Joshe

Nice share! Sorry certain realities are hard for you to stomach. Next time, I'll be sure to include a chapter on empathy and how they're human beings too. Maybe that'll help you not get lost in your own psychic distortions. Something like this: For all their faults, they are people just like me. I am no better than them. I even care about them and love them. I do not think they are inferior to me. However, it is a fact that their willful ignorance to accept what is true and to deny reality has manifested a highly volatile scenario where the fate of the world is on the line. No matter how unsettling, this is true, but we should remember they are people as well. That's the best I can do for you. I know it's not perfectly tailored to your liking but I couldn't omit that one truth I know you don't like.

Good idea. It's important that we maintain a good image so others can think highly of us. Now, be a predictable boy and get the last word in. Make it count!

Aww, you're special. The question was to you sweetheart, not other members. A simple "yes, I ignorantly assumed what you have and have not considered and based my entire argument on that" would have sufficed, but I understand the need for social validation. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We all do it from time to time.

Even your adhoms are fallacious. Your entire post relies on false assumptions and your understanding of the topic is lacking. Why do you assume my position dismisses their grievances? Why do you assume I haven't examined the disconnect you're referring to? Why do you assume I simply chalk up the 80+ million people to simply being low-conscious? Why do you assume I view those 80 million as the scum of the earth? Do you like these assumptions because they help you dismiss the truth? The people in my life who I love most are Trumpists. I'm not very political. But you and your "type" ignorantly label anyone who has my position as being left or progressive, because you use your assumptions as if they're fact. That's how the truth works. It's perfect and it can't be tore down, no matter how hard you try. It's coherent and logical. You can criticize my interpretation of the truth and maybe say I focus too much on one aspect of it, but no one cares what you say if you dismiss the truth outright. And please, spare us your Tucker Carlson talking points. Lastly, why do you feel the need to wrap the word Trumpism in quotes? Is it because you reject the term? I don't need an answer. I already know that's the case. Good day to you sir.

It'll be interesting how the 'wisdom of the crowds' evolves.

The whole "chaos agent" cohort no longer has a leg to stand on. They did in 2016, but after Trump tried to overthrow the democratic will of the people to seize power for himself, it became obvious the chosen chaos agent is too chaotic to fuck around with. Just as good sense-making isn't in everyone's wheelhouse, neither is tact. That said, I would employ much more tact face to face than what I do on a forum discussing Trumpism. You left out the largest factor. Can you figure out where the majority of the negative emotions actually stem from? If you understood this point, you yourself would likely speak against Trumpism rather than attempt to make room for it. If you care about the world and care about people, you experience pain from Trumpism. People with a small circle of concern, or dare I say, lacking moral development, can only view it intellectually and that's why centrists can't wrap their heads around what they like to call TDS. This critique seems black and white and reductionist. You're projecting black and white thinking onto others. For example, why would you assume others would call Bernie supporters high consciousness just because they voted for Bernie? Anyone using a single data point like "voted for Bernie" as marker of high consciousness would be a great example of bad thinking.

Unless you're willing to go all out in spirituality, it doesn't make sense to bother yourself too much with understanding the why of reality. If it is no longer interesting or causing you distress, just put it on the back burner and come back to it when you feel like it. In the meantime, occupy yourself with things you enjoy. You don't have to know right now and if you insist that you do, that should be let go of. It sounds like a form of OCD; uselessly and neurotically fixating on something, telling yourself that you must, but in reality, you just need to learn to shift your focus and accept that sometimes things must be let go.

That's the the answer in a nutshell, but that's a very unsatisfying high-level explanation. It's hard to understand because there are so many complex psychological and social structures involved. You have to flesh out multiple psychological profiles and even after you understand them all, you will still be bewildered. There is no satisfactory answer for why willful ignorance persists or why they call good bad and truth false. They're fools who know not what they do. They've been suckling at America's teet for so long that they take it for granted, totally ignorant of what America even is. They have little to live for and they don't care about much outside themselves and their families. Many of them think it's funny. low consciousness poor sensemaking entitled and spoiled no good life purpose small circle of concern selfish And there are more if them than there are of you!

Don't forget to factor in Putin's bots.

