Somewhere on the Internet, I saw a comment about why Tim Walz is so popular with the Democrats. The commenter said it’s because Walz reminds people about the dads they lost to Fox News. The demographic that likes right-wing politics include a lot of straight white military-vet, gun-owning, football-coach-type Middle America older men. Then there’s Walz, who is square in the middle of that demographic, but who has leaned liberal instead. And everyone who spent last Thanksgiving listening to their dad predict the downfall of western civilization if he’s forced to use someone’s preferred pronouns thinks, “I wish my dad was like Walz.”
I’ve been blogging a couple years now, and you may have heard me refer to my difficult relationship with my father. My father was a conspiracy theorist before the Internet was a thing. Watching conspiracy theories move into the mainstream Republican party disturbed me deeply, because of how much confusion and pain it caused me to be raised by a conspiracy theorist.
Hearing Walz characterized as the opposite-of-a-conspiracy-theorist made me sit and really think about why conspiracy theorists are difficult parents. This post is based on my experiences with my father. Not all conspiracy theorists are exactly alike. Some are hardwired to be conspiracy theorists (like my dad) and some would chill out and go back to normal if they quit the constant diet of right-wing fearmongering. Yes, of course there are variations in peoples’ experiences.
Negative Feelings Towards Others
My father had negative feelings towards people who were different than he was, and who he didn’t understand. I would call those feelings contempt and hatred. My father would characterize them as insight and clear vision. He could see threats that others couldn’t. He was unusually perceptive and felt prompted to share his views with others as a warning. On some level, he believed he was being helpful by pointing out things that the rest of us didn’t see.
This affected his parenting because it made me reluctant to talk about anything outside of his scope of approval. If I accidentally used one of his trigger words, the conversation was over and Dad would monologue about the threat presented by … whoever/whatever. I self-censored because I didn’t want to set off an unpleasant rant. Again, those sounded to me like the most bitter hatred and disgust. My dad thought he was preaching or warning or providing insight.
Suspicion and Blame
A conspiracy theorist blames “them” for problems. Whatever the problem is, there is a “them” that he can blame. The identity of “them” is vague. Sometimes it changes. But if anything goes wrong, it is someone’s fault and my father can go on for quite a while about that awful, terrible, horrible “them.”
As his child, I soaked up this attitude. When something went wrong, it was someone’s fault. I internalized it, so if something went wrong, it was my fault. My father hates people who cause the problem. I twisted myself into a pretzel to pretend that I never had a problem and never needed help. I knew that, if I had a problem, the first thing my father would do is blame me.
One time, when I was an adult, I got angry about this. My father was very surprised to find out that I thought I couldn’t ask for help. That’s never what he meant! I had misinterpreted everything and he was a kind and supportive father who would happily help me with whatever I needed. But of course, when I actually needed his help, his baseline personality reasserted himself and I deeply regretted asking him for help.
I also learned to be very judgmental of others. Never offer help if you can blame someone for their own problem. And you can always find a way to blame them. It took a lot of work to root that attitude out as an adult. I over-corrected and now want to help everyone, especially those who are the authors of their own misfortune.
He Doesn’t Listen
Conspiracy theorists firmly believe they are right about everything. The only reason you disagree with them is because they haven’t explained it enough. Conspiracy theorists never shut up. Never. They don’t want to hear your differing experiences or opinions, unless it’s to gain more material for their argument.
The effect on parenting is obvious. Once he called me on the phone, and I set the phone down and came back every so often to check if he had even noticed that I wasn’t listening to him. It wasn’t even conspiracy theorist stuff – he was telling me how to run my life (I was in my late 20s and had NOT asked for advice). After 68 minutes of his monologuing (I checked my call history later), I interrupted him and ended the call.
He Doesn’t Accept People For Who They Are
I used to meet all my dad’s expectations and kept quiet about anything he might disapprove of. He praised me to the skies. Then I fell off the pedestal. He told me I was under the influence of Satan.
If you have high expectations and expect your children to meet them, consider the possibility that your children are just ordinary human beings who are withholding their genuine struggles from you out of fear that you won’t love them anymore. It turns out I was right – once he knew about my struggles, my dad didn’t love me anymore. Again, he wouldn’t agree with that characterization. He would see the humiliating jokes he made at my expense and condescending lectures as efforts to help me by motivating me to do better and get back up on that pedestal. When I finally got it through to him that I was not going back on the pedestal, that’s when he told me I was under Satan’s influence.
The End
I could go on, but this is really depressing to write. My father never saw his negative impact on his parenting. My mother cushioned him from a lot of it. We children quickly learned what to hide from him. He was not self-aware.
He had some good traits as a father. For example, he came to my sports games and piano recitals. He did dad stuff like help me get my first car, and taught me to drive a stick shift. He hugged all of us and said he loved his kids frequently. None of that made him someone that any of us trusted. Every one of his kids kept secrets from him because we were afraid of his reaction or knew he’d just make things worse.
I’ve shed countless tears because of my father — fear, pain, confusion, humiliation, regret, anger, and more pain. Apparently Tim Walz’s son, Gus, cried for joy, he was so proud of his father at the Democratic National Convention this week. I’m thrilled that Gus knows just how special his father is.
(Also, obviously everything I wrote can be applied to mothers who are conspiracy theorists too.)
Questions:
- Has this happened to you? Have you been in a close relationship with a conspiracy theorist?
- Question for any conspiracy theorists who actually read this blog: How do you judge the health of your family relationships?
- If you’ve got a conspiracy theorist in the family, have you been able to set boundaries and maintain the relationship?
- When you’re discussing politics with someone face-to-face, how long do you talk before you listen to the other person?
- Tell a story about a time your dad really came through for you, or a time when you were there for your kids.
Wheat & Tares 
Hmmm… If I was in charge of selecting lessons for elders quorum, I think I would recommend this article for discussion.
I’m not in charge, but I’m glad I read this article.
I’ve been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist” in some areas, but that is largely because my area of professional expertise is cybersecurity. I like to joke that I am professionally paranoid. (Seriously, my job is to look at systems and think of ways that I can break them, then work out ways to fix the flaws that I find.)
A side effect of that is that there are some areas where I can acknowledge that some conspiracy theorists have valid points, such as in the field of election security (just as an example). I look at the way modern voting machines are designed and can think of about a dozen different ways that I could compromise the process if I wanted to. I also have to assume that there are bad actors out there at least as smart as I am, if not far more so, and so there’s a distinct possibility (if not probability) that someone has used some or all of those ways to compromise the voting process.
In the past 20 years I’ve worked with others to design and propose a more robust and secure voting machine process (separate the machine that you vote on from the machine that counts the votes, produce a human-readable ballot using defined standards that can be produced and read by vendor agnostic equipment and encourage multiple vendors to implement the standard so you can validate the counts with multiple independent implementations, or even a hand recount). However, I’ve also seen those with vested interests in the current processes (and far more money) block such proposals, often in coordinated efforts (would that qualify as a conspiracy?).
At the same time, I also try to remain self aware that my professional training has this effect on me, and so I work hard to counteract it. While I recognize that there may be valid points to a conspiracy theory, I also try to recognize where they go beyond those points to jump off the deep end of what isn’t supported. I also try to stay involved in organizations (I’ve remained heavily involved in Scouting, for example) that focus on helping others to remind me that most people you meet are good, and not bad actors.
Janey: your description of your father sounds so familiar. And I really honestly think Fox News is a major factor. I often wonder how different some of our parents would be had Fox News never appeared. When you mix Fox News + talk radio + Mormon patriarchy it gets pretty crazy.
I don’t trust the liberal media either. But the mix of conservative sources and Church teachings is a plague among LDS. I used to be right in the middle of it all.
My FIL seems to be in some ways “right in the middle of it all”.
Periodically he recommends Fox News to my husband (who has his own rabbit holes / special interests that are better for my mental health).
I think the biggest disservice that Patriarchy does for our menfolk is encourage them to “preside” to “hoard power & authority / decision-making” rather then given them actual practice in “transferring power and authority” to others – including recognizing & respecting the power and authority of their women in non-pedestal ways, and effectively transferring power and authority to their children.
