[GMoromisato]

Ironically, it's this ritual self-flagellation that helped elect Trump.

Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America. And if you don't trust the media, then it's a lot easier to believe Trump's lies.

[kelnos]

I feel like it's the other way around: Trump got elected because he was extremely critical of the US, and spun that as "America sucks right now because the liberals have ruined it".

And beyond that, he just said the right words to people who were not doing so well in the economy. Lies, of course, but very seductive lies, and for a while I even felt bad for some Trump voters for getting sucked into those lies. And then of course he leaned into the popular right-wing culture-war stuff.

(No longer, though: at some point you lose the ability to say "but I thought he would help me!" after the 500th time he hasn't helped you like he said he would.)

[GMoromisato]

Agreed!

Both sides said that "America sucks right now". I think Trump said "Let's go back to when America was great" whereas liberals said, "America was never great, so we need to keep changing."

Worse, it was easy for some liberals to slide from "America was never great" to "and it's the fault of [white people|cis people|males]"

I'm not endorsing any of those views--I just think that's how some people perceived it.

[jquery]

> Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America.

I would argue they lost faith because the media constantly lies and distorts the truth to promote the ideology of capital. They are elite and disconnected, absolutely, just not in a left wing way, but a corpo-capitalist way (which only looks “left” if you’re to the right of capital).

[boxed]

> constantly lies and distorts the truth

sure

> to promote the ideology of capital

eh, no that's false. They promote the ideology of ad revenue at most, which causes audience capture, which on the left means anti-capital crazy talk like pro-theocracy, anti-growth and other weird shit.

[microgpt]

Social media promotes ad revenue (engagement). That's why it's full of brainrot slop and outrage bait. Legacy media promotes ideologies consistent with its owners, which is why for instance it downplays bad stuff Israel does and upplays bad stuff Iran does.

[boxed]

> Legacy media promotes ideologies consistent with its owners, which is why for instance it downplays bad stuff Israel does and upplays bad stuff Iran does.

Partly true, but also mostly wrong. It's all about the business model. Owners doing what you say can only do so much if the business model is based on selling ads and no one gets a salary if they don't attack jews enough for their audience.

The claim that Israels bad actions are down played is pretty doubtful. I always see 10x or more negative reporting of Israel compared to what I happen to know about the conflicts. Like in Swedish media it's always "Israel attacks Lebanon" but never ever "Hizbollah attacks Israel", even though that's what happens first.

[microgpt]

The business model isn't based on selling ads any more. The primary source of revenue is accepting payment to run or block certain topics

[boxed]

Wow. ENORMOUS citation needed for that one.