[kristopolous]

I understand that mentality but it's clearly not how people behave. People who buy into bullshit do so as a core personality behavior. It's like how doomsday cult members double down when the predictions don't come to pass.

I mean https://www.heavensgate.com/ is still around. Being discredited has the opposite effect as the intended. It instead concretizes the delusions. Exposing charlatans seems to only increase the fanaticism of their adherents.

[kelipso]

You are thinking of a completely different situation. No one is thinking of some real estate guy who wants the dems or republicans to win as their cult leader when seeing those ads.

[kristopolous]

At least in the US, political partisanship I think is operationally pretty similar to a cult. It certainly doesn't have to exist like this but right now I think it is which is why I brought up the observation in the first place.

[kelipso]

I feel like that's an impression caused by the current political media environment but it's not reality. Voter turnout is less than 50% of voting age population in the US and a significant portion of the voters are independents. Silent majority or whatever.

[kristopolous]

Those observations are somewhat in agreement. If politics became less culty there might be higher engagement.

Everyone I know who posts about a particular politic or election are totally batshit.

Really the only reaction I have is of concern. Like, are they getting therapy, does their family know...

[tekknik]

you seem to have some other motive with these statements but i’ll bite, what’s the solution to a less “cult like” political environment?

should one party move to the other or something else?

[kristopolous]

I have no idea.

Maybe it's because there's too much sensationalism and story-telling? People realized you get better ratings through theatrical emotionally charged fictions sitting adjacent to reality and they're cheaper to produce than careful and cautious journalism? That's kind of Juvenal's bread and circuses theory.

Maybe it's a natural consequence of the vast diversity of information channels and online communities so not only do classically oppressed groups have homes but also those committed to hate or messianic cults?

Maybe there's some increased isolationism of industrial society so people end up severing the in person community ties that help to keep them better attached to reality?

Maybe it's all of these?

My observation of the current state is Republicans are pining for a dictator, Democrats are trying to be a 2002 era George W Bush knockoff and most people are thinking "what is up with these lousy options?"

It's the problem you see in almost all organizations: when you focus on the fans, you alienate the base by deluding yourself into imagining a phantom majority a few steps away from loving you but which in reality wants nothing to do with you.