My dad taught us Broadway show tunes and how to do chores. His craziness was predestinati
This is a wonderful post. What is the answer to this problem? Well, it is the words of the famous literary Door Mouse: “Feed your head.”
What the Door Mouse meant was that we should fill our brains with knowledge and wisdom. The problem is that this takes work. It takes long hours of reading high-level, reliable publications.
Far too few are willing to put in the work it takes to be truly educated. They want their news like they want their hot dogs: a small package that can consumed in 2.7 seconds. That is why they turn to outlets like Fox News—they can be fed a no content diet of talking points, without expending any effort.
And that is where conspiracy theorists come from. Unwilling to put forth the effort to feed their heads actual information, the vacant heads get filled with nonsense. This is the great triumph of laziness in modern society.
It’s DORMOUSE. My dad also taught us cheapness. He didn’t get FOX and neither do I. It costs extra.Sent from my iPhone
My dad is a Faux News addict. A real tragedy because he was a university professor and a real smart guy. But on politics he repeats Fox drivel. In 2020 during COVID and the George Floyd protests when political issues became highly discussed I told my dad that I simply couldn’t talk politics with him anymore. Still, he has the occasional jab, but he isn’t as candid about his views as he used to be.
My brother is a hardcore anti-government libertarian. He went to business school at Arizona State, where conservative economist Ed Prescott taught. He is very Friedmanist/Reaganist in his views. He thinks global warming is a hoax but other than that he doesn’t seem too conspiratorial in his thinking. My brother-in-law is a hardcore conspiracy theorist who has said that the moon landing was faked, that Obama wasn’t born in the US, and has repeated QAnon conspiracy theories. He also criticized members who doubt that there was a global flood or that Moses parted the Red Sea saying that they do not trust in God’s power. Then I have my two brothers. My late oldest brother for years claimed that the earth was flat. He was also anti-doctor and refused to go to a hospital. He died at 58 of liver disease and refused any and all medical treatment. Another brother of mine and his wife are hardcore conspiracy theorists and reject modern medicine in favor of “natural” remedies. I remember one time when their 14-year-old son said that he heard on some video on YouTube about how Elvis was actually still alive because of some DNA test or whatever and my brother thought that that made sense. I made the mistake of talking about 9/11 with him. “No possible way that a plane could have brought down the buildings” and down the rabbit hole we go.
I’m a mainline progressive who is strongly supportive of the Democratic Party. I grew up in Utah county in an extremely conservative family. I feel out of place with them. Interactions with them over the years has occupied a lot of my mental space.
On maintaining boundaries, luckily there are a lot of things to talk about that aren’t related to religion and politics.
Why all the patronizing partisanship on this blog? You don’t have to wear it on your sleeve.
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Patronizing partisanship? Look, yes, there are left wing conspiracy theories. I have a sibling who is very liberal and at one point bought into some of the 9/11 conspiracies. I don’t know if that’s still true because I don’t care to ask. However, right now the political right is the side that has made fringe conspiracy theories mainstream, so discussing it inherently has a partisan slant. As for the patronizing part, I’m not sure what to say. Most of this stuff is hard to take seriously. We do need be respectful of others, but I don’t think all ideas are worthy of equal respect. If me not respecting silly ideas makes me patronizing, so be it.
Janey,
Your description of life with your father is very very similar to mine, only it was my mother, not my father. I am sorry for the pain he caused and continues to cause. I know it will.
I don’t expect many responses to this question. Conspiracy theorists don’t think they are conspiracy theorists, so in order for them to respond to this question, they’d first have to be self-aware enough to recognize that they are a conspiracy theories, which simply isn’t going to happen.
We have an extreme female conspiracy theorist in our ward–QAnon, adenochrome, chem trails, book banning, you get the idea. I’m not close to her, so I don’t have to deal with her on a personal level very often, so I must confess that one of my guilty pleasures is seeing her latest crazy post on Facebook “teaching” people about all this “special knowledge” she has. Her behavior has been an eye opener for me since she doesn’t fit the stereotype of a conspiracy theorist that I grew up with, as she is a wealthy, confident, college educated, health conscious, stylish woman (she could literally be a fitness model if she wanted to). She sometimes gets some pushback from people on Facebook, and one of her common “comebacks” is to just tell people that she’s “done her research” or she’s “not going to do other people’s research for them”. She knows better than everyone else, so don’t even try to present her with evidence that she may be wrong–her “research” (which I assume is just browsing crazy websites and “news” programs that confirm her conclusions) trumps anything that anyone else might tell or show her. I get some entertainment value from her Facebook posts, but at the same time, I get very scared, because she actually has quite a few friends and followers, and I can see that she is successfullly influencing others to believe the nonsense she is spewing.
My grandmother, who passed away a few years ago and lived out her final years in my parent’s home, became a nonstop consumer of Fox News (and worse) in those last years (she was a thoughtful person, not prone to conspiracy theories, for most of her life). When I went to see her, we were able to talk about some other things, but the conversation would inevetiably turn towards the misinformation and conspiracy theories that she was swimming in. She was old, so my strategy was just to nod my head and try to redirect the conversation back to something sane. I blame Fox news, and other similar media outlets, for doing this to my grandmother. I wish there had been a way to prevent her from watching this stuff 24/7 as she faded away.
My parents, who are both well educated, got caught up in the conservative talk radio stuff decades ago, but they were self aware enough to finally brush it off. They are now very critical of Fox News and similar media outlets. I feel very lucky since we are still able to have good conversations on almost any topic, including discussions of how dangerous all the misinformation being spread around is–it scares the crap out of them just like it scares the crap out of me.
I watched the Democratic National Convention (hooray for C-Span!) and try to keep up with some national politics. I really dig Walz. He was like my High School shot-put coach in Indiana and several other teachers that focused more on leadership through inspiration. He’s a normal guy trying to do a little good every day. Mechanically speaking, the DNC is really trying to hit home the coach, father figure, and military service side of Walz; as they should. He’s a parent that kids can talk to without fear.
I wish that the vibe coming from modern Christianity and political parties at a macro level was centered more around Christ’s sermon on the mount and less about the Ten Commandments. Less hate, fear, bullying, rules and more about acceptance and kindness. I don’t believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, but I do miss those rare times of genuine love from members in the church. I would return just to be with genuine people who care more about friendship and love and less about rules, policies, statistics and fear-based conspiracies.
Patronizing partisanship? Look, yes, there are left wing conspiracy theories. … However, right now the political right is the side that has made fringe conspiracy theories mainstream, so discussing it inherently has a partisan slant.
Whether something is a conspiracy theory or not sometimes depends on who is doing the framing of the story. One recent example is related to Covid. For years, the possibility that its source was a lab leak was treated as a “conspiracy theory,” until the narrative changed and it was acknowledged as a viable (and even probable) source for the initial infection. Often, labeling something as a “conspiracy theory” is nothing more than saying it doesn’t follow the “mainstream” or consensus viewpoint.
When you are talking about stories in the media, it’s inherently going to be easier to label right-wing things as “conspiracy theories” because the majority of the media establishment generally leans to the left. Hence, something like Hunter Biden’s laptop was uniformly dismissed as Russian disinformation by much of the media until the FBI used it in his recent trial and authenticated it (at which point it was quietly ignored by the left-wing press). That has all of the elements of a left-wing conspiracy theory, but because the press controls the narrative, it’s not treated as one.
That’s in contrast to some of the truly nutty, non-political conspiracy theories out there, such as faking the moon landing.
