I read this letter to the editor in the SF Chronicle today and I can't stop thinking how correct and

[kimbutgar]

Insightful the writer was. But also nervous that things like AI and the early indoctrination of young people. If the right wing gets it way to destroy public education and make education for profit.

Just got back from Arizona where I heard the state has cut funding per student for education and pushing for more charter schools. The feigned outrage over the non existence of CRT or making white children feel bad about the past history so they shouldn’t be taught is outrageous. But right now we are in a surreal kind of 1984 pushed by the right wing and magaloons.

Anyway here is the letter that was insightful but also bothered me!

Media Indoctrination

We have a big problem. It's not Donald Trump. It's not President Biden. It's not climate change, recession, inflation, racism or homophobia.

I have engaged in an experiment. An inveterate progressive for nearly half a century, I have, for the past 60 days, listened onlv to Joe Rogan's podcast, watched only YouTube videos with Matt Walsh and those holding similar views, and only read articles on Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit. And fascinatingly, troublingly, my mind is changing.

I now find myself angrily gravitating toward the indignation of the conservative right. I am witnessing my own brainwashing. I am experiencing firsthand what tens of millions of Americans are experiencing - the toxic and catastrophic confluence of human neuro-plasticity, social media and the never-ending quest for power and dollars.

1, at least, have undertaken this experiment consciously. Most do not, and in the end, I fear it is going to tear us apart.

I won’t print his name but will give his initials DW of San Francisco

[brush]

1. Not buying it. I'll paraphrase MLK Jr.s' famous statement.

“the arc of moral intelligence is long, but it bends leftwards towards empathy and justice.”

IMO if one starts with those things, you won't succumb to right-leaning cruelty...and ya won't be able to stand listening to that crap for two months.

[Silent3]

4. Large numbers of people who vote don't have the skills or the basic decency...

...to recognize toxic propaganda for what it is.

Whether you blame them or forgive them for that, that's besides the point to the outcome. If we don't find a way to fight this stuff, we're in a lot of trouble.

[brush]

5. We outnumber those "large number of people." See the 2020 results.

[Silent3]

6. By a troubling small margin given how plainly awful Trump is

I don't trust the judgment of a voting public that (even if Clinton had a small popular vote advantage) was stupid and/or nasty enough to hand Trump the Presidency even once.

I don't trust the judgment of a voting public that, having seen Trump in action for four years, didn't hand Biden the Presidency by a 20% or greater margin.

The brainwashing effects of propaganda are real. I wish I knew a good way to fight it.

[brush]

7. trump will be indicted 4 times and most likely convicted at least once...

by election day. He'll lose votes because of these realities and do even worst against Biden in '24.

Being indicted multiple times and convicted at least once is not ideal for a presidential candidate. And then there are the women still angry over Dobbs.

We will get out the vote of soccer moms in the suburbs, LGBTQ+ people, POCs and left-of-center Dems and progressives so relax. We've got this.

[Silent3]

8. The OP isn't just about the next election

I think Biden most likely will win the next election, but we're not so safe right now that unforeseen events can't derail that.

A smart, well-informed, good-hearted electorate wouldn't hand the Presidency to Trump, or his ilk, once or ever again, no matter what. The electorate we actually have could too easily be derailed by a big economic downturn, or a Democratic scandal (real or ginned up) of one tenth the magnitude of Trump's malfeasance.

We certainly aren't safe for retaining the Senate in 2024. We aren't safe in the elections after 2024 from another Trump-like figure eager to destroy our democracy.

Our society is teetering too close to the edge. Until the Republican party, as it exists now, utterly collapses, and is replaced by something conservative but less corrupt and far less zealous and authoritarian at heart, our democracy will be at risk. One single lost election could easily make subsequent elections irrelevant for a long time. We're not safe until losing to Republicans is a mere short-term setback, and not a long-term threat.

The propaganda effect the OP discusses is at the heart of this ongoing threat.

[rubbersole]

9. I share your optimism.

This time. We're up against motivated unlimited wealth. This will take a decade(s). The addition of AI/disinformation won't help. But that works both ways.

