US Politics Thread

BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
When I read "Joe Walsh" I thought it referred to this guy:


The musician Walsh doesn't seem to be a Trump fan either:
www.rollingstone.com

The Last Word: Joe Walsh on the Eagles, Trump and Turning 70

Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh on the group's future plans, turning 70 and the best advice he ever got
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com
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Joe Walsh was the only really great thing about the Eagles. I like his solo stuff much better than most of what they did -- especially "Life's Been Good."
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
Joe Walsh was the only really great thing about the Eagles. I like his solo stuff much better than most of what they did -- especially "Life's Been Good."
Click to expand...
I really love Walsh - especially after watching some recent interviews/broadcasts of him. I liked the Eagles as well.... a confluence of talented musicians.

One of my favorites of Joe's:
 
SWP's back said:
Good, serves the fucking idiots right.

View attachment 43455
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As terrible as Covid is, so help me, I can't help but see a silver lining. Deaths and near deaths due to COVIDmust have served as a wakeup call to those on the Right. Snap out of it! - scientists are almost always correct, and we'd do best to follow their guidance.

Yet, even in the face of death of loved ones, and near death experiences of self... the Right's toxic individualism and science denial remains unexpectedly strong.

Unfortunately, it may take a black death-level catastrophe to wake the science deniers up.
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
As terrible as Covid is, so help me, I can't help but see a silver lining. Deaths and near deaths due to COVIDmust have served as a wakeup call to those on the Right. Snap out of it! - scientists are almost always correct, and we'd do best to follow their guidance.

Yet, even in the face of death of loved ones, and near death experiences of self... the Right's toxic individualism and science denial remains unexpectedly strong.

Unfortunately, it may take a black death-level catastrophe to wake the science deniers up.
Click to expand...
The science denial of the cult is IMO largely a function of Trump's science denial, which was solely a function of him not wanting to shut down his precious economic growth engine to fight off the pandemic. Recall he's a germaphobe -- it never made any other kind of sense for him to react as he did outside this context.

And a large portion of his supporters took the cue from him, and that morphed into a broad denial of science generally, because then many of these folks had to rationalize why they didn't believe Fauci but might believe some other scientist on some other topic. Easier to say they're all wrong -- then your brain doesn't have to work so hard to resolve conflicting information.

The same thing has happened on other topics/issues as generalizations and stereotyping are easier and faster than resolving conflicting/diverse points of view. It's easier to be absolutist. I do it too about the Trumpian cult.

But when polls show "85%+ of Republicans/Trump supporters say '_____'", the data tends to support such a generalization, which is why I keep doing it.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
The science denial of the cult is IMO largely a function of Trump's science denial, which was solely a function of him not wanting to shut down his precious economic growth engine to fight off the pandemic. Recall he's a germaphobe -- it never made any other kind of sense for him to react as he did outside this context.

And a large portion of his supporters took the cue from him, and that morphed into a broad denial of science generally, because then many of these folks had to rationalize why they didn't believe Fauci but might believe some other scientist on some other topic. Easier to say they're all wrong -- then your brain doesn't have to work so hard to resolve conflicting information.

The same thing has happened on other topics/issues as generalizations and stereotyping are easier and faster than resolving conflicting/diverse points of view. It's easier to be absolutist. I do it too about the Trumpian cult.

But when polls show "85%+ of Republicans/Trump supporters say '_____'", the data tends to support such a generalization, which is why I keep doing it.
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I grew up in a very conservative household. My father, son of a Missouri farmer, staunch lifelong conservative, and a PhD mathematician, was stubbornly anti-fact. He doubted medical opinion - and lost his teeth due to his dismissal of the efficacy of flossing - he doubted scientific findings on the danger of pollution and took up the side of industry - he doubted medical research outlining the dangers of smoking and its effects, including second hand smoke; and so on.

I think that science denial was widespread among the Right way before Trump as evinced by my father - Trump and the support he received from Fox and other right-leaning outlets simply made science denial socially acceptable if not admired. And from there, the floodgates of lunacy opened wide. The Right's "tent" of acceptable views burgeoned, to include conspiracy theorists and right wing radicals.

But the science denial mindset was widespread among conservatives and existed long before Trump.

Harking back to high school chemistry, I think that Trump is best classified as "catalyst" rather than "reagent."
 
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BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
I grew up in a very conservative household. My father, son of a Missouri farmer, staunch lifelong conservative, and a PhD mathematician, was stubbornly anti-fact. He doubted medical opinion - and lost his teeth due to his dismissal of the efficacy of flossing - he doubted scientific findings on the danger of pollution and took up the side of industry - he doubted medical research outlining the dangers of smoking and its effects, including second hand smoke; and so on.

I think that science denial was widespread among the Right way before Trump as evinced by my father - Trump and the support he received from Fox and other right-leaning outlets simply made science denial socially acceptable if not admired. And from there, the floodgates of lunacy opened wide. The Right's "tent" of acceptable views burgeoned, to include conspiracy theorists and right wing radicals.

But the science denial mindset was widespread among conservatives and existed long before Trump.
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Among an aspect of conservatives I believe this is true. But that "aspect" is now the central narrative. It's now core. It's definitional. I don't think that was the case under the Bushes, nor Reagan, nor Nixon.
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
As terrible as Covid is, so help me, I can't help but see a silver lining. Deaths and near deaths due to COVIDmust have served as a wakeup call to those on the Right. Snap out of it! - scientists are almost always correct, and we'd do best to follow their guidance.

Yet, even in the face of death of loved ones, and near death experiences of self... the Right's toxic individualism and science denial remains unexpectedly strong.

Unfortunately, it may take a black death-level catastrophe to wake the science deniers up.
Click to expand...
As long as enough of them have been naturally selected out of the species through their own stupidity...
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
Among an aspect of conservatives I believe this is true. But that "aspect" is now the central narrative. It's now core. It's definitional. I don't think that was the case under the Bushes, nor Reagan, nor Nixon.
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Another analogy...

The percentage of the populace who are gay, bisexual or who identify with the gender opposite their birth certificate is almost certainly the same now as it was, say 50 years ago. And yet the freedom to express sexual and gender orientation is far, far higher now than in the past.

So too science denial. Science denial has existed for decades in the US, but was socially repressed. The Right dislikes science - because it's intellectual, it takes effort to comprehend, and most of all because it's inconvenient.

Steve Bannon - hate the guy - is genius for recognizing precise this. That a huge, untapped anti-science, anti-government, anti-liberal sentiment had been brewing in rural America for decades - he helped Trump channel this force into a successful run for President.

Trump is mostly catalyst - not reagent.
 
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