Joshe

I’m sure our tax dollars will pay for a thorough bug sweep. The jet is really nice and sleek. Of course Trump couldn’t say no. Now that he’s actually one of the richest men on the planet from his various schemes and cons, it’s interesting to consider if he’d put power on the back burner and spend more time basking in opulence. In Trump’s mind, the most successful person is the person who can play other people the best. So when he asks himself the question, “who is more successful than me”, the answer is no one. Now with the unfathomable riches he’s bringing in, from the billion dollar shit coin scheme, the insider trading, charging 5 million dollars a pop for guests to just breath near him for 30 minutes, the 100k Chinese watches, and the hundreds or thousands of other schemes in play, he’s making all that money by playing other people for fools, and no one else in human history has made it as far as him in this game. I could totally see him just not giving a fuck about politics anymore now that he’s beat the game. He’s going to auction off the U.S to the highest bidder, collect billions in bribes, manipulate the market, and just dip. Lol. I mean… maybe? He’s publicly displaying a much more opulent tendency that he was in his first term. Sharing videos of golden Trump statues, lavish real estate in Gaza, gold-plating the Oval Office, on and on. Then, he shared a video about becoming pope. That pope video could be a signal that he’s ready to move on from politics.

Not sure if this has been formally explored, but it should be. We need a model centered around Need for Cognition. Such a model could offer a foundational lens through which we understand the cognitive stratification of the population, not in terms of IQ, but in terms of how much individuals engage with complexity, nuance, and abstract reasoning, and the implications of those. Imagine what we could uncover: What if the 50th percentile or lower accounted for 95% of authoritarian followers? What if NFC predicts ideological rigidity, susceptibility to propaganda, political indifference, etc. What if low NFC correlates with social conformity, religion, or preference for dogma over ambiguity, while high NFC predicts skepticism, internal consistency, logical coherence, truth-acceptance, etc. Could NFC percentile be a more predictive trait than IQ or Big Five openness when it comes to worldview formation? What if it was even more fundamental to worldview construction than the Big 5? We’ve built entire psychological models around surface traits with MBTI, Big 5, etc. But NFC is a cognitive-energy preference that could explain why people process the world the way they do, and why some people never even see complexity to begin with. A percentile-based NFC model could reframe how we think about everything from polarization, education, persuasion, mental health, etc. Maybe 10% increments are too granular.

In a word: Discernment. Media outlets have descended because their viewers demand certain narratives be upheld, or at least, not attacked, which makes it challenging for them to only bring you what is true. Priority #1 is to feed easy narratives to those who don’t know how or don’t want to question, and if they can fit the truth in there, then great, but truth isn’t their top priority. You need to be up-to-speed on all forms of psychological trickery and deception, especially the kinds used by marketers, politicians, etc. When you watch Chenk from Young Turks, you need to be able to discern what he’s up to. Analyze commercials and understand how they’re working. What tactics are they using? What audience are they targeting. How big is the audience, etc. Tese types of inquiries build discernment. You have to practice making reads and wait for them to be confirmed or disconfirmed. Over time, discernment builds. That said, you should be pretty safe in trusting what credible media outlets are left. AP, Reuters, NPR, Axios, and a few others. But always leave room for them to be mistaken on details, and get good at separating fact from opinion and don’t give opinions much weight. For example, today, the Trump regime said they’re considering suspending Habeus Corpus or whatever. That’s a fact I accept because I heard it straight from the horses mouth, but when it comes to fleshing out the implications of that fact, I will not rely much on punditry commentary. I do consume commentary but I don’t automatically buy it without applying my own critical thinking and exploration. I often use ChatGPT to get to the bottom of things. Today, I asked it was is Habeus Corpus, when in the past it has been suspended and why, and what the implications of its suspension are. After that inquiry, I don’t need commentary, unless there’s something I missed, which I can always inquire further into if I come across it. Point is, never just trust someone to tell you what’s true.

If it were the 50s and we were figuring out how to win so blacks could just exist, and if Dem politicians were trying to further that cause by calling for reparations, I’d say they need to avoid any mention of that because the attack ads would kill any chance they had. That’s not conceding to the right. It’s operating within the bounds of what the electorate finds acceptable. The electorate doesn’t like men in women’s sports. Yes, it’s not a real issue, but the electorate will be manipulated into thinking it is. And you have to deal with that reality. I just saw a lefty chick running for congress on the Piers Morgan show. Piers asked her if she thought it was okay for trans women to play in female sports. She answered yes, then Piers called her position absurd because he knows he has the backing of the majority. The electorate is nowhere near being open-minded enough to see her as anything more than a confused or sick fool. This is just the current reality. It seems like a huge gamble to continue on with anything that resembles support for woke. It could end up working in the long run, but short term, it’s gonna lose.

We’re not conceding to the right. We’re saying to get rid of the baggage because the average citizen is too easily manipulated by it. Even with your framing, they’ll still be able to implement effective attacks. They/them ads will still continue to roll. My idea of a good strategy is to take away their most effective attacks. Give them no culture war attack lines, then what will they have left? Not much. You’d have a much higher chance of beating them this way.