This describes my dad quite well. He was a blue-collar boomer, who upon retirement found himself with a lot more free time, and filled it with FNC and conservative talk radio. The constant feeding of confirmation bias to his moderate conservative views caused them to shift further and further right, which also gave him permission to go down conspiratorial rabbit holes more frequently, and adopted those extreme worldviews. He died of a rare, fast-acting cancer at age 70, about 5 years ago. In the last several years of his life, he and I were mostly estranged. He couldn’t shut up about his extreme views, and it was too much of an energy drain to argue with him, as he was becoming less reasonable, and more disconnected from reality. So to protect my own sanity, I just avoided him, for better or worse. We lived in separate states, so it wasn’t hard. But after his passing I mourned the loss for the potential relationship we could have had. When I was young, I recall that he was very level-headed, and moderate in his political/social views, even leaning liberal on a few select issues (as a union laborer who benefitted greatly from collective bargaining, he was strongly in favor of workers’ rights).
As he was becoming more extremely conservative, though, he was correspondingly becoming more and more devoutly TBM, which I don’t think was a coincidence. Toward the end of his life, he was making weekly trips to the temple (100 miles each way), getting up at 4 am to do two back-to-back endowment sessions each time (he was fairly lukewarm in his church participation when I was growing up). His interpretations of the gospel, Church teachings and doctrines became more intertwined with his shifting political views. Ironically, as he became more devoutly religious, he was becoming less Christlike (considering his dehumanizing opinions about immigrants, minorities and the impoverished). I don’t think he was aware of how much this was alienating him from his family, since he was convinced that he was right and everyone else was wrong. The Church did nothing to counter these attitudes, and the rise of Trump helped normalize and validate his abhorrent views, and gave him permission to express them more frequently and publicly.
Interestingly, his father (my grandfather, WWII/Korea vet, no-nonsense/tough-as-nails kind of guy) was very much the opposite, and his hard edges had worn down and softened with age; he was a warm, friendly guy to the end, and actually became less religious and less spiritual as he got older. So I think my dad’s FNC-fueled extreme right turn was more a product of his own time, and not part of a typical generational cycle.
Like Janey, I suppose I could go on further, but it’s kind of depressing to unpack.
Just in the last six months, my wife’s elderly aunt:
(a) took some money from her retirement account and had some portion withheld for taxes, and she was irate, and she blames Trump.
(b) had some siding blow off one part of her 1930s house, the only house in the neighborhood that had damage, and she blames Trump because her siding damage is caused by climate change, which Trump caused.
(c) had one medicine changed to another because of something with Medicare, and this second medicine doesn’t work as well, and she blames Trump because he messed up Medicare.
(d) is paying a lot more for her house insurance in the past 2-3 years, and it is Trump’s fault.
(e) still believes that Biden is and has been fully competent, suffers no degradation of faculties, and that it was Fox News who forced him to step down in his run for President because Fox News thought that Trump would more easily defeat Harris–yes, it was Fox News who is championing Harris and who torpedoed Biden.
I could go on. Telling her that Trump has been out of office for 3 1/2 years changes nothing. Almost no neighbors will talk to her, most of whom will vote Democratic in November, because no matter the conversation she will blame Trump for whatever is wrong. My wife is the only family member who speaks with her regularly, and while she doesn’t like Trump she’s tired of her aunt’s anti-Trumpism. Yes, there is craziness on the right and on the left.
Yes, we have a conspiracy theorist in our family, and no, we haven’t successfully been able to set boundaries. We do everything to avoid politics, but that is where she will force every discussion. We smile and try to move on, but we fail. I’m not sure if it is conspiracy theory or simply Trump Derangement Syndrome. No doubt there are other disorders.
In a ward I was in several years ago, there was a retired couple that made me think, “I want to be like them when I get old.” I started watching what they did that made them so likable and happy and here are a few things I noticed.
They didn’t talk about negative stuff. They weren’t into toxic positivity, but when negative stuff came up, it was a headshake and, ‘that’s too bad’ and then the conversation moved on. They weren’t fixated on figuring out what went wrong and who to blame. That was huge. If there was an issue, they were focused on the solution, not on finding someone to blame for the problem.
I also liked that they didn’t talk much about the good ol’ days. Telling some childhood stories is fun and relatable, but my dad used to openly wonder how any of us could develop good moral character since we weren’t being raised on a farm like he was. Jeez, Dad, you’re the one that picked out a suburb to raise your family. You could have inherited the family farm if you wanted it.
They were genuinely interested in the people around them. The conversations were balanced. They listened as much as they talked. That was a skill and practice that I started working on immediately. My friendships improved right away. In hindsight, it’s a total no-brainer, but seeing their example of listening and asking follow-up questions changed the way I interact with people.
Many thanks for the kind words, especially from people who have had conspiracy theorist thinking affect their own family relationships.
If I want to get depressed I think about the national debt. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, it just keeps getting bigger. Partisanship is just a way to raise your blood pressure and create arguments about nothing. I mock th
In my retirement I spend a lot of time making music. As a result I’m sensitized to the spelling of dormouse….not my favorite song because of the drug connection, but I still like to play it.
I don’t bring up politics with the other players. I try to sensitize myself to what they can play and what they like to play. Lately I’ve been singing a lot of C&W music – Judds, Alison Krauss, Patty Loveless, George Jones, Buck Owens, etc. But in open mics I go back to playing The Who, Stones, REM, Costello, Knopfler and U2. That’s what I like and play instinctively, but I’m willing to bend to the whims of the Merl Haggard crowd for the sense of unity. I can play and sing it better than most of them. And the more I play, the better I get.
The same applies to politics. I have my favorites, but I’m not campaigning for anyone. I’m a repertory player, one song to the next. I’d never get through a day of arguing personalities. To one person Trump is the devil, to the next person Biden is the devil, but in the end what does it matter. We’re stuck with our politicians.
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One of the best decisions I ever made was to stop watching/listening to the daily news. I realized at some point years ago that it was making me miserable and stressed about things I couldn’t control at all.
The 24-hour news cycle doesn’t do much actual news reporting anyway. It’s more about speculating about how horrible it COULD be. This just preys on the human tendency to focus on the negative to keep eyes glued to the screen for advertisers. This applies to all of the major news networks.
The mainstream news rarely provides actual solutions, so scared people scurry off to the Internet where there’s always someone to give them any answer they want to hear, and social media algorithms reinforce it with and endless supply of dopamine.
It was hard to break the news addiction at first, but it quickly became obvious how much of my headspace had been occupied by the opinions people I don’t know about events I can’t control.
On Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The “laptop” with child porn and proof of corruption never existed. The claims of same were disinformation.
The laptop that exonerated Biden of corruption but also documented the firearm violations is what existed.
It annoys me when people use it as an example since the narrative about it was entwined with lies that the people mentioning it fail to acknowledge were part and parcel of the story.
The original narrative was Russian disinformation. The truth is more complicated.
The bottom line is that the laptop as claimed was a lie put forth by traitors who embraced the Russian lies—and that they knew were lies.
The truth quite has a more complex narrative and doesn’t validate the initial story.
Janey, I loved this insight into your family of origin. It’s something I’ve been reading about lately in Vienna Pharaon’s book The Origins of You (How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love). I am also reading Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson, a book that was published in 2011, so it predates a lot of this current nonsense, but not by much. I am not quite sure I’d characterize any in my family in the exact same way as what you are describing, even those who think Fox News is actual news and not griftly pandering to the worst instincts of humanity.
Like you, I grew up with very libertarian views, and I still have a pretty complete collection of Ayn Rand’s works, although her ideas are very flawed, and her characters are bizarre and under-developed. (I was bizarre and under-developed as a teen, so I related, although her preference for “rape” as ideal and necessary between true equal minds was pretty disturbing and sounded a lot like she had her own history of trauma). My dad told me his favorite political pundit was Hannity (back in the 90s I think), and after watching 15 minutes of it, I couldn’t watch any more. I just thought “Wow, this guy has the most shallow, stupidest talking points I’ve ever heard.” It was for sure not for me, although I would have said I was not political. I have never been socially conservative, though, even when I flirted with libertarianism. I agree with Walz that people need to go back to minding their own business, and I agree with Harris that the anti-abortion fervor of the right looks like they’ve lost their damn minds.
