Misinformation drove these people to vote for Trump. This is going be leopard eating their faces. Sad and shows just how much fake videos and misinformation can influence our elections.
We can blame voters or fix our media landscape. You can do both, but we need to do the latter to have a functioning democracy.
People are really not ready for the media landscape conversation because it has absolutely no easy answers. The first amendment means that well-funded misinformation systems have an absolute right to keep operating.
How would you fix something that isn’t broken? This is what for-profit capitalist media does and has always done. Manufacturer consent for capitalism and its desires. Regulation in the past made it mildly less obvious? I mean they still breathlessly covered and promoted the Red Scare a half a century ago.
Not to mention that state and nonprofit media still have issues. How would one fix any of them? The only way to fix the media is to fix the voters. Actually teach critical thinking stills and encourage them. Not gullibly devouring anything fed to you unquestioningly.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. All the information to debunk every claim ever made by Trump is out there. All anyone has to do is look. But most people cannot be bothered. They will just go with whatever hearsay they see on Facebook.
On that note I recently had to deal with my sister getting a bit frothy. Raging about how the Harris administration had spent so much more money than the Trump administration had on some meaningless thing. I had to insert myself and point out if there had never been a Harris administration. And that not even the Biden Administration had done what she was talking about.
only way to fix the media is to fix the voters.
This narrative serves the capitalist class and cannot be proven. You don’t “fix” voters, you create solidarity by dealing with their material conditions (engage in mutual aid).
Solidarity is great. And I I’m all for it. But how do you have solidarity with a group of people that cannot even agree on what constitutes reality. How do you address the material conditions of people who reject addressing the material conditions if it also helps someone who isn’t them.
The answer is you cannot. Not until critical thinking skills Etc are addressed. As long as people are blindly ideological of any stripe. There can’t be solidarity
How would you fix something that isn’t broken?
I would respectfully disagree and point out that all of your well-considered points are in fact indicative that media in the US and to some other extent the rest of the world is very much broken.
And has been for well over 50 years.
Then you should be able to provide relevant counter points to current events and the constant creep of sensationalist yellow journalism. Otherwise you’re just disagreeing to disagree.
When it comes to mass media it’s actually been this way far longer. The 50 years statement was in relation to just postwar propaganda output ala the red scare. It existed and was popular before that too. But I look forward to you actually posing something to actually disprove it other than “nuh uh”.
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink.
The issue here is that the horse has been drilled into being gullible for generations now. Compared to other civilised nations, what Fox & co are allowed to spew forth on a daily basis goes way beyond what would be considered libel or incitement in other places. But the root of the problem isn’t even that, the real crux is that whoever pays the most, decides what is legal and what not in the US. The fact that pumping money into politics has been decided to be perfectly a-ok freedom of speech instead of skewing legislation towards the richest is incomprehensible in many other societies. The Supreme Court and the lobbies make a mockery of actual democracy in favour of buying influence.
Sure, stopping billion dollar, profit-driven corporate media conglomerates should be super easy.
Honestly, “corporate mainstream media sucks” is a thing most people agree on. I know a guy who voted for Trump at least once who has been turning away from that kind of politics lately, and it’s this kind of message I hear him repeating. Now, I’m sure we have different views on how to solve that and what alternative sources should be used, but if it’s something to agree on, then maybe it’s a point of leverage.
part of me wishes that the democrats spent money to put up a decent fight against the VERY rampant misinformation in spanish media instead of using the money to attack third party candidates.
Third party candidates are often part of the misinformation machine. Used as an attack Vector as well. The problem is Democrats cannot address everything. Oligarchs fund conservative media more than most people realize. So many outlets exist just to push a narrative. Not to make a profit. Tim Pool and several other right-wing demagogues were recently exposed for getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars effectively a week to put out one or two low effort barely edited videos of propaganda. They made more in a couple weeks than someone like Sam Cedar for instance makes in a year. And they are just the ones we know about. Democrats simply cannot compete with or push back against all of it with the minuscule funding they do get.
the democrats literally broke campaign fund raising records and their donor list includes some of the richest oligarchs on this planet.
it was clear that they barely tried at all on univision and telemundo based on the professionally-polished trump-loving pundits mopping the floor with unpracticed volunteers and nonprofits; it was like watching the debate but in reverse with trump’s side dominating the discourse just as hard as kamala did.
i think that the democrats just assumed that latinos would vote for them anyways like they did with almost everyone else.