😂😂😂

No. I'm saying if it were to happen, you can thank Trump, Trumpism, and all the people who've been running apologetics for Trump, who were too ignorant to see reality for what it clearly was. See, when fucked up shit happens, I go to the root. I like to prevent problems from happening, which means straightening out bad sensemaking and removing falsehoods. Now, if I had a magic red button I could press that would make the Dems seize power in the event of a Trump victory, would I press it? I would consider it. See, the word "consider" means something. If you have a ball sack and know how to think clearly, you can consider things and make decisions based on the considerations without concern for what others might think about the decision. The way the consideration would work is like this: First, is there a good way to do it without it being overt. If not, probably can't do it. Next, look at the likely negative impacts of both options. Next, game those out to fullest and see which is worse. So, yeah, I would consider it and I'm not ashamed to say it. If action Y is near fatal and action X is just toxic, I have the balls to choose option X, regardless of what anyone thinks about it. If democracy has to suffer a bad blow to prevent a fatal blow, which would you prefer? Would you even choose? And it's not just democracy at stake here. We're talking a huge list of toxicities and potentially malignant, unrecoverable. World wars, health crisis, etc.

Do you know why this speculation even exists in your mind right now? I know why. It's because the cancer that is Trump set the precedent for it. No way around this. The guy and movement you run apologetics for is responsible. People warned about this sort of thing and centrist apologists refused to see. Part of me hopes they get a Trump win.

Trumpist like derogatory language, so here ya go: Anyone weighing whether to vote Kamala or Trump is a straight fucking idiot. It's really simple. You look at January 6 through your eye holes and let that information fall into your brain bucket. Then, if you're not a full on retard, you will say "Oh, shit, Trump is a serious threat to democracy and I should probably do all I can to prevent him from fucking that up, because...you know... that's like some serious shit". That's it! End of sensemaking. Jesus fucking Christ the amount of idiocy on this forum is embarrassing. And you fancy yourselves high-conscious people? If you find yourself shirking your responsibility to vote against Trump, your sensemaking apparatus is in dire need of fixing.

I noticed that when I'm dealing with existential stuff or when I'm super fixated on perfecting everything, that's when I start waking up in the middle of the night. The problem seems to get worse the more cerebral I've been and the more intent I am on controlling myself. For example, if I were focused on perfecting my sleep, that alone would fuck my sleep up. Lol. I went years waking up in the middle of the night but since I gave up on self-dev, I sleep all night, no problem. I think A-type personalities engage in stressful shit without recognizing it as stress, and that stress fucks with sleep.

@Fearey haha, that's hilarious.

Close.. I'd put it at ~95% just to be cautious. 😂

There is no flaw. I did not say everyone who is anti-abortion is a non-thinking sheep. I said, "generally speaking". You keep dancing around the point. What do you make of the fact that before political strategists manipulated the Christians into caring about abortion, evangelical Christians were not concerned with it? This is a clear example of the unconscious behavior that I'm talking about. And here's the thing... within a large group of Christians, some of them are thinkers. The thinking types care more about logical consistency for their positions than the non-thinking types, so there will obviously be attempts to use reason to justify their inherited positions. This is basic psychology. People get indoctrinated with ideas and beliefs and then they seek good reason for them. You can almost always trace back their positions to having no solid ground in reality. If you ask them why they care about the 2nd amendment, their answer will be the best answer they have been provided with. If such nonsense was never propagandized and used for political strategy, they wouldn't care two shits about the 2nd amendment. Some would, but the vast majority would not. Same with immigration. The vast majority who care about immigration are just dumb racists who use the best talking points available to justify their crusade. I'm not saying there are no good arguments for these positions. I'm saying that the majority who support them are doing so out of unconscious mimetic behavior, propaganda, and things like this. This is clearly the truth and it's so obvious. And of course, the left does this too, but at least you can usually trace their positions back to solid ground. A climate activist might be propagandized but they at least can usually articulate good reason for their activism. Do you personally know any right wingers? If you do, this should all be obvious.

