livewithinyourmemesFor Republicans, truth is... honestly overrated
I don’t think the audience Vance’s message is supposed to resonate with cares about being fact-checked, or facts in general.
Trump doesn’t care if he’s being fact-checked because facts don’t matter to him, and his voters have the same outlook.
It’s actually worse.
The core MAGA people are utterly convinced that ‘fact checking’ is literally the moderators lying to prevent Republicans from saying what is actually true.
They are way, way, waaaaay down the rabbit hole of the lugenpresse, I mean fake news, that basically any time the figures they adore/worship are ever fact checked, well actually that is evidence of a vast liberal media conspiracy against them.
They actively despise fact checking, and when it happens, this triggers their conspiracism harder.
The reason why Vance made a show of crying about fact checking was partly due to personal anger/embarrassment/whatever, but the other part is that he knows that complaining about it is appealing to core Trump voters.
circuitfarmerAnd the fact that Lügenpresse has even come up at all is freaking wild. That’s something which should send a chill down the spine of anyone with even a whiff of understanding of modern history.
That they’re down the rabbit hole about it should be impossible. The whole idea should have been political suicide. I take it as evidence of the extreme control years and years of Republican propaganda has on its constituents. They not only vote against their own interests, but they now actively stand against democracy. Absolutely insane.
For clarity: Vance did not literally say lugenpresse or fake news, he just performatively complained about fact checking.
I am the one saying lugenpresse.
…Because one of the many fascist elements of Trump’s cult is his repeated refrain of ‘fake news’, which is exactly the same tactic as Hitler and many other fascists have used in their rise to power.
Again, Vance did not literally say lugenpresse at the debate.
:::spoiler Personal Aside
But uh yeah, in general, widespread American conservative adoption of fascist culture and talking points is not surprising to me.
These people it appeals to the most are narcissistic assholes who have largely failed in life, and are fueled by raging against their inability to achieve the American Dream™ … and then that rage is directed toward anything that conservative hate mongers can blame for that failure.
I grew up in a religious, conservative household and had to do a considerable amount of research and investigation to escape it, and be able to refute it.
Incurious people who grow up in that setting often never really have any inkling to challenge any of it and are basically always ostracized, negged or disowned for doing so.
They just get more and more indoctrinated, culminating in basically QAnon/MAGA worldview: Just make up a narrative that makes you superior righteous and truly knowledgeable , and all your ideological enemies extremely brainwashed at best, literal, actual demons (reptillians?) at worst.
My dad went from making me listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage every time we were in the car together, to, last time I spoke with him, attempting to convince me that Tom Hank’s son actually was a pedophile who raped and ate babies for their adrenochrome.
The… more and more time I spend away from my family, the more and more I talk, either in person or online, with other people, the … more and more I realize just how absurdly insane my life experience has been, that I can best describe myself as a traumatized survivor of it.
Its taken me around two decades to escape the constant physical, mental and financial trauma inflicted upon me by the narcissistic, moronic hypocrites that raised me, taken me two decades to undo all the brainwashing.
Its a cult. American conservatism is a cult of rage and hatred.
That’s why it isn’t surprising to me that it finally went mask off with Trump. It’s always been there seething beneath the surface of begrudging civility.
You just have to have come from it, been born into it, and then escaped, to know how bad it has been, and still is.
:::
It is not a stretch to say that Lügenpresse is a key talking point of the Trump platform. Was the exact word said at the debate? No. Has Trump (and potentially Vance) called the press liars when it comes to the Trump campaign? Yes, on many occasions.
We shouldn’t split hairs about semantics in the face of fascism.