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What the fuck happened to Zeynep Tufekci www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/o...

The entire piece is just allowing Trump voters to launder their authoritarian beliefs into polite-sounding language. The "power of Trump's appeal" is a) mostly white majoritarianism and b) one of the most over-analyzed topics in American punditry.

Is it all just bitterness because she couldn't win over everyone with the stupid lab leak crap?

The lab leak has become a red flag for going off the deep end Perhaps a reflection of one’s own brokenness searching for meaning, and grasping at conspiracy theories, later edging towards a strongman

It's emblematic of a mindset where bad things must not be explained by the most reasonable origins--there must be a more sophisticated explanation that only you and a select few are brave enough and smart enough to consider, and it must somehow be the fault of people conservatives don't like.

I'm sure you have strong evidence against that theory then?

no, I don't, the scientists studying the same sorts of disease outbreaks from the same area have done pretty well on it, and the common sense conclusion is that it's yet another coronavirus epidemic emerging from wild (bat) sources like SARS and MERS but nooooo this is special it wuz a sekrit lab

There is nothing secret about those labs or what they do. It's even funded by US agencies

Because there are no live bats in Wuhan?

Yes, indeed very strong evidence against most possible, and certainly all currently advanced, lab leak fantasies.

that is a fantastic graphic

There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was created in, or leaked from, a laboratory.

Effing lab leak shit is a distraction at best. So effing what. Gonna sue China or something? Whatever, It is still a pandemic and the same who prattle on about lab leak seem to curiously resist mitigation measures. Big fat smoky red herring screen.

A but there is a lot of evidence

The way science and things in general work is that the person promoting the theory has to provide the evidence for their theory.

We're still waiting for the evidence on the natural emergence of sars2

yes, mountains of it. you’ve already had people link to it whenever you pull this bullshit, thought it over, and decided you know more about this than every epidemiologist on the planet

I understand that it might make people feel safer if they could believe that the deadly microbes around us only come to get us if someone drops a test tube, but no, they're out there, in countless numbers, and all it takes is a few species adaptations to wipe many or all of us & our animals out.

that’s not where the burden of proof lies

Lol

He hasn't any.

Here's the FBI, "searching for meaning" 🤡 www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/p...

FBI Director Wray acknowledges bureau assessment that Covid-19 likely resulted from lab incident | C...www.cnn.com FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday acknowledged that the bureau believes the Covid-19 pandemic was likely the result of a lab accident in Wuhan, China.

And here's the WHO Director General, "reflecting on his own brokenness" 🤡 www.who.int/news/item/30...

WHO calls for further studies, data on origin of SARS-CoV-2 virus, reiterates that all hypotheses re...www.who.int The report of the international team on their Wuhan field visit, from 14 January -10 February 2021, was published today as WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for further studies...

That has to be part of it. Since her pixie dust expired on that and no one cares about it anymore (or Turkey) it’s like she purposely wrote an article to own the libs

I see her lab leak stuff -- and the response to it -- less as the cause of her going off the deep and more a sign that she had done so.

And for the record, while I don't think a lab leak has been entirely _eliminated_ as a possible explantion, there's no evidence for it. And it simply doesn't matter that much. The problem with lab leak obsession is as much the obsession as it is the theory itself.

Among lab leak obsessives there tends to be a lot of rhetorical slippage between an accidental lab leak (which is, at least, a remote possibility) and a secret, intentionally created bioweapon (which is a crazy conspiracy theory).

At this point I think stuff like "separate information environments" and "we no longer have a shared reality" are massively overblown when it comes to stuff like how people view J. 6th. I think most of the people she spoke to likely thought Jan 6th was just fine but were evasive about admitting it.

They cannot fathom that people they think are normal and harmless can have such horrifying beliefs. As if every single racist down South doesn’t have “that one Black friend”. Shit, my roomie’s dad welcomed me into his home and also sent her books about how the races are better off apart.

Yes. These beliefs are not new. I’ve heard them expressed my entire life.

I don't. I think the information bubble, and especially how the right-wing outrage machine takes advantage of it, is a big part of the problem. They keep pumping shit out, and people swallow it. They're convinced that any source giving contrary info is "Fake News".

It’s not like that’s the only tv channel they have. They make their own information bubble because they want their terrible beliefs laundered. People who aren’t racist react to Fox News with disgust. Or everyone who is forced to watch it at an airport would be a Trump supporter.

They come to believe it like a religion. Propaganda works, which is why they keep using it. And they become convinced that all opposing views are propaganda.

The propaganda inflames what is already there and makes them feel emboldened to say it more often and louder. It’s a contributing factor to how openly racist and terrible people are at this moment, but Fox News and their ilk would have nothing if they weren’t tapping into what’s already there.

If ZT is saying "we no longer have a shared reality" instead of "rightwingers have created a false alternative reality", she's given up the game

belated, but 2/3rds of "likely republican voters" were willing to basically admit it to a YouGov/CBS polll, so yeah.

The only people who think Trump's appeal is "mysterious" are people who are still incapable of believing that millions of Americans are unbelievably racist and care about that more than anything else. There's only a few dozen such people left and they all seem to have newspaper columns

The only "mysterious" part about Trump's appeal to his base is the fact that they prefer him rather than some other angry racist, as well as some other aspects like QAnon. His base being racist and liking him for being racist is something no informed person should question at this point.

That’s not mysterious either. It’s because he was already famous.

True. Hence the quotes.

QAnon was just the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, slightly rebranded

I lived in NJ in the 80s, and I still find it mysterious that people are capable of believing anything that comes out of that incompetent corrupt con man's mouth. (Except the racism parts; people can tell he actually means those.)