I bet there are a lot of small-business people who feel like following Trump makes them more like big-business people. His policies are really going to fuck them up. And the effects of his "promises" are already coming to fruition. Their businesses don't have reserve capital enough to float them through additional costs that they can't calculate yet. I am not sure why so many people didn't check out what they were in for, but I'm still dealing with the thing I completely underrated--
There are a lot of people who simply don't know shit. Like:
I hate to put a lot of highly paid pundits out of business, but look at this f**king graphpic.twitter.com/PPjiQAtWba
The dumb thing is we know from the polls mainstream media kept putting in our faces is that these people didn't know shit. The local reporters kept going to diners to interview people who didn't seem to understand policy at all. I was blaming the media for showing us the people who didn't know shit (and YEAH! their job is to inform), and now I'm kind of blaming Democrat operatives for not realizing how many people do not know shit and didn't think about meeting people where they are and message accordingly.
Or maybe to be more exact--how are we going to get to them without making it weird and appallingly condescending?
See, we tried to confront the hack gap problem in yesteryear, and it was called "Air America"--radio in answer to the right-wing AM monolith, and it was over and done in 2010 and frankly, the breakout stars of that ensemble are people I, a lefty, don't actually listen to. I like Rachel Maddow in theory. I don't watch her show. Why even? Cable news is appalling. Podcasts kind of creep me out. I literally don't know how you reach the young people who obviously are getting their news form a fucking Skibidi toilet, whatever that is.
So, me and my husband were making Phil Hartman Frankenstein impressions while reading ads from the Trump campaign that were so simple it literally made us laugh:
Maybe that is the actual way to get people who aren't us though. I don't know. But somebody the hell needs to figure it out, because paying for the dome in Las Vegas or getting millennial-coded millionaire celebs to show up apparently isn't the answer. Overcoming why people see that and get it is the answer. Even if it's wrong and dumb. But it's obviously cheap and effective. And seems to have cut against a major fund raising and GOTV advantage we were according to the experts supposed to have.
My committed ass was texted to come and vote at least two dozen times--why? Invest in some other shit. Don't you know my record? Do I have to text back, but I'm Vixen Strangely, dammit!
Anyway, I love Lawyers Guns and Money for being a blog of some real intelligent folks, and Loomis has a boss-ass post about what we might try
I still can't get beyond yelling in folks' faces: WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH YOU!!!!!!! He stole classified shit, he's in debt to Russia, he's a racist ass rapist and a whole white collar fraud! And 1/6 though! And....
I guess that didn't work. You think it would have. My bad for the last however many years. In earlier times you know, it would have done. Any part of it would have, but I guess that was then. And we are facing a now with more climate crises, more intelligence failure internationally, less cooperation, and more paranoia, and less faith in science and our national institutions--maybe at a time when we are going to really need them.
Our communicators need legitimacy in the popular current. They can't be people pre-emptively discredited. We can't create the anti-disinfo environment inauthentically because it won't catch on.
But we need a space where we can Dare to be stupid, and just talk frankly and not like politicians or corporate hacks.
And see if that can even catch on. I mean, we can't make up for the science people didn't learn about climate change or vaccines or economics or whether Democrats are mostly always right about things in a day--but over time, maybe>?
I live in Rhode Island, so I have seen some bad driving. It occurs to me that bad drivers learn to be that way by being surrounded by other bad drivers and thinking that everyone is that way. That's the effect of social media on politics: they think they're mainstream because everyone they interact with agrees with them.
I think there's something there--the siloing of opinion in social media spaces, the high visibility of MAGA swag (hats, signs) and the normalization of Trump in even mainstream media spaces told them "This is fine, actually".
Even if some education tells them something is off, how to you go against the herd?
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I live in Rhode Island, so I have seen some bad driving. It occurs to me that bad drivers learn to be that way by being surrounded by other bad drivers and thinking that everyone is that way. That's the effect of social media on politics: they think they're mainstream because everyone they interact with agrees with them.
I think there's something there--the siloing of opinion in social media spaces, the high visibility of MAGA swag (hats, signs) and the normalization of Trump in even mainstream media spaces told them "This is fine, actually".
Even if some education tells them something is off, how to you go against the herd?
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