I appreciate you explaining your perspective and I understand your viewpoints and you do point out legitimate issues, but it seems as if you're either avoiding or lacking some psychological and historical understanding because my statement is not a matter of opinion. Since you don't seem to know it's a fact that most Trump supporters have their positions because they were given to them via propaganda and mimetic behavior, let me illustrate how the Christian-right's #1 policy concern was never a concern until political strategists drilled it into them. Did you know the Bible doesn't take a stance on abortion? So why is the Christian-right so up in arms about it? Did they intelligently arrive at their position? We don't have to be charitable here if we know the answer to the question: Why is abortion #1 on the list of their political concerns? The answer is they were strategically manipulated. The manipulation was mostly implemented by Paul Weyrich. The purpose was to motivate one of the largest demographics in America to get out and vote for the republican candidate, who was being lobbied by Big Christian elites. This is a fact which you can verify yourself. Here's a docu that explains more: https://tubitv.com/movies/100020971/bad-faith. If you don't want to watch it, just look up Paul Weyrich. So when I see a Trump supporter crusading for anti-abortion policy, generally speaking, I know the truth of how they arrived at that position. I'm not in doubt so why would I be charitable to anything other than the truth? It's not mere speculation from a lazy mind seeking to demonize. It's acceptance of a truth that was derived from years of deep insights into human psychology and a little bit of historical knowledge. You can say this truth can be toxic and hard to integrate healthfully, and I would agree. Maybe this truth is unsettling to you because you don't know how to be in harmony with your fellows if they are this low-conscious, which is a real problem and not an easy one to solve, as OP and myself acknowledge. Like OP, I do experience resentment and agitation and sometimes even anger and hate of the willful ignorance that paves the way for toxicity, and I've not yet chosen to be above it and lovingly accept it as opposed to critically condemn it, but of course, you're right that it would be wise to do so.

Do you think if someone understands Trumpism from stage yellow or higher that they're automatically not energetically moved when the phenomenon comes into perception? If someone is engaged in a conversation about Trumpism, they might seem more intense if there was just a stream of appaling developments whereas in another conversation a week later, they might say, "yeah, Trumpism is just a fact of reality.", because their focus might be elsewhere. Many things can modulate the degree to which someone crusades for their values or condemns that which trample upon them. SD is too high-level to apply to individual psychology. Did you read the list? lol. Trump is going to make people respect the police? Trump is going to protect the constitution? A vote for Trump is a vote for law and order? The one thing Trump could maybe deliver is to keep the 10 or so trans men out of women's sports. You know that the vast majority of Trump supporters are not his supporters because of how he governs, right? They are his supporters largely due to monkey-see monkey-do mimetics. For example, I have a cousin who was wearing a "Let's go Brandon" bracelet. He was never political at all so I asked him why he had it and he responded with a laugh and an "I don't know". Well guess what... I do know. He likes to identify with being a tough guy. The candidate that says "fuck you" is his favorite, as long as others like him too. He saw others on the bandwagon and thought it was cool, so he hopped on. Obviously, the answer to your question is yes, they may achieve some semblance of what they think they want, but that's primarily the elimination of fabricated fears they've been propagandized with. The issue here though is this "reasoning" is a facade to give the appearance of being rational, but in reality it's formed to disguise the actual drivers, which is usually a deep-seated need for belonging and identity within a tribe that validates them, but it depends on which cohort you're talking about. Many of the ultra-rich aren’t fooled; they support him simply for the tax cuts, so yes, it’s possible. And I believe many of his supporters weren’t deceived at first; they were drawn to the Trump camp through mimetic behavior. Once there, they felt compelled to uphold a consistent identity and worldview, which led them to overlook the falsehoods while gradually embracing more tribal rhetoric. This, in turn, forces them to accept Trump’s lies as truths. Basically, there is no good rationale for supporting Trump as president of the U.S and anyone who does is a fool. This is a fact, no matter how much you dislike it.

The "shock" or confusion comes from people thinking Trump cares about delivering any of the things they want. Healthy minds can clearly see having faith in a con artist to provide the citizenry with anything of value is utter foolishness. That foolishness is what shocks. The problem is, Trump supporters don't see him as the con man that he is. They say things like "Trump isn't perfect, but he cares about America." The healthy minds among us have a hard time acclimating to a reality where a large portion of their fellows flat out reject and deny a truth that is so easy to see, yet they persist in willful ignorance and refuse to see the truth of what is. This happens with religion but the dangers of religion are nowhere near as immediate as the dangers of putting an overtly toxic, Machiavellian narcissistic con artist at the helm of the most powerful country on the planet. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who sees Trump as he is, which is a con artist, to say the least. Recognize that every single thing he says, he says to further his personal agenda and is almost certainly a lie. He will lie to Christians, unions, Jews, hurricane victims, etc. He will lie to every single demographic and he will make them believe he cares about them with all his heart and he's the strong man to make their dreams a reality. To see those demographics fall for his overt con artistry is disturbing. The best rebuttal a Trump apologist could give here is introduce a both-sides argument, but if they do that, they just demonstrate they can't see what Trump is, and this is yet another facet that contributes to the shock, confusion, and disturbance of healthy minds. We livin' in the upside down bro.

