cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35684522
Despite his support for Trump, Ragland has become increasingly vocal about the need for immediate trade resolution. “We desperately need to get something rectified quickly with China, our biggest export customer,” he told CNN. “We wanna encourage the administration to get a proactive trade deal done.”
All that is true, but the shit he’s saying goes through a filter. Not just the filter of Fox News but also the filter of those who disseminate that bullshit.
A very sad and unfortunate fact about most Americans is that they do not read the news and most of their political knowledge comes from their friends and family or communities. The propaganda dissemination models that are currently driving the US toward fascism are reliant on there being a core group of malignants who disseminate the disinformation that they get from Fox, AM radio and elsewhere.
The group whom you’re referring to as “conservatives” are demographically the most exposed to right-wing propaganda. The so-called “average” cluster, as revealed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This group (originally targeted by Facebook) is particularly sensitive to the message pushed by conservatives (“law and order”, “traditional”). But if you look at the messaging that’s being used to manipulate them, it’s the same stuff that was used to target Germans in the Weimar republic.
Honestly, the conservatives I have both the least and greatest problems with are the ones who don’t really pay attention any news in particular. They heard once that conservatives are good with money and that progressives have funny ideas and they’ve latched onto that idea with ever challenging it once. They’re simply incapable of looking at something deeper than surface level and they refuse to address the complexity of any given situation. Those people will, at times, end up as centrists who “really don’t like to get into politics” and “think they have cool ideas but they could never get them done”.
This doesn’t much go against my original point, though. They exist in a place where they hate learning and changing their ideas is not something they can really handle. If all they have to do is fit one mold then that’s easy, but once they have to start custom-building their own personality it all falls apart. It’s too much work for them, and they retreat to comfortable familiarity.