew, of course; it's not the rocket science.
Expert lied to maintain the official narrative; otherwise they would be fired for being racists, biphobes, and russkis.
No one knows for sure and people have the right to believe it came from a lab. They don't have the right to be censored for that belief. As a court has found. Of course, the Biden administration which was found guilty is free to take it to the supreme Court.
DeleteThe court found that and it was 100% backed up by an appeals court.
DeleteLet's just agree that Trump had the right idea to gaslight the viral pandemic. It would have worked too, just like when the Right gaslit climate change.
DeleteExperts cannot be believed. Experts have to be investigated and there claims have to be checked out. If it came from a lab, they are the ones that fucked up. So they have an incentive to say it did not come from a lab. And that goes for Anthony.Fauci.
Delete7:09,
DeleteThe Left calls everyone who disagrees with them "racists". They even called the snowflake Right-wingers who threw a public temper tantrum at the U.S. Capitol just because black peoples votes counted in the 2020 Presidential election "racists".
What are you goin to do?
The disease is the same name as the lab!
DeleteThe disease is named for the city of Wuhan, as is the lab.
Delete7:26,
DeleteExactly. The Dems even called the folks with the photoshop of Obama with a bone through his nose "racist".
It's why they'll never get the Right to vote with them. Well, that and the whole "equality for black people" thing.
Tell that to all the black people who are not at all excited about Democrats and probably won't support them in even the numbers they did in 2020..
DeleteKevin Drum:
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/scott-perry-explains-impeachment/
Drum says that is a simple, factual matter that the FBI is not engaged in a partisan war against Republicans but a court found last week that "the FBI, too, likely (1) coerced the platforms into moderating content, and (2) encouraged them to do so by effecting changes to their moderation policies, both in violation of the First Amendment." and some of that content had to do with kooky and dumb Republican ideas. Being censored by the FBI could lead to a belief, accurate or not, that there's a partisan beef from some parts of the FBI.
ReplyDeleteDrum's claim is a perfect example of someone speaking from a silo.
A string of suppositions doesn’t equal a single fact.
DeleteBeliefs are not facts.
DeletePeople have the right to be wrong. They have a first amendment right to be wrong and to believe things that are not factual. It's their right.
DeleteIt is not legal to commit illegal acts motivated by mistaken beliefs. The law hyothesizes a reasonable person whose beliefs are considered. It isn’t anything goes. The law does not protect all speech, even if someone has beliefs that motivate slander, libel, fraud, etc.
Delete"Drum's claim is a perfect example of someone speaking from a silo."
DeleteIt is indeed. Drum himself is not in a silo, though. He's one of those who brainwash the unfortunate dwellers of the silo. That's how he makes his living.
No one is making claims about believing anything goes. Stop moving the goal posts. Drum is wrong as it is a reasonable belief based on evidence.
DeleteBob’s silo: All idiocy of the party of personal responsibility can be blamed on its opposition. How did Drum miss the war on Christmas? Is that a matter of opinion?
ReplyDeleteBob's been pointing out the Right are nothing but reactionaries for a while now, like he's some hippie from the 1960s.
ReplyDelete