@Keryo Koffa Just informed me they're using Google Keep for a knowledge management system. I'm not sure how many other poor souls there are out here so I figured I'd offer some upgrades. Obsidian uses markdown for notes. Really simple. Plain text files basically. It's free and it has badass features and plugins. My favorite: Infinite canvas. Good for not getting lost in minutia of the thing you're studying. The nodes are notes. You can zoom all the way in and out. Each of these nodes can be external notes as well. If you use Obsidian the way they suggests, you can get a really nice Bird's eye view of your brain with their graph view. Each note/filename is a node. You can click it and it'll take you to the note. Here's an example using mock data. Here's a video of the graph feature. Not sure how well it will play. I'm hosting it with my microsoft account. https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ajj233BUpjgM46kT8RnDEtWFSpt5kQ?e=O0Jldg And here's one for the infinite canvas: https://1drv.ms/i/s!Ajj233BUpjgM46ki3RAxju3IpMNKbA?e=c8jeru You're welcome!

@ryandesreu - That's a good video. Pakman does a good job of explaining right-wing masculinity and their grifters. His explanation basically explains facets of an agitated stage orange demographic and he goes on to talk about how the left(stage green) needs to start providing those folks healthier alternatives of masculinity. This was one of his best takes I've seen so far. Timestamp 34:24. It's obvious this sort of strongman facade resonates with orange but there are subtleties that are easy to miss. Many Trump supporters aren't necessarily right-wing, but rather, pro-perceived strength, and then they might often end up identifying as being on the right because they want to align their identity with strength, toughness, grit, etc., which are ubiquitous values.

@Javfly33 One of my top desires in my early twenties was a particular Mercedes. As time went on, I eventually stopped wanting it. I wanted people to look at the car and be like "wow!" and associate it with me, so I could get ego strokes. Once I understood the desire sprang from this, it slowly went away and never came back. Today, I'd feel awkward driving it because I don't want to be flashy. You seem like you're interested in evolving, so I doubt you'll care about a flashy car in 5 or 10 years.

@What Am I Go create multiple accounts on X and don't follow anyone or tell it your interests, let us know what you see. You'll see Elon telling you democracy is at risk if you don't vote for Trump and you can earn $47 bucks if you go to his link and refer a friend to vote. I just signed up with X a few months back just to see what it was like, and Elon Musk was all over the feed. To be fair though, I saw much right wing propaganda and promotion when I created a new Google account and went to Youtube. The algorithms expect a male in my area to be interested in that stuff. But the difference between Youtube and X's algorithms is that Musk is tweaking his to serve him however he sees fit, whereas Google's is designed to get as much engagement as possible to increase ad revenue. They aren't intentionally trying to propagandize people like Musk is. It's public record that Thiel and Musk LOVE the idea of "memes" and "mimetic theory". Why? Why would the richest men in the world be interested in such things? Meme: units of cultural information—such as ideas, beliefs, practices, or symbols—that spread from person to person through imitation, similar to how genes propagate biological traits. Is it because they want to enrich humanity or enrich themselves? Obviously, themselves, and this is why Musk bought Twitter. If you have the resources (vehicles to distribute memes) and knowledge of memetic theory, you can apply it like this: Influence Public Opinion: Shape societal beliefs by spreading desirable or strategic memes that drive public discourse. Amplify Divisions: Use memes to heighten tribalism and polarize groups, making them easier to control or manipulate. Create Social Movements: Spark or steer social movements by seeding viral ideas that align with specific political or economic agendas. Control Desires: Guide consumer behavior or political preferences by manipulating what people desire through imitative processes. Deflect Criticism: Distract from personal or business issues by flooding the discourse with memes that shift focus elsewhere. Rally Support: Build loyal followings by embedding identity-forming memes that create strong in-group cohesion. Scapegoating: Use memes to direct collective frustration or anger toward specific targets, reducing conflict toward powerholders. Manufacture Consent: Shape societal norms and legitimize authority by making certain ideas appear self-evident or widely accepted through imitation.

I like this guy: