On Facebook, I wrote:Today is 0217 2017. This combination foretells that President Trump will do something stupid.
FZR1KG wrote:I foretell that Trump will do something stupid on any give day that ends in "y".
Lance wrote:Yes. Of three people I know who voted for Trump, one did so because he honestly believed Trump was the better choice but two did so specifically citing the things I've brought up. They said had it not been for those issues they'd have voted for her. So 2/3 in my very small sample but definite proof that the disinformation and misinformation changed some peoples' minds. And remember, the margins in the swing states that Trump won were small. It didn't take much.
Lance wrote:Мастер wrote:There were persistent rumours about Obama being born in Kenya, or some variation thereof. As nearly as I can tell, these rumours do not have the slightest basis in fact, but a lot of people at least suspected that they were true.
That was started by Trump, after Obama was elected. It never really had a chance to alter the outcome.
Enzo wrote:I think most people in the USA are not thinking about it analytically. They listen to all the stuff flying around and accept that which supports their notions. Yes, the birther thing predates Trump, but he brought it back up as an argument. But in watching the debate on that topic, they come up with a copy of Obama's birth certificate. They look at that and say "Yeah, but SEE? This doesn;t say "birth certificate" on it, it says "Certificate of live birth", and then some rationalization ensues.
Pretty standard around here, if someone gets arrested for some crime, which is later shown to be someone else's crime. They say "Well, them people wouldn't have arrested him if he didn't do nothing." Pretty common college classroom demonstration: accuse a guy of something, then later explain he had nothing to do with the crime, the whole thing was a classroom ruse, the majority of students will nonethelss approach the actor with suspicion, and attribute motives and trustworthiness estimates lower than other candidates.
I think people believe what they want to believe. And where do they get their news matters. Those who rely on Fox NEws won't be seeing teh Clinton responses in substantive ways.
Enzo wrote:Debunking doesn't work well. Ther was an article about it in a recent Skeptic or maybe Skeptical Inquirer. They didn't say it this way, but I think for a lot of people it boils down to "Why should I listen to you instead of the guys I already listen to?" Most possitions are not reasoned out after carefull weighing of data. Offering up more facts doesn't usually get past the brain barrier.
Мастер wrote:So why would lies about Clinton be more influential than truths about Trump?
...and I am very skeptical that so many people were persuaded by easily debunked false information about Clinton.
Lance wrote:No one is making that claim.
Lance wrote:As previously discussed, there were people that wouldn't piss on Hillary if she were on fire. They were never going to vote for her anyway. The group in play were those very few that "fell for it". They were the gullible ones that followed the loudest, most persistent message. I think you're assuming a level playing field, intellectually, among the undecided. And that's demonstrably not so. There were a couple of studies on exactly that. The ones that were swayed were just kind of, oh, easy to persuade by a strong personality.
Мастер wrote:I wouldn't piss on Hillary if she were on fire, but that doesn't translate into support for Trump. Being a more effective liar than the other side was a truth-teller, well, that is possible, and it might have swung a few percent over enough to change the outcome - that may well be. The phenomenon I'm stuck on is, why did the other forty-something percent go this way? Usually Trump-like candidates are in the low single-digit vote-share category. I can see why a lot of the electorate might be pissed off, they're in socio-economic groups that haven't seen much improvement for decades, and they're angry that they only earn ten times the wages of Vietnamese workers with the same skills they have, when they should earn thirty or forty times more based on their birthplace. This I understand (without necessarily agreeing), but - is this really the solution to their problem?
Мастер wrote:No one is claiming anyone made that claim
FZR1KG wrote:I think there are quite a few reasons for the vote towards Trump, technically it was more of a non vote combined with I'm not voting for Clinton than a vote for Trump.
[... reasons...]
Enzo wrote:Let us also not forget that Hillary managed to attract three million more votes than did the Orangutan. It is easy to after the fact decide the DNC did this or that wrong, but the question is not why she didn't lure more voters, it is why she didn't lure more electoral votes.
Lance wrote:And that question takes us back to those few 10s of thousands of votes in the swing states.
Enzo wrote:Let us also not forget that Hillary managed to attract three million more votes than did the Orangutan. It is easy to after the fact decide the DNC did this or that wrong, but the question is not why she didn't lure more voters, it is why she didn't lure more electoral votes.
Thanks for the life lesson, but I don't think claiming ther was a massacre at Bowling Green or a terrorist event in Sweden quite comes down to political stance. The events happened or they did not. Now the neocons may want us to overlook those things, and the liberals may think it is real important to pursue it, but in either case the basis for the issue is not in question. How shall I re-evaluate my position on this?
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