I've been listening primarily to the liberal mainstream news propaganda. Their lies are obvious if you dig a bit deeper, look at the facts and think for yourself.
Apparently critical thinking is what college-educated people lack this days after years of indoctrination into groupthink and compliance. Deresiewicz called them 'excellent sheep' for a good reason.
I find this kind epistemology fascinating. Suppose I were to not believe any institutional message, and lend it no credence whatsoever. "Thinking for myself" is not enough. Ultimately, I need information that I can't gather myself, and, often enough, some expert who can put it into context, because there are too many things and too little time, and learning anything in depth requires years. So, in the end, you have to trust someone, and it seems to me that the people who say "think for yourself" or "do your own research" might be skeptical of institutional sources, but are quicker to trust other sources than your "excellent sheep," but why they trust the particular sources they trust is pretty mysterious.
I tried, as a "magical mystery tour" exercise of sort, to see if I could get into the conspiracy theories that permeate the Trump world, but found that I was too skeptical and couldn't truly bring myself to believe what they believe, even as an experiment, because their entire epistemological system, the philosophy of how they come to "know" something, is something I couldn't follow the rules of. How someone's reputation is determined was a mystery to me. There are no documented methodologies, no agreed-upon "scientific method", no peer review. I once asked someone how he knew something, and he said that he'd done his own research. I asked him which databases and archives they had access to, but then realized that what he meant by "research" was that he'd read some posts on Facebook by people he didn't know and watched some videos on YouTube, also by people he didn't know, and he'd judged their reputation based on the opinions of others, but those others had had just the same corpus of knowledge, and nobody actually had any access to primary data, and no one even thought this should make them skeptical.
So how do you know that this conspiracy theory is something you should believe but not that other one? I assumed there was some internal logic, but I just couldn't find a pattern. I think it has to do with the aesthetics of the story; how dramatic it is, how good-vs-evil, and whether it fits with an overarching meta-conspiracy-theory of hidden powers. If the story is dramatic, they believe it. In other words, the truth is whatever makes for a good story, where I am played as a pawn of some hidden cabal. But perhaps you can shed some more light on that epistemological process.
(Before I begin, I'd like to thank you for trying to understand the perspectives of others rather than bashing and ignoring anyone who doesn't share the same beliefs. We need more of this in the world.)
I see a few important aspects to touch on here...I'm personally towards the right of the political spectrum, and would probably identify as Libertarian. First, you're generalizing the entire right-wing ideology from a "conspiracy theory" starting point. Most right-wing ideology isn't based around impacts from "conspiracy theories", it's mostly based around believing that the left's agenda is bad for America in the long-term. Adding up all the "conspiracy theories" won't give you the "sum" of what defines the right's beliefs...it could more reliably be defined as "subtracting" the future negative outcomes of left-wing policies. Second, most "conspiracy theories" by nature aren't fleshed out and therefore don't have clear-cut epistemological foundations. That's not to say they aren't possibly true in at least some form. It was once a "conspiracy theory" to say the Earth was round. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That's not to say some things aren't completely outrageous, but it's much more dangerous to say every "conspiracy theory" is fake than the opposite, which is the media's/left's current approach. Third, you're over-distilling the term "think for myself/yourself". This doesn't literally mean go out and find every single fact yourself, it means diversify your source of news outside of the 3-4 media conglomerates (which are owned by a handful of individuals). Fourth, you seem to skip over the entire aspect of why the parent commenter mentions "think for yourself". It's not only the sweeping censorship that's an issue, it's also the non-reporting or shadow-banning of any topics that go against the left-wing narrative.
Political psychologists claim that, generally (and, of course, as a simplification), the right is over-sensitive to danger, while the left is under-sensitive. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that conspiracy theories aren't actual beliefs about what is actual reality, but rather potential threats, and so, tend to focus on hidden threats -- because that's where "real danger" is presumed to lie -- rather than overt ones, like, say, global warming. Is that what you're saying?
So I think I understand the general framework better now. Nevertheless, while conspiracies are, of course, always possible, they're quite implausible. I can't help but think about Hofstadter's "paranoid style":
> The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction...
> ... Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him...
From what I see in popular conspiracy theories, this is what happens. They form around a Hollywood thriller's perception of power, but those who've seen power up close -- whether in large corporations, the military or politics -- know that this is not how power works. Secrets can't be kept; conflicting interests make it hard if not impossible to get enough people on the same page, and the less mainstream that page is, the harder it is; even the craftiest people are clumsy and make mistakes all the time.