My parents can’t hear well enough to watch much TV anymore, but they are definitely conservative, although I think they mistakenly believe that Reagan and Romney would still be considered Republicans today. When I last visited them, my dad was reading a thick book about Washington, and I would bet $50 that this glistening elegy doesn’t mention that Washington wore dentures made from the teeth of enslaved people that he purchased from them while they were living. I avoid talking politics with my family whenever possible. I will talk about things that I think we can nearly all agree on like the disastrous state of health insurance as the healthcare system we have, or the idea that nuclear power should not have been shut down when all we did was give dirty energy a whole lot more time and influence. (As a long retired engineer, my dad is so into clean energy–whether he believes in global warming or not which I can’t say for sure–that they literally went to see an ocean-based hydroelectric plant when they were on vacation in Hawaii.) When I shared a freakonomics chapter with him about how affirmative action worked and the issues with how black people have been held back through things like being denied housing and being held back by racism, for the first time he seemed to “get” it. I really think he’s open to scientific and fact-based arguments. He’s just not getting them very often. My mom is more like your dad, angry rants, blaming others, and does not believe that others should be allowed to have freedoms if they disagree or believe differently. Maybe this is because she had a much more traumatic childhood, which she certainly did.
That doesn’t make it right, IMO, but I think that a lot of these extremely negative folks are like wounded animals, lashing out, not believing in psychology and never having diagnosed what happened to them which was…a lot. So instead they cocoon themselves in a comfort bubble of pundits and narratives that confirm that they are good people who overcame bad things, and anyone who didn’t overcome it or who doesn’t think like they do deserves what happened to them. Hurt people hurt people.
thhq – this post is personal. It’s about my relationship with my father, and how it affects family relationships when someone is deep into conspiracy theories and the types of thinking that go along with conspiracy theories. The reason that implicates partisan stuff is because only one party has really encouraged conspiracy theories and moved them into the mainstream and started passing laws based on groundless fears.
When I was growing up, Dad was Republican but Republicans weren’t conspiracy theorists. I was Republican clear into my late twenties. Then I was an Independent. I didn’t register as a Democrat until about five years ago, when I thought it was important to take a stand against Trump.
If you have a story of someone’s parent going left-wing and ruining a relationship, feel free to share. Georgis talked about his great-aunt. I’m in the wrong place to hear stories of parents becoming more accepting of LGBTQ and concerned about addressing racism, and this swerve to the left leads to serious strain on family relationships.
Pirate Priest – I have made that same decision. I rarely watch news videos, ever. Once you’re listening to someone, they’re performing, and that means getting emotional. Outrage and fear are the emotions that keep people engaged and that’s what verbal news reports focus on. Talk shows are the same way. Keeping people engaged means keeping people outraged and scared.
I skim headlines on major news outlets. I skip everything that is a prediction, because Pirate Priest is right, it’s speculation and that’s useless. I also skip everything that is, “someone said something outrageous!” Yeah, that happens. Nothing I can do about it; I’m not going to read it. That eliminates quite a bit of news, and then I pick and choose the rest, aiming for stories that look like they will have actual information. When I read something outrageous for the entertainment value, I take it with a big rock of salt and don’t believe it.
I’m sorry you and your father don’t get along Janey. Have a nice day.
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As someone who has been around a lot of conspiracy theorists, I have to say that they are not all the same. There is conspiracism lite and then there are those who are off the deep end. Those who are off the deep end often seem to suffer from something akin to paranoid personality disorder. Two out of my three brothers who are off the deep end are extremely paranoid and have severe anxiety problems which has affected their abilities to be logical and rational. Some of my friends and acquaintances have gone off the deep as well. But all of them seemed to long suffer from serious anxiety. I have compassion for them and maintain contact with them as a friend. However if conspiracy stuff gets brought up, I say that I simply don’t find the ideas terribly convincing and leave it at that. Trying to debunk is a lost cause and rather pointless. The conspiracist brain jumps from one conspiracy to the next. There’s no holding them down or asking them to elaborate on the detailed evidence that supports their theory. They arrived at accepting the outlandish theories because they struggle to think logically. Therefore we can’t expect them to explain the theories using logic. It’s always seizure upon some perceived anomaly in a supposed official account of something happening and then a massive throwing out of the baby with the bathwater.
As to this idea that both sides have conspiracy theories, this is a really bad false equivalence. Do some among the 80 million+ Democratic voters believe in conspiracy theories? Of course. Do leading Democratic Party figures regularly promote conspiracy theories to attract voters and fire up a constituent base? No. Trump rose to political prominence on the platform of Obama not being born in the US. He said that he won the 2020 election. He recently stated that Harris’ large crowd sizes in Detroit were a product of AI and weren’t real. Conspiracy theories are the lifeblood of the majority of the conservative movement, most prominent among them being that Trump actually won in 2020. By contrast, Democratic voters don’t appear to be driven to back the party out of conspiratorial thinking.
thhq
I have found value in your viewpoint.
I am most concerned about the national debt when blaming social safety nets gets the blame for the debt, but lowering taxes for corporations and very wealthy people does not. When costs of years long wars that were started by incorrect information are not blamed for it. When taxes on capital gains are lowered because “it stimulates the economy”, without recognizing that people working actually stimulates the economy.
“Bothsides-ism” applies poorly to the national debt.
I’ve enjoyed reading all the gre
thhq, I’m curious why so many of your posts end with incomplete sentences and incomplete words.
Nice article and thanks for sharing. Have a happy safe day everyone.
Alice I don’t know why. Some of my posts don’t show up
There are so many conspiracy theories
Every poster here has one.Sent from my iPhone
The one about Hunter’s lapt
thhq, the idea that “everybody has conspiracy theories they believe” is another form of “both sides”ism. No, I don’t believe conspiracy theories, because that is not how I think. I fact check things before I believe them. That leaves a whole lot of stuff in the “I don’t know” category. And I am FINE with things in the “I don’t know” category. Hunter’s laptop? unproven so until it is proven, I don’t believe it because I just don’t know. So, Hunter is innocent until proven guilty, and rumors about stuff on a missing laptop is not proof. Now Trump, he has been proven guilty, several times. Hillary’s emails, they tried and couldn’t prove a damn thing, so Hillary is innocent.
So much of the right’s stuff is unproven rumor and suspicion and what if. Because that is how suspicious people think. They want easy answers and clear “bad guys” and jumping to conclusions at least lets you feel like you understand.
There have been psychological studies, and people who lean right politically have more anxiety. Their thinking is fear based. So, you get people who are paranoid, anxious, and easily scared. And Trump knows exactly how to appeal to those people. You whip up a whole bunch of fear. That is actually pretty easy and doesn’t take the truth. You talk about crime and blame the “out” group. So, Trump talks about the 1 out f 100 people who cross the border then commit violent crime as if that is the only or even most of the crime. That scares people. And Trump is very good at that.
Conspiracy theories give an explanation for things that are hard to understand. And having an explanation, even if it is wrong, gives you the illusion that you have some control over a scary world. You know who the bad guys are, even if you think they are lizard people, and so you can keep yourself safer than if you didn’t know who the bad guys are.
So, for people who lean left, their thinking is not primarily fear based. They are usually better educated also. That is why colleges lean left because the more educated you become, the more you learn to think critically and your thinking is not primarily emotional but more rational.
I have been scared to post this because it is going to offend some readers who lean right, but the science behind political affiliation is pretty solid. So, don’t get mad at me because I didn’t cause the situation, just try to understand your own thinking. And yes, I simplified it because I don’t have time to write a book.
Fearful people are afraid of change. So, duh, being conservative is all about not changing. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. But what if it ain’t broke for white people but is for blacks? So, us crazy liberals say, why not change it and see what happens. Maybe we can make the system more fair. Yes, there is risk and whites are going to have to give up some privilege. And that scares conservatives. Not only do they not want to give up the cushy front of the bus, they are afraid they won’t even get a seat, or be able to even get on the bus. And sometimes us crazy liberal do get it wrong and then we have to change again.
