Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I think that a signifiant contributing factor is the power of group-think, which is a phenomenon that is extremely difficult for all people to overcome. It is socially engrained, instinctive behaviour, and I find for the most part that people are simply not interested in knowing why we think the thoughts that we think.
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Yup and like nfotiu said throw in social media and the algorithms that tend to show you things you agree with...
And organizations know this and leveraged this to a large degree.
There was a very in-depth article on the Trump campaign and how they were using their data, and one of their tactics was a voter suppression effort. They were doing ad buys targeting specific groups of voters (black people, women) and providing ads directing them to sources of info that were designed to discourage them from voting.
There was
another talking about all the fake news sites that spread disinformation during the campaign. Reddit, Facebook, twitter, etc were all flooded with news sites that often looked professional (The Dallas Providence or International Political News or something) but if you checked they were brand new domain names registered to someone in Russia, or a teenager in Macedonia, etc.
I mean 120 years ago people would attend public lynchings, not murderous psychopaths, but regular people. We want to fit into the crowd.
It's fine to take a wait and see attitude with Trump, but it's also important to watch very carefully that he doesn't become normalized, because he's not normal.