Veteran 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley reported on Donald Trumpās efforts to strong-arm some of the countryās top law firms into doing his bidding on Sunday nightās episode of the embattled CBS newsmagazine.
Pelleyās segment pulled no punches in describing Trumpās efforts and reminding viewers that Trump is the āfirst felonā ever to sit in the Oval Office.
Iām not talking about Nazis. When all this is over, they can deal with the consequences of their actions
Iām talking about the people who genuinely have no idea whatās going on. The Trump supporters you see in real life. The ones who were shocked when the tarrifs went through. The ones who think Trump is religious. The ones who thought Elon was actually intelligent and is reducing fraud
Most people you meet in real life arenāt the raving lunatics you see online, theyāre people who watch the news. In American news, everything Trump says is sane washed.
They arenāt Nazis. They donāt believe Nazi things. They donāt know or understand whatās going on, they think itās business as usual because thatās what theyāre being told
Thereās genuinely not very many Nazis, thereās plenty of casual bigots, but the ignorant vastly outnumber the true believers
Thereās no concept of ācasual bigotryā as thereās no āranked bigotryā. A bigot is a bigot the same way as a nazi is a nazi even if he only shares a meal with other known nazis.
No amount of sane washing can change their nature, only re-education and facing consequences for their choices will.
Itās time to stop being polite and understanding with people who have no sense of community or care for others around them, keeping this attitude will never solve the problem. If you show mercy to this people they will continue to resent you while feeling as victims of an unjust system (in their eyes) and will continue to spread their worldview to their spawn presenting it as a ācountercultureā to the mainstream way of life keeping this circle of hate and victimisation alive.
We have to break the circuit by showing to their faces why they arenāt adapt to be living among us and we need to be clear in our messaging, otherwise any small window we will leave they will use it to maintain their positions and preach their gospel of hatred.
You are correct, they arenāt Nazis, not even close. But they are full of hate. Enough hate that they would prefer to be thought of as stupid, or easily fooled rather than admit why they chose to vote for someone who who is an open fascist, āadmirersā Nazi generals, and was best friends with a pedophile. Trump is not some unknown. He has was not only president before, but his presidency was was disastrous and he exited with the worst polls of any president ever. They knew exactly what they were getting. They werenāt fooled. They werenāt conned or hoodwinked. They didnāt even lack for choice. There were plenty of other little fascist wanna bees running around trying to get elected.
Stop infantilizing grown adults. If they ādidnāt know what they were gettingā it is because they chose not to know. They purposely chose someone that they knew would hurt them because they expect him to hurt the people that they hate more.
Theyāre not full of hate - theyāre full of fear and anger. Warranted fear and anger. Just misdirected
In Trumpās last presidency, nothing fascist really happened. Bad things certainly, disastrous even, but honestly? Living through it, it was mostly business as usual. Things got worse, but the COVID response was really the worst, and thereās no living comparisonā¦ So itās a mishandling of a unique crisis, so it was what it was
You donāt understand propoganda.
One of the times I felt most ignorant was when I was working in France, and talking politics I called them socialist and they laughed. Because all my life, France was labeled socialist, I learned it in elementary school through college. I was already a leftist. But I never thought to evaluate my understanding of socialism against my understanding of French politics. And when called out, I immediately realized it was a complete blind spot and felt ashamed. I learned to doubt what Iād been taught, to examine my geopolitical beliefs more deeply. Iād never have done that without a wakeup call
They donāt know what fascism is. Theyāve never experienced it. The Nazis are unambigiously evil to them, but they donāt know the fascism checklist. The news they consume reframes everything as normal partisan politicsā¦ It downplays it all to a degree that can only be described as lies.
They donāt know that thereās any inconsistency. They are the highest form of ignorant - they donāt know to question yet
I think I understand propaganda well enough. I think you underestimate peopleās intelligence and misunderstand how propaganda affects people. In your own story of dealing with propaganda, when confronted with conflicting information, you realized your error, or were at least open to learning more. Or is it that you feel that you are so much smarter than the average conservative that they are just helpless compared to you? You are correct that they are full of fear and anger, but I donāt believe it was something that just happened to them without them being able to do anything about it.
Also, not fascist? He straight out said he wanted to be a dictator, he praised Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and, Hungaryās authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban.
And as for his first term, even if we pretend that his policies and actions didnāt significantly worsen the spread of Covid, and wipe Covid from the slate, his presidency was still a nonstop shit show that separated children from their parents for crueltyās sake, got service men and allies killed, exposed, got tortured, and got murdered a significant part of our foreign intelligence gathering community. And that is just skimming the top and pulling out the easy stuff.
No, thatās my point exactly - I felt the inconsistency viscerally. My reality conflicted with what I never thought to question. Itās the same for everyone.
My example was not to say Iām superior, but to say propaganda works. Even if youāre educated. Even if you put in time to question your own beliefs. It slips in without notice, and you donāt know itās there until you do
And the news, social media, the language of politicians - itās intentionally designed to give people a skewed version of the world.
Let me give you an example happening right nowā¦ The tarrifs. Markets went down, Trump approval went down. The markets recovered, people think it was a nothing burger
The ports are empty. The supply chains cuts are about to ripple throughā¦ But most people think that whole thing is over, that Trump just did a little insider trading, but the economy managed to hold up to it. So his approval rate recovered a bit
This summer, weāre going to have empty store shelves. Itās so obviously not overā¦ But many, many people have mixed up the āeconomyā with the actual trade of goods and services.
Thatās the level of most peopleās understanding