As a society we need both the crazy liberals and the scared conservatives to balance things out. But sometimes a wanna be dictator comes along and starts scaring people because if you get people scared enough they will give up their freedom for safety, or what they think is safety. Then the conservatives are not doing their job of talking the liberal out of too crazy of ideas, because they go chasing after the wrong bad guys. We *need* our conservatives being sensible conservatives, not fighting over tampons in boys bathrooms. THAT isn’t going to hurt anybody. But outlawing abortion in all circumstances— women are going to die in childbirth more often and women will start deciding it isn’t worth the risk. And more and more women will opt out of having children. I live in a state where the doctors are too afraid of going to prison, so they put the woman on a life flight helicopter and send her to another state as the only way to save her life. And the time that takes is time she could bleed to death. So, doctors are moving out of state and hospitals are closing labor and delivery units and simply no longer taking pregnant women but forcing them to drive long distances to get any prenatal care. But, rather then fix the abortion law so it is clear and doctors know when they can and cannot do an abortion to save a woman’s life, our state legislature is passing laws about who can use the bathrooms.
Anna I hope I’m allowed to respond to you, but who knows? You’ve spun a couple of conspiracy theories into your post. They are based on partisan biases regarding Trump and abortion. There is no balance, just a God Is On My Side attitude. For instance, a national abortion standard should have been passed in 2021, but Democrats could not agree on anything, and nothing got done. That’s an intraparty fail. It moots your entire last apocalyptic paragraph if you think about it. The Dems failure to pass an abortion standard is on a par with the GOP failing to repeal Obamacare. All your dire consequences are Biden. Schumer and Pelosi’s fault. But go ahead a blame Trump, Idaho and FOX if you like. That’s how partisan conspiracy theories work.
I spin my own conspiracy theories, mostly around COVID. I compare our response with Japan’s and I am disappointed. I’m especially disappointed with Trump for several reasons, but I am also disappointed with Biden for not changing Trump’s course. The two of them piled on $5 trillion in debt and a million people died. If we had done things Japan’s way our mortality would have been 10% of that. >
A number of commenters have claimed that there are conspiracy theories among the Democratic leaders and among the Democratic electorate. My question is what are these exactly? I don’t ask in denial that these exist, but out of sincere desire to know.
I can list several that are popular among Republican leaders and among the Republican electorate. The Clintons are guilty of corruption (Rush Limbaugh even claimed that they killed Vince Foster), there is a secret cabal plotting the creation of a North American Union, Obama wasn’t born in the US and faked his birth certificate, Obama is a secret Muslim, the Federal Reserve isn’t audited, ivermectin/hydroxychloroquin cures COVID and access to it is suppressed, masks do nothing to curb the spread of COVID, COVID vaccines are harmful on a large scale, Trump won the 2020 election, Biden is guilty of bribery, there is rampant voter fraud, illegal immigrants are being allowed to vote. To name a few. I could go on.
As for Democrats, I’m not sure what conspiracy theories are believed and promoted by leaders and voters. Some say that the Democrats were promoting a baseless conspiracy theory by saying that Trump and his 2016 has ties to the Kremlin. And yet in August 2020 a GOP-led inquiry produced a 1,000-page report detailing a web of connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The Mueller report laid out in detail 10 possible areas of obstruction of justice by Trump. I have every reason to believe that if the justice system were able to do a fuller more thorough investigation without obstruction and without Trump being a sitting president and without bad faith conservatives acting on Trump’s behalf in Congress and the Supreme Court, it might be able to find acts that rose to the level of conspiracy. There were certainly a lot of contacts. Some say that Stacey Abrams is an election denier. And yet she conceded that Brian Kemp won. Additionally she was pointing out voter suppression efforts by the GOP, of which there is a mountain of evidence, unlike voter fraud claims, of which there is zero evidence of anything in a scale that could affect the results of an election. On the progressive side of the political spectrum (many of these folks aren’t registered Democrats) there is some batty stuff here and there, but I don’t see these ideas really promoted by leading figures in the Democratic Party.
Iif you put your partisanship aside you’d be able to see them Brad. Bay of Pigs, Gulf of Tonkin, white racial superiority, domino theory, etc etc etc. are all Democratic confections. GWB wasn’t the only one with Weapons of Mass Destruction on the brain.
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I’m with Brad D. There is no equivalence between the Rs and Ds on conspiracy theories and outright lies. The MAGA Rs have cornered that market.
Speculating is sure fun, but there’s actual data that exists on who is most likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Nature published a study about it a couple years ago.
“Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries” (links in comments get blocked sometimes, but you can search for it)
Based on the data it appears that conspiracy theories are most common on both extremes of the political spectrum, but that they’re more prevalent on the right than on the left. There’s also evidence that one side’s conspiracy mindset strengthens whenever their side isn’t in power.
In some of the studies they went so far as to make up conspiracy theories to track how they spread and who ultimately fell for them…which I find simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
So yes, it appears to be true that the far right is into more conspiracy theories than the far left, but they both do it.
Conspiracy theories are a useful tool in the authoritarian & populist handbooks, especially in our weird, almost post-scientific era…and there’s always someone willing to tell anything they want to hear to get a vote.
Downvotes are a good indicati
Scientific American did a review of studies about combatting conspiracy theories, and it boiled down to a few key things:
1 – Don’t appeal to emotion. The research suggests that emotional strategies don’t work to budge belief.
2 – Don’t get sucked into factual arguments. Debates over the facts of a conspiracy theory or the consequences of believing in a particular conspiracy also fail to make much difference, the authors found.
3 – Focus on prevention. The best strategies seem to involve helping people recognize unreliable information and untrustworthy sources before they’re exposed to a specific belief.
4 – Support education and analysis. Putting people into an analytic mindset and explicitly teaching them how to evaluate information appears most protective against conspiracy rabbit holes.
It’s extremely unlikely to be able to talk someone out of a conspiracy theory, which can be incredibly challenging, especially when it’s a loved one who has fallen for it.
This is why data and information literacy should be a required topic in school. We are constantly swimming in a sea of information, misinformation, and disinformation. It takes some knowledge and skill to sift them.
thhq, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. I’m unaware of Democratic leaders and voters invoking conspiracy theories about the Bay of Pigs or Gulf of Tonkin (especially nowadays). I’m fact, I’d venture to say that most people don’t know what the Bay of Pigs operation even was.
Also, I didn’t even know what domino theory was, I had to look it up. I regularly follow news and current events. I’ve never once heard Democratic leaders or voters talk about domino theory. You seem to be saying that Democrats in the past (during the Cold War years) were involved in conspiracies. Which confirms my point. It is the right-wing (you’re obviously pretty right wing) that tends to invoke conspiracy theories more.
Thanks for displaying your political bias Brad. You don’t know me. But I know th
Maybe posting from an iPhone is causing truncation. Let’s see how the MAC does.
I enjoy debate. Over time I have found that profiling people is a fast way to terminate the discussion. So I may have been remiss in using the term God Is On My Side, though I think it is at the heart of most conspiracy thinking.
The points I raised were prime examples of conspiracy thinking which resulted in major catastrophes. The Civil War, The Russian Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the Iraq War. Democratic leaders imbibe the unicorn fairy dust too.
Now let’s go back to an earlier point. The failure of Democratic leaders to pass a national abortion standard in 2021 when they had the power to do so. Here’s my theory. Seven states allow abortion up to time of birth, and six of those are Democratic. Because of this, it was impossible to pass a more stringent standard like sixteen weeks without spitting the party. It was politics.
But maybe you can explain your party’s failure some another way Brad. Why didn’t Biden, Schumer and Pelosi get your party’s major initiative over the line? I was disappointed in them. Were you?
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Thhq, I don’t mean to poke fun and I would be extremely frustrated with the comment truncation if it were happening to me.
But the constant stream of half sentences cutting off mid word makes the thread read like you’re constantly getting interrupted and shushing yourself in response like Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Or like someone has heard your sentence begin and has abruptly changed the channel.
Conspiracy theories abound in a world in which people have lost trust in their institutions. I’m all for following the evidence and altering one’s opinion in response to data but at a certain point, one has to trust the institution reporting the data or gather the data yourself. Flat earthers don’t trust any of the data you give them because they don’t trust the institutions providing them. In a way, we all live in separate realities. Throw in a belief in an enchanted world where not every true thing needs to be even literally possible—a world that’s supposedly the battlefield between literal angels and demons—and add to it the ability to fake nearly anything with AI nowadays and the situation is truly dire.
