CommentsMY TURN--Conservatives seem to love spreading fake news, especially when it relates to topics where they are clueless.
The slow rise of the fear mongering for the trump supporters has been acting like a wildlife, leaping from one area to another until trump made use of it in his fascist-style rally in El Paso, TX. Apparently the latest instructions from the Kremlin include making his cult followers rip their hair out when they think of their glorious Amerikkka turning to socialism. It appears that trump is once again playing the dolts for their stupidity, because most are unaware that the U.S. already has programs in place that might be socialist and many of them take part in them.
The first thing to address is the statement that a majority of the fake new is spread by conservatives. However, the comment doesn’t end there, it also includes the fact that most people spreading the false narratives are those over the age of 65 years. Vox reported this information in their article: People over 65 are the most likely to share fake news on Facebook, study finds Blame the baby boomers.
“Conservatives and people over the age of 65 were disproportionately likely to share articles from fake news domains during the last presidential election, researchers from Princeton University and New York University found in a recent study, the results of which were published in Science Advances this week.
The conservative part is perhaps unsurprising, given that so many fake news sites were pro-Donald Trump. But the age part, not so much: Researchers found that regardless of ideology, Facebook users age 65 and older shared almost seven times as many fake news articles as younger users. In other words, blame the baby boomers.”
While this article addresses only Facebook fake news, another article by Inc. includes an additional study that validates conservatives falling prey to and spreading more fake news than any other demographic:
“While 18 percent of Republicans in our sample shared links from fake news sites, only 3.5 percent of Democrats did,” the authors report (self-identified independents shared as much as Republicans). But the authors [sic] note that most of the fake news produced before the election was pro-Trump, so conservatives may just have had more options to be misled (or mislead).
Whatever the explanation for conservative older folks being the most prone to sharing misinformation, share they did. “Republicans over the age of 65 were seven times more likely to share fake news than respondents of any political leaning aged between 18 and 29,” NewScientist’s write-up of the study highlights.
Now We Turn to the Term Socialism
Republicans have been trying to scare the public with threats of “socialism” for many years. They count on their base being completely ignorant of what is involved and it’s not uncommon to see the Republican sycophants yelling about socialists while they clutch onto their Medicare cards and take advantage of a lot of programs that are considered to be “socialist” in nature. It seems that it takes very little to set them off and at one point or another they will start screaming that the liberals have gone far too left.
This entire scenario is almost yawn-provoking, because we have seen and heard it before. The sad part is that like Lucy holding the football, the conservatives seem to fall for it every single time.
BBC covered this topic in a well-written article where they state:
“In 1961 Ronald Reagan, then a Hollywood actor and right-wing activist, accused the Democrats who created Medicare — the government-managed healthcare program for the elderly — of waging an incremental effort to turn the US into a freedom-crushing socialist state.
‘One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine,” Reagan said. “It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.’
Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, echoed similar sentiments.
‘Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink?’ he asked.”
Frankly, a majority of us have stopped even making an attempt to “reason” with those that are part of the trump and conservative cult group. Even when given verifiable facts, they put their fingers in their ears and scream “fake news” simply because it doesn’t line up with their belief system.
I cover this topic in my article Opinion: Yes We Can Call These People Morons
“Many of these types of people don’t read, and frankly, never have bothered to read. Therefore, the current flow of easy-to-digest information via videos and social media is perfect for them. They also seem to be unaware of the differences in media forms and to separate facts from those that are designed to brainwash. This is the demographic that is most vulnerable to the Russian and Macedonian purveyors of false news. When you add into the mix that they would much rather believe the propaganda being fed to them daily by their fellow uninformed friends and co-workers, it’s a formula that is perfect for conservatives to appeal to.
If you listen to some of the comments that these individuals spew, you will quickly recognize that they parrot each other. Whether type written or spoken, they are copy-and-paste and almost all sound like they are those that are repeated on Fox (not recognized as a news channel). They seem to be quite proud of their lack of knowledge and yet still seem to think that they are smarter than minorities.
I am reminded of the quote from John Cleese, British Comedian, Director, and of famed Monty Python:
“In order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place,” Cleese elaborates, “which means — and this is terribly funny — that if you are absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills you need to know that you are absolutely no good at it.” With that, he gives us an extremely brief introduction to the Dunning–Kruger effect, “a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate” owing to “a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude” (and, by the same token, of “highly skilled individuals to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others”).
-John Cleese
Venezuela is the Only Thing Conservatives Have
I often shake my head when I hear conservatives bleating out misinformation, knowing that they will spread it to someone else who will repeat and extrapolate to the point of idiocy. Every type of government in history has had both successes and failures. You need only talk to those that make this their focus of study for them to remind us that we do not live in a Democracy. It was a good idea, but capitalism has destroyed that dream a long time ago.
There are some successful socialist governments around the world and then, there’s Venezuela. The failure of this country is a study unto itself, but as a majority of the falls occur, it is usually wrapped around greed and inequality. Many of the governments that have been established with “Democratic Socialist” base cover a complex list on both sides of the arena that assist in keeping them strong and healthy. And then, there is Venezuela. Probably the worst example of socialism gone awry, with the pendulum swinging too far to one side.
Of course, this is the fear mongering that trump and the extreme right conservatives want to throw at their base to stir the pot of hate. They will add additional ingredients that are rooted in lies, including non-existent increased numbers of illegal immigrants that will be taking advantage of these programs, and create a recipe that’s perfect for the cult-followers who don’t bother to fact check and believe any and all the over 6,000 lies that trump tells.
Russia’s Propaganda Arm Preparing for 2020
We are already seeing and hearing the misinformation being spread across conservative sources and this is all part of Putin’s takeover plans. Scaring the hell out of witless Americans was so easy the last time, they are going to up the game so that the conservatives who live in a constant state of fear will be running down the street ripping their hair out.
The mere idea of healthcare for all, educational opportunities, international wellbeing, and protecting the planet are being spun into some of the wildest stories that one would think were derived from the Twilight Zone. International alliances are being spewed as suspicious and there is an encouragement for adoration for Vladimir Putin and Russia.
The usual scare tactics are being thrown stating that liberals want open borders and to take away all the guns that the gun addicts are hoarding. Of course, none of this is true, but since it worked so well that last time — they are going to do it again.
Social media has been exposed for not only allowing the spread of fake news but making money on it. The profit machines are now under a magnifying glass and companies such as Facebook and Twitter are being held accountable.
The question is — will common sense U.S. citizens fall for it?