Democracy: “of the People, by the People, for the People”.
Y’all seem to forget the middle part. Institutions, including the media, are not there to hand democracy on a silver platter. Democracy must be safeguarded. Constantly. There is no room for passive participation. American democracy is under threat because people are so apathetic and just expect it to happen on its own.
Statements like “the media should…” are not going to accomplish anything. It’s just more passive participation.
Much as I agree, these people went rabbitholing on Youtube. Well-designed “independent” (toxic) videos, properly targeted by Youtube & co (in exchange for some tax returns, maybe?) were an important part of their information, something that you can hardly blame on more … traditional sources.
“I didn’t do anything beyond confirm my own biases. Why are things this terrible all of a sudden? I didn’t want this!”
Tell me you haven’t spent much time in the naturalized Latino community, hanging out, asking them about where they came from, asking how they feel about illegal immigrants, without, you know, telling me.
After trump called every stripe of latino, rapists and murderers, and threatened mass deportations, out loud, and often, more latinos voted for donald trump in this election than have ever voted for any republican candidate in any american election before.
It’s deluded and destructive, but this is the reality on the ground.
Well I won’t feel sorry for them when they get deported along with all the "illegals " they chose the leopard to eat their face on purpose.
yes. agreed. though, once again, working in the community, really opened up my eyes to what a great many naturalized citizens feel is important to them. not all, of course, but it shocked the shit out of me, and no one would have believed it until after they voted.
*edit: it’s important to know what your constituency values, and if those things run counter to the basis of secular egalitarian representative democracy, change their minds. just saying well that’s stupid and self destructive to the whole, isn’t going to win their votes.
I know all about it. I worked in the flooring industry. A lot illegal immigrants doing that work, and some had Trump stickers and blue lives matter stickers.
So they hate themselves? Or are they delusional enough to think that the Trump administration will weed out the “good” latinos from the “bad” ones?
The ones that voted are by definition here legally, and they’re susceptible to the propaganda about illegals coming in and taking jobs and getting all sorts of resources from the government. If you believe that, while your path to citizenship was anything but that, you might start thinking something needs to be done about the border too.
While the border wall stuff is definitely rooted into racism, the economic argument will still speak to immigrants that are in the country legally. Of course, if Trump is serious about “rounding up illegals” or whatever the plan is, a lot of legal residents will also end up caught in the drag net, and it’s going to suck for everyone.
to answer this honestly more than dips the toe into racist stereotypes, and i’d like to have the honest conversation but will suffice to say, the guys i know (and this isn’t limited to that small group) appreciate strength, and a heavy hand from their government, almost above all other things.
it would have been advantageous for democrats to have pointed out that, by and large, the nations from which a majority have immigrated from, are corrupt, and dangerous to the point where a living wage is unattainable, and the organs of state either could not or would not keep them and their families safe.
that is what the united states can offer, with a government of by and for the people. now we fall considerably short of this, all the time, and have since the founding fathers, but we have an engine of economy, and relative comparative safety which continue to draw latino immigrants, legal and otherwise.
it’s in pointing out the benefits, of a free egalitarian secular representative accountable democracy, which drew they and their families here in the first place, and explain, in detail, how corruption that the MAGA world was threatening, and displayed during Trump’s first term, would destroy all that they had come to this country for in the first place.
Fucking morons bouta get rekt.
“turning to Youtube” doesn’t really say much one way or another. There is a wide range of content from professional media over smaller alternative media outlets over individual opinion pieces to manufactured disinformation from state actors all hosted on Youtube.
The algorithm doesn’t really send you down the helpful rabbit holes in my experience. Every reasonable video on YouTube is like two away from Infowars level content.
I use Freetube so my algorithm has been slightly neutered. Yet I have gotten video recommendations that are all about “End Wokeness in Games” or “Trump is going to save us.” Those videos will take you directly to the far right.