My teenage son struggles with English class in high school, so I’ve been pretty involved with tutoring him in English for about three years now. Every single year includes units on how to spot misinformation, how to evaluate the trustworthiness of websites, how to tell if you’re reading an opinion or a fact. There is so much media literacy in his curriculum. I’ve been impressed with it. It’s thorough and it gets repeated frequently. Sometimes they’ll even throw some media literacy into another unit, like explaining how misinformation is spreading about a particular topic.
Democrats don’t have conspiracy theories the way Republicans have conspiracy theories. My impression is that the fringe liberals have zero political power because they don’t vote. If you’re an extreme liberal, you refuse to vote. The hope is that, by not voting, things will get so bad that there will be a revolution instead. Fringe liberals hate the idea of harm reduction and incremental change. (I’m getting all this from tumblr, since that’s the only place where I hang out with liberals online, which might not be an actual reflection of reality.)
Fringe republicans vote in every single election. That’s why the far-right has so much political influence. There is a far-left, but they’ve removed themselves from the political process and are irrelevant and mostly ignored. They also don’t generally create conspiracy theories.
thhq – are you trying to say there’s a conspiracy theory that explains why there isn’t a national abortion law? What??
I searched it and immediately found the answer: “The U.S. Senate once again failed to enshrine the right to abortion into federal law, falling short of the votes needed to advance the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA)toward passage. This was the Senate’s second 2022 vote on the bill, which is supported by a majority of voters in the U.S and was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in September. As with the Senate’s last vote in February, WHPA again did not receive the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.”
You’ll recall that the Senate in 2021 was split nearly 50/50. The Democrats needed 60 votes to overcome the filibuster and there weren’t 60 Democrats in the Senate.
My dad was a John Birch Chapter and Section Leader in the 1960’s. He had all the books and magazines. We had a huge library filled with books like “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” “The Politician”. (about Eisenhower being a communist by Robert Welsh), and of course a complete set of Skousen books. There was American Opinion, the weekly John Birch newsletters, and countless pamphlets “explaining one conspiracy or another” and how it was going to doom our country.
I left home in 1972 to go to college and serve an LDS mission and immediately had to face what I was taught at home in the light of the world. Even in the church at that time, John Birch views on politics weren’t very accepted because Ezra Taft Benson wasn’t a prophet until later. Of course, these views were laughed at Ohio State, where I went to school. I also found out they were very hard to defend.
To make a long story short, over a long period with a lot of intervening experiences and questions and living on the other side of the country and not under the constant eye of my parents, I started to get some of my own opinions. Also getting married into a very TBM family that bordered on fundamentalist, I began to see that what I learned as a young person was flat out wrong. Just asking a question drove my inlaws nuts which of course helped me find a lot more answers.
Well at 55 I went to visit my parents. The John Birch Society had waned in its influence on my dad and society. He, like many others, had developed a more libertarian bent outwardly masked as the Tea Party movement in 2008, it was just John Birch lite. We had a conversation about some political topic and he turned red and kind of shook and told me he was going to smash my argument to bits. I looked at him and said, “Dad, I’m 55 years old, I have two Master’s Degrees. You taught me to look at different sides and become educated on the issues. Well, I’ve been studying this issue for 30 years. I have had experience with it in my job for the same amount of time. You can say what you want and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.” He looked at me, his countenance changed and it was over. I guess I was lucky because it was a defining moment in our relationship.
He passed about a year later and I’m glad we had that talk because he knew who I was. Over the last 15 years, I’ve missed him. When I first talked to my mother about politics or issues in the news she got really upset. I learned that she wasn’t as John Birch. She didn’t like it at all. She thought I was a splitting image of my father but over time, I was able to show her how I was 180 degrees different and it was because I felt the John Birch ideology was at odds with what the scriptures said about how we should act towards one another. She began to see herself in a new light and even voted for Clinton and later Biden. (At first, she made horrible comments about both) My siblings have made similar journeys in their lives and I think my mom seeing that has done so herself in these past years. My mother thinks my dad would have seen through all the Trump and MAGA stuff but my siblings aren’t so sure. I’m going to think he would have because I don’t think he would have wanted to lose his children.
It’s sad what Fox News and the crazy right-wing ideology have done to families. I’m thankful that when I watched the Democratic Convention this past week, I was texting my daughters with affirmations and we were all very emotional about the prospects of another 2008. I know that 2024 has the potential to be a pivotal year in our history both with the possibility of our first female president but also more hopefully a turning back of a right-wing conservative agenda that goes back in time to the founding of our country and our inability to deal with basic human rights issues, particularly slavery.
Thanks kirkstall. I walk miles a day for exercise, and read blogs and news for entertainment. But there is probably a penalty for posting when I only have one bar. I’ve always tried to be concise and to the point, but it’s hard to convey a thought in five words or less. The last MAC post went up intact.
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Sorry Janey but your party failed to pass their signature legislation. The legislation was not written to attract GOP support, and your party paid the price. Collins Murkowski would have passed easily, but Schumer shut it down.
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thhq, I fail to see how what Republicans did in one state has to do with the Democrats failure to pass any kind of bill nationally. And I don’t see how that is me believing in any kind of conspiracy. In Idaho, the STATE legislature could not define what their abortion law really means, as in how close to death does a woman have to be before doctors are allowed to preform an abortion because they spent too much time arguing about who gets to use what bathrooms. They just kind of brushed the problem aside as unimportant because a “man” might use a woman’s restroom and that is more threatening than women dying from a miscarriage. So, how is that believing a conspiracy theory? And what does it have to do with Democrats being unable to agree nationwide? I mentioned why we need the conservatives to stop irrelevant panic over trivial ideas and actually, you know be conservatives. They passed a poorly defined law, and refused to clarify what they meant. Leaving doctors not knowing if they will be sent to prison for doing their best to save a woman’s life when she is bleeding to death. That is just a problem in one state and has nothing to do with what the other 50 states could or could not agree on.
Are you saying that Democrats sometimes fail to do a good job. Fine, I totally agree. But I don’t see what that has to do with conspiracy theory. I am not suggesting any kind of conspiracy went into Idaho’s failure to write a good law. Just normal stupidity. So, I really can’t see your point about how I believe conspiracy theories.
In the final vote, Schumer couldn’t even get a majority because he lost Manchin. The political optics of Schumer cooperating with the GOP destroyed our best chance for a national abortion standard. It was the old “my way or the highway” game.
Not every theory is a conspiracy theory. But Alice’s rambling tirade about birth rates and helicopters had the ring of “vast right wing conspiracy” to it, and my rebuttal is that the Democrat’s failed to end her apocalyptic vision.
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thhq, still scratching my head as to what conspiracy theories the Democratic party leaders and voters believe. Civil War? Iraq War? What??? And honestly, even with your comments untruncated, I’m not sure I quite understand what you’re even talking about.
As to why Democrats didn’t pass everything they wanted to, what in the world does that have to do with conspiracy theories?
Maybe try to be more specific. Something as in: much like Republican leaders and voters commonly believe and promote the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged, Democratic leaders and voters commonly believe and promote the conspiracy theory that…x, y, and z. I really couldn’t make out from your comment exactly what conspiracy theories are commonly asserted among Democratic leaders and voters.
Brad I get it. Whatever a Democrat has done, or will ever do, is right. Discussion over. Have a nice day.
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The corollary Brad that everything that the GOP does is wrong. It makes everything easier in black and white that way. And this is fine.
I recommend some reading on American history. Not because you’ll learn anything but because it’s entertaining.
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I just have to say that it’s been hilarious to see almost every comment by thhq get cut off then sometimes end with “sent from my iPhone.” Like the spirit of Steve Jobs is interrupting every sentence.
(sent from my Android)
For a while I thought it might be censorship Pirate, but then I noticed I only had one bar. The home MAC works better.
