No no not that votes were counted incorrectly. Just that the election was stolen from here?

I would hope you would know better than to take Trollys view on that. And I am not suggesting you are.

I too, would struggle to define Trolly in that way as he really does not get into political discussions very often.

Trolly and anyone who is on the left, tends to define anyone who simply disagrees with them as having to be on the right, necessarily. e_d and O.A.F.K do it too. there is no room for nuance or a person have a myriad of views many of which can be left and right. Time and again if you disagree with them on any issue you simply cannot be left and must be right.

I bet you in every day practice and as a CDN i am far more left than most American's are and most here are and yet I am constantly accused of being a right extremist.

It’s not that conspiracies happen to line up with Republican thinking. It’s that Republicans have looked at various conspiracies and felt it made good business sense to promote them, platform them or at the least JAQ them off. Probably the single most important event in north his shift is George W Bush becoming so unpopular that even 9/11 conspiracies, which were considered borderline treason on the right in 2006 became fine.

You have to remember that GOP distrusts the media (even while they watch Fox) a lot more than the Democrats. And that's going to lead to them embracing conspiracy theories. This is something that started pre-Trump.

I never claimed that the election was "stolen." That isn't the correct word for what happened. I do believe that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. I have no way of knowing how much impact Russian interference had on voting behavior, or what the outcome would have been absent Russian interference. My guess is that Trump still would have won, but who knows, really. Regardless, I thought Donald Trump should be sworn in as the 45th POTUS, which he was, even though I knew he was going to be a huge disaster, which he was.

I'll have to look to find data going back further, but the decline in trust amongst republicans over the last few years is pretty remarkable.

It's also interesting that after a steady climb turning the Trump years, that Democratic trust has declined as well recently.

Even during the height of the Bush years, the GOP had less trust than Democrats in media.

There was definitely a conspiratorial bent to the Tea Party republicans of the early 2010s-- and it can argued that Trump was able to capture that movement.

And then there is qanon-- which I don't think anyone even argues wasn't something being run by political operatives (probably Bannon). How much of an influence it has had idk although it's certainly gotten a lot of play.

This is utter hot garbage.

If I went line though line on every possible issue I would probably say you are closer to me politically than ED.

If anything the reverse of the above is true, just because I dont agree with your take on woke etc, you are putting me in the extreme lefty box or at least intolerant of other view points etc.

I think you mistake hostility towards you as a woat terrible poster for hostility to your positions.

I might be closer to you than ED but if I debate anything with him its going to be a much more intellectually honest discussion where he does not accuse me of gaslighting every other post.

The only thing they trust less is their elected officials.

Media has dramatically changed as well.

Was not the Oklahoma City bombing at least partially motivated by conspiracy theory?

I never said you I asked about the lefties in general here.

I don't think you or e_d are on the extreme left. Worse you are part of the centre who cover everything they do and make sure they have room not just to exist but to flourish thru a reflexive denialism of any issues they have or any abuses they do.

Nearly correct.

I have the ability to observe when such "abuses" are being deployed to use in right wing messaging, so that when someone tells me that we cant do anything about global warming because of woke, I realise they are talking nonsense, whereby you cover for them.

If anyone's reflexively covering its not me.

Any way to answer TS the reason culture war stuff and Qanon stuff is at the fore of GOP politics is because the GOP politicians can see an inevitable shift coming where the ability to grift and funnel tax payer dollars into their usual cohort of donors and friends is going to shift to other priorities such as those who support the Dem party.

POC and young people are demanding and will start to get their share of the tax payer largesse and eventually they may get more than share, as GOP and Corporate Dem supporters have got since near inception of the US gov't.


So at this point in time and the GOP needs to distract citizen with culture war items as they loot the treasury as much as they can, kill as many programs and try to distort and end democracy to hold on to power and the advantage. Without culture wars BS citizens would be focused on Coffee Table or Bread and Butter issues, and the GOP cannot have that.

As they love to say in the GOP 'bootstraps for thee, gov't graft for me!'


Here is how taxpayer dollars earmarked for welfare get prioritized and allocated in one of the poorest States just before the same people rant about 'entitled people on welfare who need to pull up their bootstraps.'


I mean you wouldn't want the Uni to have to dig in their $100MM and growing endowment now would we.


In all seriousness the above is a microcosm of what this battle is almost entirely about. A shift in who doles out the tax payer goodies and who gets them with the coming generation of Dem's threatening to give the bulk to every day citizens in need and POC and not the wealthy and privileged as prior.

It's a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. Interesting for sure but also completely wrong.

A truth is not only true or not if depending on who is messaging it or not. I absolutely agree that you seem to respond as if everything is a culture war point where you are battling 'the right'. That much is clear.

Even if a truth 'was' coming from your perceived right wing enemies you should be able to acknowledge the points within it that are accurate and true because when you do not, when you refuse, spin and deflect, because you think their intent is not honest, then you just prove to them that you are not an honest broker in the discussion and then they feel empowered to do what you do, and not be honest back to you.

What part of we cant stop climate change because of woke am I supposed to acknowledge, its a statement of zero truth, its a vacuum of any reflection of reality.

it is not wrong.

The big shift in American politics is one where both parties had slightly divergent interests but both were generally focused on bigger 'goods' for America over all, that helped build the country's middle class. Infrastructure, minimum wage, etc were 'both side' issues. Growth overall was good for everybody. The rich got richer with growth as did the MC and even the poor.

As however globalism had become the norm, and China and other nations proved to not only take the lowest paying jobs but also compete for the high end jobs and the very companies that create them, it has become tougher for many in the 'elites' or 'rich' to find the next levels of growth and profits. That made those 'Elites' turn inwards and for Wall Street to find a new target.

American MC homeownership had soared, on relatively thin equity that in aggregate was a huge bundle. Social Security, and Medicare are huge pots of collected wealth. So as Wall Street does, there is a focus on how to target and gut those pots of wealth and move them over to the Elite. The 20008/9 Mortgage crisis took a massive chunk of that MC wealth tied up in homes and pushed it up in to the elite. Step 1 done.

It will take a combination of legislation and Wall Street to figure out how to get to SS and Medicare but those are prizes they will never take their eyes off of and they just need to find the right vehicle they can push threw to get them, that they can tie in to culture wars to ensure the populace on the right supports them.

I think it is Rick Scott pushing the idea that all Gov't legislation should sunset every X years, and then if not voted back in, it ceases to exist. this idea of automatically canceling all legislation appeals to the culture warriors on the right who cannot see the folly and danger and will be enticed with programs directed at the poor or POC, that they do not like for culture war reasons.

In the end this all about an emergent American Oligarch class, that would gladly tip the US model more towards the Russian model of management than what the US was when it garnered all this wealth. An age of 'gutting' as opposed to 'building'.

If both are the media then what leads the GOP to trust media other than Fox?

I've seen this sentiment both here and in a lot of other places.

I guess its for a lot of people a convenient truth. As the predicted horrors of man-made climate change become facts, people can lean back and say "I only refused it because it was full of woke baggage!".

Actors like political parties, big oil companies, some industry actors and fossil-fuel exporters have spent half a century fighting facts and research. This approach has become increasingly futile. By bringing the debate onto the cultural arena there is no need for facts however. You can just point to some (imaginary) people and go "look at those awful environmentalists who support everything you dislike!".

It's just nonsense of course, but that doesn't matter. You can always find some social justice activist who is an environmentalist to point fingers at and screech "see?!". This is because environmentalists come from all kinds of ideologies, as trying to avoid the destruction of your future or the land can motivate anyone.

Of course party politics and party ideology can sharply divide on environmentalism, and progressive parties and ideology have been more welcoming for environmentalist issues. But that doesn't really say much about the motivations of environmentalists. If it had been conservative parties that drove the political fight against climate change, the vast majority of environmentalists would have voted for them.

Shouldn't the title o the thread be How the Republican Party and the Democratic party came to embrace conspiracy theory?

So Joe Biden in his speech talks about the extreme Maga crown and the threat they are to democracy which he is correct on. Yet his party donates 53 million $$ to these extreme candidates so they can win the primary. That money is responsible for at least one of them winning a primary .

So what they are saying is we cant beat the normal republican so its justified. Many would agree as what ever takes is the GOP strategy so why not the Dems

But what if one or two of them actually win? AS we all know many voters just vote for the party as you only have two choices.

It's a convenient theory, but not really supported by the surveys.

https://www.pewresearch.org/journali...n-republicans/

This survey tells us that Republicans trust Fox News pretty much on par with the highest supported media among Democrats.

They merely trust other media a lot less.

So what conspiracy theories are democrats embracing? The more detail the better

Is there literally any issue you can’t bothsides?