9DegreesEastVille
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Update at bottom of post
Update at bottom of post
Like many others, one of the games I find myself playing these days is "Can you believe people actually believe this stuff?"
Case in point, one of the main takeaways from Abacus Data's latest polling effort:
37% (or 11 million) think “there is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political views. This is an articulation of what is commonly referred to as replacement theory.
Scary stuff, and it tracks closer to US'ian preferences than many Canadians (maybe) previously thought.
But still, the notion of that our immigration policy has been designed to replace old stock Canadians to win elections for the Laurentians is so ludicrous that we can rest easy that the other 63% of us will keep things on the rails for the duration, right?
Sure thing.
However, when it comes to the other main takeaways the fine folks at Abacus are trumpeting things get a little murkier:
Whoah! I thought at first.
That one is super scary, both the number and the 'belief'.
But then I thought about it a little more...
Of course big deals are ultimately decided by a few people who often meet behind closed doors to discuss things frankly and, presumably, openly.
After all, that's why we elect leaders and stuff.
But that wee bit of pushing in the Abacus polling about the hatching of secret plots makes it sound like everything, regardless whether or not it is above board, is designed to screw us over.
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However, when it comes to the other main takeaways the fine folks at Abacus are trumpeting things get a little murkier:
44% (the equivalent of 13 million adults) believe “big events like wars, recessions and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people working in secret against us”. Almost as many agree “much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places.
Whoah! I thought at first.
That one is super scary, both the number and the 'belief'.
But then I thought about it a little more...
Of course big deals are ultimately decided by a few people who often meet behind closed doors to discuss things frankly and, presumably, openly.
After all, that's why we elect leaders and stuff.
But that wee bit of pushing in the Abacus polling about the hatching of secret plots makes it sound like everything, regardless whether or not it is above board, is designed to screw us over.
And when you get people to that place it's not too difficult to conclude that those folks willing to step out onto the ledge of the cliff marked autocracy may not all be ultra-reactionaries.
And then there's this one, also from Abacus:
Now, just hang on a second there...
And then there's this one, also from Abacus:
20% believe it is definitely or probably true that “the World Economic Forum is a group of global elites with a secretive strategy to impose their ideas on the world.” Another 37% think it is possibly true or aren’t sure either way.
Now, just hang on a second there...
I, myself, think, despite the fact that the they now apparently support trade unionism, that the WEF's penchant for pushing a 'stakeholder capitalism' agenda often results in an over reliance on public-private-partnerships that ultimately corrode the common good.
Thus, I am not fully down with Davos man.
And, despite the fact that I consider myself a pretty reasonable fellow, what if I was to start believing that all of this secret plotting and will imposing by the elites has left me and mine powerless to affect change?
In other words, what if all of this flooding of the zone with sh*t, and that includes push polling designed to win social media friends and influence legacy media uncles, gets me to thinking that I don't actually live in a liberal democracy anymore?
Well...
Do you see the potential for real danger in their game?
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Update: Monday afternoon...And the legacy media uncles have taken the bait...
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6 comments:
Who is to blame for this....Fox news..Yes...but even more at fault is the interweb as a whole.
Facebook...Twitter..Youtube..Gab..getterrr..Truth Social...Telegram ..4 chan...8chan.
At one time I believed that the internet was a good thing..but more and more i'm of the belief that the web has made things much worse, dangerously worse.
I peruse many informational sites on the web, right, left and middle....That's why the majority of my post, past and present are filled with links to the data.
Interwebz is getting worse by the day....And, unless freedom of speech is curtailed in some way...or somehow limit public speech, web speech to actual facts...
I believe those poll results...Too many people are finding depraved, anger stoking echo chambers online.(And perhaps those echo chambers resonate with their own prejudices)
It's gonna get worse before it gets better..
Do you Ross K....or anyone out there have an answer, or a solution as to how to stop this madness....The only solution I see available requires curtailing free-speech, or requiring facts to back up what one may want to free speech about.
Anyway...as of 2022...The web is doing far more harm than good.
Cheers
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1536141453193527296
"Stirewalt was fired by Fox in January 2021 after right-wing backlash to the network’s call of Arizona for then-candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.
Stirewalt wrote in a Los Angeles Times piece after his firing that the refusal by many of Trump’s supporters to believe the election results was a “tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/12/politics/ben-ginsberg-january-6-committee-testify/index.html
It is everywhere.Recently was in a small interior town- held the door for two young zombies who both walked out with ear buds on looking at screens. Neither looked at me while they walked out.
For myself the whole trend or whatever it is is crazy, and shows people are very easily manipulated.
I used to say in a former job that people are stupid and quite lazy.
Scary times.
Education defunding and privatization has certainly been ‘beneficial’ to certain segments if the plan was to reduce critical thinking.
whenever I read/hear about those who believe in 'the replacement theory" it gives me a good laugh. Who the hell do they think they are. We of other countries who are not Indigenous, we took over their country and replaced them. Its called nothing stays the same. There arenn't many people in this country who have been here for more than a few generations. There are a few families who came to Canada in the 1600th and 1700th century, etc. but the rest of us, got off the boat in Halifax.
If people think there is a plot all they have to do is vote for the people who wouldnot go along with those ideas. I;m not surprised by the figure and then am. Its like it a whole ot of people and then its of no surprise knowing the amount of racism in our country. Its always been there. the groups its aimed at has just changed. What they used to say about Italians, they then said about South Asians, and now they're saying it about Middle Eastern and Asians.
I don't know if tribalism is built into us at some level, but I do know we as humans have the ability to think, absorb information, make decisions, etc. Its about time we started doing it for the betterment of the human race or we may find we're all gone and just that cockroach is left.
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