With each downvote I get, I know that I have yanked a chain. A badge of honor among thieves. I prefer that to being in the Amen Chorus.
I was once the Pirate King for a day. It is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King. Even for only a day.
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thhq, You’re hanging yourself, digging the hole deeper, or any other metaphor for someone who is making their case only seem weaker and weaker, their control less and less, and their good will long gone. People have engaged you with respect here. It’s sad to see you devolve so much when it comes to political discussions. The grasping is astounding. I wish you the best, but you aren’t make a good impression. There are other ways.
Reading thhq’s comments has been a lot like talking to my dad. Ideas are incomprehensible; replies aren’t on topic; no one is quite sure how one idea follows another; persecution (downvotes) are a sign of courage; no one understands what you’re talking about and that is somehow proof that … I don’t know what you think it proves, but I can tell you’re proud of it.
One thing I’ve noticed over 70 years is that partisans don’t have a sense of humor. You can’t be funny if you take yourself seriously.
You dig your hole I’ll dig mine. I suppose that if I were a Mormon there would be some chance of reforming me.
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Janey I showed you that the Democrats failed to pass their signature abortion legislation. But you wriggled away. Can’t you stand hearing the truth about your politicians? Schumer and Biden crucified abortion legislation on their cross of politics. Who’s the bad man?
I suspected that after 68 minutes of this that you would have hung up on me. But you didn’t. Maybe it’s because I’m not your dad. Maybe it’s because I respected my dad even when he talked crazy. I have taken a lot of downvotes here for posting my observations and true statements.
I have functioned as your straw man.
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Janey, I thought the same thing about thhq’s comments. Granted, I don’t know your father, but he sounds very much like my brother-in-law. Lots of jumping around from one place to the next. Wanting to seem above the fray and privy to knowledge and insight that the rest of us have a hard time seeing. Claiming a special gift to be able to read between the lines. Bringing up lists of events as if they speak for themselves. Trying to connect all sorts of dots. Endlessly talking.
thhq, I’m sure you’re probably a great guy in person and no doubt you have lots of opinions on a variety of topics. But honestly I’m not quite sure how to engage you in online conversation, so I’ll give you the last word and bow out. You’re a new commenter here, right? Welcome. This is a place of diverse opinions that sometimes leans a little liberal. But probably one of the best online forums to engage in discussion on politics and religion that I’ve found.
Then engage Brian. Everything you post sounds like it came from the Democratic Manual of Operations. The W&T Amen Chorus here has your back here in this safe place. Try it at WSJ and see what happens. Not everyone there is a card-carrying Democrat like you.
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Brad, I didn’t know we were related… 🙂
This thread stinks of partisan hypocrisy. Shaming your father for watching FOX is the same as shaming my daughter for watching CNN.
It reflects the attitude of God Is On My Side. Or as the Germans wrote it on their military belt buckles, Gott Mit Uns.
The targeted PERSON is reduced to a straw man to attack. A lost cause politically and therefore no longer a human. No longer my flesh and blood because of political incorrectness.
As Gotye put it, just somebody that I used to know.
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Tempting to write a post titled, “The Blogs We Lost to Politics.”
I get that for many topics, there is a link between contemporary politics and religion…and that exploring those connections is what a forum like this exists to foster. But over the past few weeks and months, it has been striking just how political the posts and comments here have become. It seems that, like Godwin’s Law, every topic becomes inexorably linked to something relating to Trump, Biden/Harris, the election, or current US political discourse.
It gets old, quite frankly, especially since these conversations are ubiquitous in every other public space. Looking forward to the post-November 5 period (hopefully, depending on the outcome of the election and the response to the results by both sides), when perhaps we can get back to examining Mormon-related things from a far less political vantage point.
It’s interesting to watch the usual suspects clock in with their downvotes. Well here’s another one for you to downvote.
There are blogs where all my posts would get heavy upvotes. The bees in different hives have different hive minds. By sitting in the friendly hive all the time I lose the dialectic. By being challenged I organize my thoughts better.
Challenge also brings epiphanies. On this thread, I realized that politics got in the way of achieving the common good for our country, both for national healthcare and for abortion. On another thread it dawned on me that Emma Smith is responsible for the human side of Mormonism that I like.
I don’t expect any intelligent replies to this. Everyone here has been great with their putdowns and ad hominems, and not engaging in any discussion. It’s interesting to learn how your hive works. What a great Mormon missionary outreach.
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To steer back to the original topic somewhat:
The more I learn about Tim Walz, the more I like him. His warm authenticity is a bright spot amid the current status quo of political discourse. The Midwestern Dad Energy gives him broad appeal which will hopefully help his ticket.
Of course, this is not to be confused with Mormon Dad Energy (think Mitt Romney) which may play well in Utah, but everywhere else is viewed as cringe.
I have a theory that Netanyahu is attacking his neighbours so that he can keep on killing Palestinians without having America withdraw his supply of weapons. Netanyahu is not going to agree to any peace deal. He does not appear to have an exit strategy from gaza, and does not appear to have any mercy, or compassion, so the only way to stop him is for America or the UN to stop him, but if he can get other Arab countries to attack Israel he becomes the victim and has to be supported. He is evil and should not be supported. Perhaps weapons could only be supplied on condition of his government being removed or they not be used on gaza.
Medical supplies are not available in gaza so children injured by Israeli deliver American supplied bombs are having limbs amputated without aesthetic. Israel has aesthetic but is withholding it. This can not be allowed to continue. He must be stopped. If it means the destruction of Israel so be it.
Foxnews adjacent:
Kellyanne Conway is impressed[!] by my answers[to what? idk] So impressed she told Mike Pompeo[!] Mike says I am the kind of patriot[!] he is looking for to complete his National Security Survey[!]
Survey Questions:
Under which age demographic do you classify yourself?
2. Are you male or female?
3. What is your marital status?
4. What is your employment status?
5. Do you consider yourself a Republican?
6. Have you ever contributed to a political campaign?
7.Do you support Senate Republicans’ campaign to take back the Majority in 2024?
8. Do you support Republicans’ plans to secure the border?
9. Do you support President Trump’s plans to build a wall?
10. Do you reject that we can do nothing to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into our country?
11. Do you support advanced measures in addition to the wall to secure our borders by any necessary means?
12. Do you believe having an unsecured border threatens our national security?
13. Do you stand with Israel in their war against vicious Hamas terrorists?
14. Do you support America opposing terrorism in all forms?
15. Do you stand with the American Jewish Community against the rising antisemitism they face in America?
16. Do you support America’s position to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression?
17. Will you contribute your most generous gift to support our campaign to take back the Senate and elect a Republican majority?
[End]
I feel sad knowing there are people who are unable to see this is loaded.
Unable to recognize flattery.
Unable to see the not subtle fear mongering with comparisons of the US border to countries who have fomented decades-to-centuries long aggressive relations with neighboring countries. Unable to note the absence of Russia from being one of the aggressors.
It’s sad.
There are lots of conspiracy theorists here at W&T that bought into the biggest conspiracy (so far) of this election cycle. The conspiracy is that President Biden was still functioning at a high enough level to be the full time executive for this country. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary 6 months ago (when I predicted on the ‘nacle that he was much more likely to drop out of the race than President Trump), but most left-wing media was ignoring it or even actively suppressing it. For those who believed that Biden was still sharp, perhaps you should have broadened your media intake to include Fox News, which actually presented evidence and facts to back up their reasoning about Biden’s incompetence. Other conservative news and opinion outlets were even better a presenting evidence about Biden’s condition and deterioration.
Having been proven correct once again, I will offer up an additional bit of information for those who are living in a media echo chamber. This one is: “Kamala is as dumb as a bag of hammers.” That is a quote from a relative who worked with her a lot in California government. I have no way to verify the truth of that statement, but many data points are out there that she is not quick on her feet. Her unscripted appearances are very few, and not really inspiring or enlightening.
Also, the same media people who were lying about Biden’s mental acuity 6 months ago are the ones doing everything to promote Harris without taking a close look at her lack of accomplishments and policy positions.