That's all true. 100% agree. But the narrative they latched onto resonated with them precisely because it was either that one or the other one. It was a binary choice. They chose a side, then the billionaires and algorithms reinforced their decision as well as prompted many to join out of memetic desire, tribalism, etc. I had a friend whose young girlfriend asked him "What are we, Democrats or Republicans?". lol. See, people want to know which side they're on. They choose whichever team aligns best with their identity, as I'm sure you know. Once they choose a team, they do not switch easily. This is why I think your strategy will not work. I agree with you on how malleable the psyche is, but the point I'm making is, once the psyche builds its identity around a tribe or ideology, undoing that is not as simple as you make it sound. Messaging alone, even if consistently, perfectly delivered, would not be enough.

But how did the current narrative become dominant? A massive coalition self-organized in rejection of the counter-narrative because they despised it. Their cups are already full, and I don’t think it'll be easy to empty them. You're not just talking about creating new, appealing narratives, you're talking about dismantling deeply entrenched structures and replacing them entirely. So, what pathway do the Dems have to create a more dominant narrative?

I get it, but I think that would just amp up the culture war because it’s still saying “yeah, we’re for this, and you’re not, and you’re weird and overly obsessed with this stuff”. I see it boiling down to the same ideological disagreements because the right would relentlessly press for the left to state their positions and sooner or later, Dem politicians would be at podiums saying “ yes, I think trans is ok”. Lol. I do think your proposed framing is much more solid than anything we’ve seen, and definitely the way to go if this stance was adopted, but sooner or later it would distill down to the same culture war disagreements, and would very likely lose. Maybe not as badly, but lose nonetheless. If the Dems decide to keep this rhetoric, then I agree with you, they should adopt your stance. It could pay off in the long term, if they managed it right, but probably not by next election. Woke has too much baggage for now, no matter how you frame it, and the Dems don’t have nearly enough influence to offload that baggage. I suppose it could work if you get lucky with transmission.

I understand the idea, and it sounds good, I just don’t think it’s gonna work. The way I see your strategy playing out is just amping up the culture war. You can’t simply dominate the frame with “yeah, we’re all about that Woke, and you’re wacky and weird for making it a big deal”. That’s never gonna work because the majority would disagree in body, mind, and spirit, so a dominant frame will not get you there with the current citizenry. I’m sure it could be effective to a degree, but not effective enough. Besides, it takes extraordinary character to dominate frame like that, so is it really feasible to train the Dems on that? I doubt it. Plus, no single politician or even group of politicians can sway the cultural frame on their own. They’d need constant, concerted effort across media and influencers, and I see no path for that. Also, Kamala did not abandon anything. She tried to avoid it but her history spoke for her, which was capitalized on with the they/them ad.

All culture war stuff must be quietly abandoned. Not saying toss those values out, just don’t advertise and never crusade on them. The Dems screw themselves when they decorate the White House lawn with rainbow flags. Any advantage it gains is offset 100 or 1000 times over in the other direction. This was clearly a mistake. Kamala might have won without the trans smears. The majority chose a coup-attempt convicted felon over a they/them candidate. Doesn’t matter if she ran on it or not because the opposition successfully made it the main point.

Or because certain truths, if acknowledged, are powerful enough to destroy their identities.

Creativity and reason are different realms. Conservatives are usually far more adverse to complexity, nuance, and intellectualism. The left can be adverse too, just not as much. Also, I don’t see the people who would attack you for that as representative of the left. They’re a loud minority. Most people wouldn’t give a shit, as far as I can tell. Maybe it’s mostly the youngsters, which I have little experience with.

It appears the doubling down is in full effect. I saw a MAGA guy today who said that yes, Trump’s meme coin is a scam, but he still loves him. Then I saw a school teacher who said her school was gonna be losing federal funding and she may lose her job, but that’s OK with her because it’s gonna make America great again, and she cares more about the future for her grandchildren than her job. Lol.

Loneliness occurs in people who rely too much on the external world for their sense of self. Most people, I’d say at least 80%, need the external world to let them know who they are. With that orientation, when there’s no one around to validate their existence, it often causes sadness, boredom, depression, or fear. To them, loneliness is like an existential crisis. The ones who derive their sense of self from their own critical thinking don’t suffer like that. The same people who suffer from loneliness are the same people who complain about boredom. But if you have a rich inner world and don’t need others to validate your existence, boredom and loneliness are very rare. In other words, loneliness is a consequence of too much extroversion or warped ideas about what one needs to be happy. A rich and secure inner world can solve that problem, but that world can’t be built if you spend all your time extroverting. Just thinking out loud really. Might be some holes in this but there’s definitely some truth to it.

True. This dude gives off an insightful vibe, which makes his advice seem potentially good. But more often than not, you’d be wasting your time following it.