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MrRodgers -> Today's right and how [it] got a Trump (10/25/2016 7:41:21 PM)
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If the GOP wants to save the party and ever win the white house again it will have to:
.....go to war with right-wing media. That is, they need to dismantle the media machine persuading their base to believe completely bonkers, bigoted garbage. It is, after all, the right-wing radio, TV and Internet fever swamps that have gotten them into this mess, that have led to massive misinformation, disinformation and cynicism among Republican voters. And draining those fever swamps is the only way to get them out of it.
For example:
7 of 10 repubs still very seriously doubt or completely disbelieve that Obama was born in the US.
6 of 10 believe Obama is a secret Muslim.
5 of 10 believe that global warming is a hoax concocted by climate scientists.
7 of 10 believe government economic data are fabricated.
5 of 10 don’t trust that votes will be counted accurately in the November election.
Get this:
Some small fraction actually believe that presidential elections are determined by Instagram followers.
HERE
Data trutherism, claims that the economy is worse than the official numbers indicate, that polls are “skewed” to favor Democrats, that hurricane forecasts are exaggerated to scare the public into fearing climate change, riled the base, even as it sowed a deadly distrust in any impartial metric of the nation’s economic, political, social or climatological health.
Never-ending witch hunts against Planned Parenthood, climate scientists, Hillary Clinton similarly galvanized supporters in the near term but increased bloodlust for punishment of political enemies in the long run.
In other words, Trump is not some black swan, whose unique cocktail of charisma, telegenicism and political fluidity landed him the nomination. His nomination is the product of years of race-baiting, conspiracy-theorizing, expert-delegitimizing right-wing media nonsense, which Republican politicians aided and abetted because it seemed politically expedient at the time. They helped the alt-right create the alternate reality that made a Trump nomination inevitable.
And unless the party establishment grapples with its own complicity in misinforming, misleading and frightening the masses, it’s doomed to field more Donald Trumps in the future.
HERE
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