Why People Stick with Trump and Fox News -- Even When Hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19 Lies Do Harm?

[dajoki]

Why People Stick with Trump and Fox News — Even When Hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19 Lies Do Harm?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/23/1939713/-Why-people-stick-with-Trump-and-Fox-when-the-lies-on-hydroxychloroquine-and-COVID-19-do-them-harm

Why are Trump supporters so devoted? The simple answer is that they are members of a death cult. Call it the #TrumpDeathCult. Beyond that simple answer, there’s this: When your identity rests on Trump and his party being right, to admit that they are wrong—or worse, that they don't even give a rat's ass about you and yours—requires rethinking everything you are. I guess for some people, dying is easier.

Donald Trump and his state propaganda sycophants over at Fox News hyped hydroxychloroquine as a "game changer,” until it was game over. We learned this week that taking the drug not only doesn’t help people recover from COVID-19, it makes it more likely that they will drop dead. Why doesn’t this make hordes of Republican voters say, “What in the world am I doing listening to these shameless liars?” The fact that they don’t is what makes them dangerous.

<<snip>>

And yet I still can’t believe these people don’t stand up and reject their right-wing masters. I’m like Charlie Brown, who thinks that this time—despite it never having happened before—Lucy will let me kick that ever-loving football. “What’s wrong with these conservatives?” I scream in my head. Don’t they care about themselves? About their own friends and families? Do the Fox News viewers even notice that suddenly no one is talking about hydroxychloroquine anymore, after it was hyped for weeks? Don’t they care?

Of course, this is even bigger than just hydroxychloroquine. Even though they had been warned—and thus knew better—Trump, Republicans, and Fox News have been lying about the severity of the coronavirus since the start. Then, once the bodies started piling up, they began lying about the fact that they had lied.

<<snip>>

[DFW]

1. There will always be those

If Trump says 2+2=5 and their calculator says 2+2=4, there will always be the hard core who will believe Trump because their calculator was made in China, and who are you going to believe, after all, a calculator made in China, or a Trump made in Queens?

[dalton99a]

2. +1. A self-made, very successful businessman from Queens

who knows everything

[DFW]

3. About the only one left who believes he is sefl-made and very successful

That would have to be Trump, himself.

After all the bail-outs and bankruptcies, the only ones who truly swallow his "genius business acumen" couldn't even populate the Hitler Bunker at this point.

[Mme. Defarge]

4. It's the sin of pride.

They cannot admit they were wrong.

[Kingofalldems]

5. They know he hates black people, just like them.

They'll never leave him.

[jaysunb]

7. Bingo ! Nt

[Aristus]

6. The Lucy-Charlie Brown-football metaphor

was used in an episode of The West Wing once.

[crickets]

8. Because FOX spews the lies and hate they want to hear.

And there is a definite brainwashing effect when they hear those lies over and over again.

How Fox News evolved into a propaganda operation

Right wing media are now brainwashing young and old alike

How Fox brainwashed conservative America

...In 1996 Murdoch launched Fox News as part of the cable network offerings, operating under the Fox Entertainment Group umbrella name. Murdoch knew that there was a much larger American audience that would buy into everything from the extreme conservative slanted “opinions” packaged as news to outright conspiracy theories.

Apparently, Murdoch was completely correct in his insight, as the so-called “news channel” portended to offer alternative views, spewing that the standard media was biased towards liberal opinions. This was the first of a long list of claims that didn’t stand up to fact checkers or statistics. [snip]

While people of all ideologies enjoy hearing validation of their personal beliefs, conservatives are the least likely to want to hear anything that contradicts them. There is also a kind of brainwashing aspect that occurs in hearing a lie repeated over and over again. I address this topic in my article: Supporting Trump: The Psychology of the Lie [snip]

If you hear a lie often enough, it starts to sound true. According to what’s called the “illusory truth effect,” the more you hear a false statement, the truer it starts to sound. This is even true when you should know better. In a fascinating, if disheartening, 2015 study, researchers showed that if people repeated the phrase ‘The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth’ enough times, the Atlantic Ocean did indeed begin to seem like the largest ocean on Earth.’

‘A constant stream of lies becomes so mentally taxing that your brain gives up. ‘It’s called cognitive load,’ Konnikova writes, meaning that “our limited cognitive resources are overburdened.’ Lie detection is difficult work, and your brain can only handle so much.’”

[IcyPeas]

9. fox news is comfort food for stupid people

[ffr]

10. Fact is, their whole world view has been shown to be a lie. Conservatism is a failure.

They cannot go back on that, because it means everything they've done in life has been for a cause that has been a big lie, a failure.

That's too hard for their shallow personalities to confess. So yeah, going down with the lie, the failure is the easier option for a death cult.