Why do Duers intuitively "GET IT" while ~25% of the country is still supporting *?

[DCKit]

I can smell BS a mile away, never believed * was anything more than a spoiled, entitled, ignorant, drug and alcohol addled cretin, yet he's still the pResident and Darth Cheney's still calling the shots. WTF is wrong with this country and why do some of us see behind the curtain so clearly when so many others simply believe whatever they're told?

There should be a limit on the number of times you can say "Fuck the people and screw the law" and get away with it. MY head has been exploding for five years because the majority of American's don't even seem to be concerned with anything other than "Terra, terra, terra."

Thanks in advance for your responses.

[sandnsea]

1. Read their newspapers

Watch their local news channels. Try it yourself. For a month, hell for a week. No other news except the news someone in a small rural town would get. Some town in Oklahoma perhaps. One newspaper. Then check back in to DU and see what you missed.

[yardwork]

11. Not just in small towns!

I live in a college town that considers itself to be highly enlightened and aware (I know, I know :puke: ). If I had to rely on the supposedly "liberal" local paper, newscasts, even NPR - I wouldn't have half a clue what was really going on. That's why I check DU every day.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. Is that Chapel Hill or Asheville?

I don't think there are any others that fit that description here.

[yardwork]

19. That would be mumble mumble the southern part of heaven....

Where are you located, NCevilDUer? :hi:

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. I'm in Raleigh, and so long as I don't go north of the beltline I'm

pretty comfortable - that always feels like I'm venturing into enemy territory, and is the only place I've been road-raged because of my bumperstickers. Don't venture out much to the other blue enclaves, but as a state employee working with nearly all like-minded persons at ( ) I don't feel to need to very often. But there are times I feel like I'm always walking on eggshells. It's not really a place for an old hippie to fit in.

[karynnj]

21. Exactly - and it doesn't have to be all that rural

The other thing is that it happened gradually - though not slowly. The news sources they trusted all their lives turned gradually more right wing. Most small time newspapers mostly take the AP (or at one time AP and UPI) stories for all their international and national news. I think both the AP and UPI were pretty nonpartisan until sometime - maybe in the 1990s. Now, you can look at most articles that have a political component and you can see that - at least subtly they show the Republicans in a better light than they do the Democrats. Sometimes it is simply the choice of adjectives or other descriptors, where the more positive ones are given to Bush or other Republicans. (The AP still describes the SBVT as having "questioned" his service.) Sometimes it is the order of the article and what appears to be their "independent view. (Consider the 2004 articles on Kerry'a Iraq proposal. The first paragraph said Kerry gave a plan at NYU, then they had the Republican comment that what he proposed (not stated because extensive diplomacy was first point etc) was what Bush was already doing. Their concluding paragraph backed the Republican claim.)

The subtlety of the bias leads people to think that they are reading the news and know what's going on. Yet each thing they read pushes them to question the motives of the Democrats. This is then reinforced if they listen to cable news. Other than Olberman, there are few Democrats prominent on any of the evening shows. Yet there is a constant noise that the media is liberal.

What is impressive is that in spite of this, the country itself moved faster than the media against Iraq. They made their own judgment. Consider how negative the media was in summer 2006 on the idea that we need to set a deadline and get out. Senator Kerry was vilified daily while Kerry/Feingold was being debated. Yet, when people were polled leading up to the 2006 elections, far more people wanted us out in one year than wanted out immediately or who were willing to stay longer. This was an enormous shift. The Presidential candidates and the media shifted to follow the people on this. This does show that the people can - if they are told things that don't seem true - will reject them.

[saracat]

2. I wouldn't say "All" Duer's "intuitively get it'. There is a small number who support the alleged

front runner, who reinforces * so effectually, they applaud the old regime as well. And they are actively campaigning for "more of the same" and with enthusiasm.I just do not "get" that. What we need is change not more of the same. We can't get rid of the corruption unless we admit it exists and some are not willing to do that. Some want to turn back the clock to an illusion of the 90's which would be government as "usual" complete with resident lobbyists. No, many DUer's do nor "get it".