As mentioned earlier I enjoy a good debate. Unfortunately the use of hyperbole, ad hominems, profiling and confirmation bias do not further discussion. Recent studies have shown that both liberals and conservatives are prone to the same bias. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2129319-liberals-are-no-strangers-to-confirmation-bias-after-all/
I may be mistaken in thinking that W&T is an open forum. Regarding politics it appears to be an echo chamber.
No @thhq, you do not enjoy a good debate, so much as you enjoy appearing as a good debater.
Sadly you are not.
you are more than welcome to apply the article you cite to the conversation, but you must do so specifically in reference to each fallacy being used, with utmost care to ensure that you yourself are not relying upon mere fallacy.
Progressives are indeed susceptible to fallacious reasoning, but I think you’re going to need a stronger argument, and much better evidence to argue your opponent’s arguments as much more fallaciously reasoned, and empirically uninformed than your own.
This isn’t the Mormon Dialogue forum. We do things differently here.
Thanks for being part of the partisan Amen Chorus Canadian Dude. One more personal attack for the record. Nitpicking precisionism does not negate my point about the smug confirmation bias this thread contains. For example, Brad D is practically a talking DNC manual, but maybe you missed his smug partisan putdowns. No one stood up to rebut my thesis that party politics sank the abortion legislation. They called names for a while, then went silent on the actual debate.
There is a personality type that believes in a hierarchical world view. Those at the top naturally deserve to be at the top. The odd thing is that they are willing to support laws enforcing this natural state.
So when you’re dad gets upset that someone is to blame, he might be correct. The problem is that he’s going to blame people lower than him in his hierarchy mindset, not those higher up. The result is that he will never vote for the politicians who would help him.
Of ccourse other problems are just life.
thhq, since this seems to be your issue, please explain how either party would get a national right to abortion through Congress. The Supremes overturned Roe in large measure because the majority does not see a right to privacy as including abortion, which means that with this court, even legislation passed by Congress that protects reproductive rights runs the risk of being declared unconstitutional. Beyond that, the only recourse is an amendment. Do you really think a right to abortion can get the backing of two-thirds of state legislative bodies?
I see an amendment as impossible. The Dodd decision moots the chance of a national law due to the 10th and 14th Amendment. The Congressional kerfuffle happened a year before. If they had gotten their act together Dodd might not have happened.
The bill sent to the Senate at the 11th hour in 2022 was passed through the House without GOP input or votes. It compelled a 24 week minimum for all states, but did not set a maximum. Ergo, it imposed a in-your-face standard for states like Idaho while giving states like Oregon a free pass for full term abortions. Naturally it failed in the Senate, by design. By failing it was supposed to increase Pelosi’s House majority. Badly done Democrats.
Could a milder 16 week law have passed? I don’t know. Pelosi could have written something that was bipartisan representing the laws of 40 states. It would have offended Oregon and Idaho at the extremes, but IMO it would have gone to the Senate with a large bipartisan majority, and enough Senate votes to avert a filibuster.
My reason for raising the issue was a response to a hysterical abortion conspiracy theory above blaming the GOP for everything. That has been the tone of this thread right from the start. It amounts to a stream of confirmation bias which dismisses bipartisan blame.
It’s Dobbs, not Dodd.
No, an amendment is not possible. But neither was a law the likes of which you mention. The majority in the House gave Dems slim hopes, but there was no way to parlay a slim majority in the Senate into an override of a GOP filibuster, even if they had Manchin. They could have set a 16-week baseline and made abortion completely illegal after the second trimester and it STILL would not have attracted senators from Idaho and many other states, and SCOTUS would have overturned it for the same reason they overturned Roe.
The GOP strategy is to return abortion decisions to the states and then win battles there (this is not a conspiracy theory because it is easily documented), except they are losing at the state level every time. How is it hysterical to point out the the GOP wants to eliminate abortion nationwide when we can easily find examples of them saying that?
Your MO seems to be to accuse other commenters of rank partisanship, even when they’ve just tried to explain that they don’t understand what the hell you’re trying to say. Other than the abortion thing, I don’t understand either. Your brilliant insight is that people have perspectives and they differ from the perspectives of other people. Truly insightful. Could it be that most everyone else just understands politics better than you do?
Think about it.
I have watched the same circus as you. I see rank partisanship paralyzing Congress. Abortion and ACA are two salient examples. It is a bipartisan problem.
So many closed minds here.
You’re all blind and live in a fantasy land.
If cackling Harris and tampon Tim get into the white house, it’s game over.
We warned you all but you can’t stop drinking the Kool aid…
What does “it’s game over” mean? Is this threat or hyperbole? Is it meant to be taken seriously?
Or, to stay within this discussion thread, is this the raving of a dad we lost to Fox News?
Sorry, Me, but I cannot take you seriously unless I know what you mean, and I don’t know what you mean.
ji, these are the tactics of bully’s and their gang of minor bullies. Reasonable people have been accusing Trump of planning to end democracy, and internationally the existing world order.
There is no possible equivalent for harris, so the bully just says you are even more of a threat than our bully is. There is no justification from a bully. The rest of the message is that you are thinking for yourself, stop that and do what we tell you.
Even the insulting names are the same bully tactics.
Hopefully Trump can go back to his life of luxury and abandon his gang to their own devices. Hopefully none of them will do anything too stupid after he does.
I don’t really think that ji was confused about Me’s post. Not speaking for him, but I think that he was suggesting that Me himself is one of these Fox News dads, an obsessed conspiracy theorist so caught up in his own mind that reality escapes him, and he (Me, not ji) cannot distinguish between hyperbole and reality. From my perspective, the world will end, and democracy will not cease, if Harris is elected, nor will it end if Trump is elected. I think both sides are capable of hyperbole and bullying, even here! Usually, the discussion is reasoned and rationale, something that we don’t get in other places.
The trouble G is that if Trump does what he has said he will do it will end ife for many people. Solve the war in Ukraine by giving it to putin and encouraging him to take what else he wants.
is there an equivalence for harris?
If Trump wins, do you expect an insurgency led by harris?
If harris wins, would you be surprised by an insurgency led by trump?
If Trump wins the world’s fight against climate change is derailed, which may be permanent, but most countrìes will not trade with countries not meeting climate targets. Who will trade with trumps america? Plus his duty on all imports, raises the price of all imports. Cost of living crisi.s
No equivalence for harris
Trump rails against the rule of law
Harris was a prosecutor no equivalence.
I don’t think the argument that they are equivalent holds.
Dude, I didn’t argue that Trump and Harris are equivalent. I trust Harris more on some issues, and I trust Trump more on other issues. Is that bad?
I think that our country can survive either candidate being elected. Americans generally support the rule of law. I don’t think that things are as bad as some people make out. This vote is not the one and sole existential decision of an entire generation. At least I don’t see it as such. Americans thought that our democracy was over when Andrew Jackson was elected. Heber J Grant thought that Utah voting for FDR four times was a terrible personal betrayal. Utah passed the amendment to end Prohibition, and our country survived–although Grant fumed. I don’t think that we’ll see the troubles when Abraham Lincoln was elected, but if we do I am confident that we will figure it out. Hey, I see the glass half full, and am not a doomsayer doing around saying that the sky is falling aka Henny Penny. We Americans will figure this election out. One good thing is that we have divided government, so the executive does not come from and dominate the legislative, as is the case in parliamentary democracies. Divided government can be good, in that the legislature can check the excesses of the executive. We’ll get through this. Out here!
I was responding to the last half of your message at 5.04 which does suggest an equivalence.
Now you seem to think Trump is no great concern even after Jan 6 and all he has said he will do this time. Some of the things I point out, that you gloss over, will cause incredible harm. So yes it is bad, that you still say you trust him on some things more.
Is nothing a bridge too far, where you say that is just too much? When Biden brought hostages home from Russia, who did Trump congratulate? If during the insurgency pence had been murdered would that still be OK?
I realise you do not respond to questions just go off in another direction, as have in your last comment. I just can’t comprehend this 6 of one half dozen of the other when the stakes are so high?