The truth that few will acknowledge is that there is a very large percentage of Americans who are White supremacists, male dominance obsessives, not very bright, sexually screwed up, and easily manipulated through disinformation that plays on these tropes. Look at these numbers for cable news viewership and you can see it clearly. These people watch Fox read, infowar, Breitbart, and Daily Caller. They listen to Limbaugh and Alex Jones. Which is to say they live in a world of fakery that panders to their biases and fears.
Tom Steyer is correct. This election is not about changing the minds of Trumplicans; that isn't going to happen. This election is about getting the non-Trumpers to get up off their asses to vote for whomever isn't Trump, and not to vote for third-party candidates. If you don't vote, or you vote for a third-party candidate, you are voting for Trump, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
Credit: Mishko
One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face obscured, and clicked “Like” on the official pages of Donald Trump and his reelection campaign. Facebook’s algorithm prodded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox Business, and a variety of fan pages with names like “In Trump We Trust.” I complied. I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined a handful of private Facebook groups for MAGA diehards, one of which required an application that seemed designed to screen out interlopers.
The president’s reelection campaign was then in the midst of a multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at shaping Americans’ understanding of the recently launched impeachment proceedings. Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread. Right-wing websites amplified every claim. Pro-Trump forums teemed […]