[DCKit]

10. I was going to say "many", but didn't want to run out of space on the subject line.

Then again, many posting on DU are only here to disrupt and don't believe what they say. They're just following the party line and obfuscating to the best of their limited ability.

[Red Zelda]

3. Go to their churches

That's where the 25% comes from. They are all religious whackjobs.

[old guy]

4. I believe there are many out there, and I know several,

that feel that once * is gone and a couple of years pass everything will go back to the "way it was". No matter how much I try to get them to look beyond their TV, they stumble on with their tunnel vision. I don't try real hard with them anymore.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. Use the 'poncho' analogy on them.

Ever buy a $2 plastic poncho? It comes in a little plastic pouch and you can carry it in your pocket. When it rains, you pull the poncho out of the pouch and put it on and stay relatively dry.

But when it has stopped raining, there is no way you are ever going to get that poncho back into its little plastic pouch. No matter how tightly you fold it, it is forever too big.

The country will never become what it was, pre-Bush. There's no way to fold it tightly enough to stuff it back in.

[old guy]

20. Good analogy. Thanks

[beltanefauve]

5. Terra, terra, terra

You got it. How successfully one is manipulated by fear is what separates those of us with good bullshit detectors from those without. If you're compliant enough to put blind faith in your so-called leaders, it's out of fear, because after all, if Daddy doesn't protect us, who will? Fear-mongering goes beyond the terra issue as well. Those at the front of the line: older, white males with money, are scared to death as well. The powers that be constantly threaten them with the loss of their place in line, by women, minorities, gays, immigrants, whatever bogeyman they can conjour up to keep them in line and keep them voting Republican.

I, and I'm sure you, have been warning people about the BFEE for the last seven years now, and have been met with denial and anger, and have been called a "terrorist-appeaser", "un-American", and whatever else they can think of to call me. We're truth-tellers, and these people are afraid of the truth. We're a threat to their illusions of safety. In the process, it is them, and not us, who have forgotten what it means to be an American.

[TwilightZone]

6. Some of it is party loyalty.

For some, it goes back generations. For them, Bush is to be supported, simply because he's an (R).

[Glorfindel]

7. I wish I knew the answer

I've had people say to me "You said all along that Iraq was a horrible mistake. You were right. But I still support the pResident." When I ask why, the answer is, "Because he's a Republican." At that point, I just have to walk away, since it's illegal to beat someone to death with a hammer.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

8. I've said this before. Some people are just stupid!

In a national poll a few weeks ago, 30% of the respondents did NOT know the date 9-11 happened. If that dosn't explain it, I don't know what does.

[yardwork]

12. That's really...... remarkable.

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. I've noticed that, too. People refer to it as 'the day 9/11 happend'.

The spin machine has made 9/11 what happened, rather than the date a terror attack happened. 9/11 was the event, not just the date.

Kind of like Pearl Harbor was the sneak attack, not just the place the sneak attack took place. That attack is semantically separated from the place name, just as the 9/11 attack is semantically separated from the date of 09/11/01.

Bizarre.

[RebelSansCause]

9. it's media control

pure and simple, people believe what they are told. hell, people can become convinced that things from the past were not when they remember them to be. have you ever read 1984? i look at that not merely as a work of fiction, but as to the ultimate ends of tyranny and fascism. having a ministry of truth which makes the truth what the government says is quite the chilling possibility, but one that i believe to be within the means of today's day and age. people believe what they want to believe, the office of the pres is supposed to hold a certain level of respectability and credence.

[Ian David]

13. The 25% are the "Some of the People, All of The Time" crowd. The GOP = The SoPATs. n/t

[Vinca]

14. If you listen to the Washington Journal in the morning, you'll realize

that the 25% is the insane people. They seem to call in early before they're medicated for the day. In fact, I'm convinced that somewhere in the deep south there is an institution devoted entirely to batty Republican women.

[rucky]

15. 25% sounds about right.

Walk into nearly any room in America with random people in it, and you have about 25% serious assholes.

[democrat2thecore]

23. Read Rocky Anderson's speech/letter posted close by. -nt