[keep_left]

12. In a speech years ago, the writer/historian Morris Berman said something which has remained...

...with me ever since. It wasn't as brilliant as his thoughts typically are; in fact, this particular insight was maybe rather ordinary, but nonetheless correct. Berman said that American public opinion (including voting and political trends) "is very ad-hoc", malleable, and undisciplined. I know it's difficult for any of us at DU to accept this, but most Americans really are plugged into the disinformation Matrix and are quite unaware. Maybe not all blissfully unaware--many of them know something's wrong--but they have no idea what to do about it, and they are easily led. That's the "ad-hoc" part.

I often wonder if it is just easier to go along believing all the nonsense from the Matrix. There's no uncomfortable questioning; "everything is on the surface", as Al Franken once described Sean Hannity.

The term that came to me a few years ago for this kind of cheerful ignorance is "comfy fascism", inspired by a character from the movie Revolutionary Road. The disinformation never stops, for the funding is nearly infinite thanks to the right-wing "think" tanks and the Hoovering of all the money and resources to the top over the last four decades. For God's sake (sorry about the pun), the good churchgoing Bible believers of the religious right are so bamboozled by propaganda that even they have forgotten why ancient Biblical societies had a Jubilee every 50 years. It was to prevent the Hoovering of all the money and resources to the top!

So that's a long answer to your statement, but it comes down to is this: you are being much too charitable when it comes to the good intentions of "the American people". They may do the right thing, but that's not going to come without one hell of a fight. Our side has no propaganda apparatus that even comes close to theirs. Consider just the shock jocks alone: Rogan, Kirk, Walsh, Prager, Ingraham, Shapiro, Jones, ... Now bring to mind all the "think" tanks. It goes on and on, because it's making a lot of rich people even richer, even as it hollows out the country.

[brush]

13. Nah, we just defeated what you call the disinformation matrix in 2020...

and more Americans than not know something is way wrong with the republicans getting ready to run crooked trump again.

We outnumber the magats. Simple as that.

And trump will be indicted 4 times and probably convicted once by election day.

It's not that complicated.

[keep_left]

14. We definitely defeated the Matrix this time, but it was close (something like 80,000 votes...

...total in several states). GOTV will be the deciding factor in 2024 and probably for the foreseeable future.

I have my doubts about Trump ever actually being convicted, but we'll see. There is a well-known DUer that always makes fun of these prognostications, saying "XX months and counting", XX being whatever amount of time has elapsed since Trump's first indictment. I hope it happens, but I'm not counting on it. And it is likely that Trump's cult will come out to vote for him in even greater numbers if he is convicted.

[brush]

15. Being indicted four times and possibly convicted, women still angry over dobbs...

it won't be nearly as close this time. We outnumber them. Most people are not stupid, they know trump is a crook and shouldn't be allowed anywhere close to the WH again.

[MOMFUDSKI]

2. In the wayback

I stumbled on Alex Jones and actually watched for some time. Then realized what crap he was spouting and jumped out. So no excuses for anyone with a brain to go down the rabbit hole unless you have always been that rabbit. I do understand what DW is saying though.

[kimbutgar]

3. I also remember reading Alex Jones in the early 2000's and it didn't take me long to think he was

Talking crazy conspiracy stuff. I got into one site what really happened during the bush years and then when President Obama got elected it got even more crazier and I stopped looking at it.

But if one is not taught to critical think early on they don’t learn to disseminate bs. I had a college professor who used the term paradigm and it changed how I look at things.

[pansypoo53219]

10. my smart Phd cousin has become a maggot loon, but he is his father's son. ditto head + angry alex

jones watcher + the left is evil blah blah.

[sabrams]

11. Did something similar last summer

In an effort to understand how people could be so extreme and accept as truth things so easily proved wrong, I also watch the trump news sources and commentators.
I learned that my feeling about most of the trump supporters was wrong. I thought they were just stupid beyond belief. It turns out they are profoundly ignorant.
Being ignorant isn't anything to be ashamed of. That can be fixed with new information, but being willfully ignorant is a mental condition that most of them share.