The few successful plots and revolutions in history never happen even remotely to the way conspiracies say they could happen. E.g. they're virtually never dropped from above on an unsuspecting public, but almost always start with restless masses and pervasive instability like Russia's mutinous and depleted military in WWI, or Cuba's series of insurrections; you can usually see them coming a mile away. Even the relatively surprising Iranian revolution was at least as much grass-roots as it was led from above. So even if the framework is one of identifying threats, their originators'/believers' unfamiliarity with history and power looks for threats in the wrong place.
That's OK. I understand the system of not believing something. But Trump world is full of things that those people do believe, and I'm trying to understand why people who claim to believe so little actually believe so much, what they base their belief on, and why they think skepticism is their brand. It's like a bunch of people who'd walk around wearing five layers of clothes and identifying as nudists.
For example, there are thousands of people in that world who are self-proclaimed skeptics, yet believe predictions made by an anonymous person, whose only reputation is of having a perfect score of total misses. So if those people see doubting those who lie to them as central to their identity, why do they make a point of believing someone who so very clearly has done nothing other than lie to them? It's not even a matter of distrusting faceless institutions and trusting only acquaintances, because they're all too happy to trust people they don't even know exist.
Trump has been true to his word, the important things he promised in the matters of policy, the important things he’s done for the economy, diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab countries, cancelling critical race theory indoctrination in government, standing up for police being scapegoated by raging mobs.
His actions speak louder than words. He closed the border with China when everyone was accusing him of xenophobia, he did it just in time to flatten the curve. He helped millions of people with stimulus package, saved countless businesses and jobs via fed corporate bonds, I can go on and on. These are not opinions but facts.
You see it’s not about what or whom you believe but what you and them actually do.
The left accuse the president of being racist without any basis, by misinterpreting or intentionally misrepresenting his sayings. Building their whole campaign around massive 'racism' conspiracy. Many people vote Trump just because they are tired of this bullshit.
That whole BLM summer of protests? Gone, no longer in fashion. Dems don’t really care about black lives, they cynically exploit race politics to grab power. It worked marvels for them in these elections.
I'm not talking about any of that. Why people voted for Trump is a related discussion, but not the same. Clearly, Pizzagate or Q or Birthers or 9/11 Truthers or Ukranian conspiracists did not deliver on their word, so I'm wondering about the dissonance in the self-identification as skeptics by people who are clearly very credulous, as well as by their epistemology, the process by which they come to know what is "true."
Well, when I look at mainstream media saying for 3 years that Trump "is a Russian agent", that Trump is conspiracy theorist saying that Obama admin spied on his campaign - I by being a "critical thinker" compare it to IG report and comments in Senate hearings and make a decision of how adjust my trust ratings for sources. At some point rating of some sources is going to be too low to even consider them, and some will be Ok-ish. That's how I will know what "conspiracy theories" to consider. They might end up not being "conspiracy theories" altogether (like conspiracy theory that Iraq does not have WMD).
I don't have an issue with what the Trump world doesn't believe. A system that says, "we believe nothing" or even, "we believe nothing said by someone's who's ever lied" is fine. What I don't understand is how easily they do believe in stuff that is, at the very least, not more credible than the stuff they don't. It's not their skepticism that perplexes me, but their credulity. They clearly have an epistemology that's very different from the mainstream Western tradition (or any other, for that matter), and I'm curious to understand what it is.
> It is not about skepticism, it is about assigning weights - stories and opinions coming from more trusted sources warrant more attention.
Sure, but how is Q more trusted than, say, the FBI, even if the FBI is hardly to be trusted at all?
> I think that "believing in stuff" is not a problem affecting only the "Trump world".
I agree, but they're unique in not just being credulous -- if not more than others then certainly no less -- but also in self-identifying as skeptics while doing so. "I don't believe scientists and historians and law enforcement because I'm a skeptic, but I do believe the unsubstantiated ramblings of strangers online, some of whom are anonymous!"
> Sure, but how is Q more trusted than, say, the FBI, even if the FBI is hardly to be trusted at all?
Yep, it is all screwed up - we need to work on establishing new sources of information because many old ones pretty much discredited themselves (maybe they can be cleaned up but I doubt it). Political journalism is hard to find these days - but there are some brave people like GG and MT that are trying to do that outside of media corporations and I think it is a way to go for now.
You don't have to dig deep at all to see Trumps lies though. They're so obvious it's disgusting. They're irresponsible and harmful. The fact that you don't see this just invalidates anything you write
