We better recognize we are all human. Humans have a tendency to kill each other, that’s not proof that they’re animals. We need to recognize we are all human. Pretending otherwise is sort of shirking responsibility

I happened to notice one of the many abuse phrases that come from abusers in your 6th paragraph, so I wanted to touch on that for a moment.


Phrases such as "You're too sensitive, "You're so emotional", "You can't take a joke", and "You're overreacting" are emotional abuse phrases made by abusers who dismiss and invalidate another person's feelings. These type of phrases said to anyone at any given time are massive red flags that are used to shame other people for their thoughts and feelings. It is emotional abuse.


If at any point someone else doesn't agree, it's perfectly reasonable to say "I don't agree" with that because it's not dismissing another persons thoughts or feelings.



Getting back to Regressive party (Republican party) the supporters themselves are human. Unfortunately, they're fed a continuous and extreme amount of disinformation that is used to keep them angry and misinformed. It's a vicious cycle of indoctrination.


Over the years, other Du-ers have shared success stories with reaching out and connecting with some Regressives and showing them reasoning and logic. It seems to be a rare occurrence but it does happen from time to time. Bless these DU-ers that have the endurance to make this happen.


An excellent OP, ShazzieB!

Sometimes it's truly disinformation , particularly in media commentary on political issues where that commentary isn't void of the preferences of the market$ where they sell.

I think it's also possible that in the US, which is a big country in which large regions of the country are built on opposing ends of the economy. Most of rural America is built on an extraction economy, that harvests resources and ships them to cities. Because this is so different from the heavily consumption/import based economies of modern post-industrial urban areas, there are bound to be perspectives and opinions that are also very different between rural and urban Americans.

These underlying, opinion/perspective generating differences aren't always built around 'disinformation'. A large fraction of them are based on "built in" socio-economic and cultural differences, and perspectives about what promotes a desired life and what risks that desired life.

Here is an example... built around the notion that "The solution to pollution is dilution". That's largely true because toxicity of pollution is often related to concentration of pollutants. Concentration of pollutants is something built into lives in urban areas that generate substantial amounts of post-consumption pollution.

Rural areas with lower populations have unsurprisingly less post-consumption pollution, and rural and urban areas unsurprisingly differ in how significant post-consumption pollution is to them, and what regulations should be present that cut post-consumption pollution often impact the pre-consumption economy, it's employees that are largely based in rural areas. That's not a matter of disinformation, it's a matter of how people in different places are impacted. Because denialism is a mechanism of self-preservation, it's common to see "the other guys in the other place" as the crux of any problem.

The general low attitude of the urban population toward rural populations, together with the lower voting power of rural areas, means that many problems that belong to urban consumption based economy are moved to rural areas where the urban area is no longer presented with the costs of their own pollution.

The mega-land fills of the American midwest aren't in urban areas (although urban areas are where the vast majority of the post-consumption methane generating pollution is created). The methane produced in those dumps exceeds all economic related methane production rural areas. Yet, popular politicians on the left want to blame "cow-farts" for unnecessary climate impacts.

The risks to aquifers and drinking water in rural communities that results from urban waste dumped within man-made mountains on and near rural communities exceeds by 10 fold the risks that are produced by 'hosting' wastes from rural communities. But then corporations make huge money disposing of waste and they -must- have a place to do that. So wastes from all over SE Wisconsin are deposited 60 miles or more away from their sites of origin. Hence the gigantic Mt Trashmore in Jefferson Co. Wi covering several square miles and rising toward 300 ft above it's adjacent wetlands. Out of site and out of mind for the urban community but forever destroying the dumpsites as ecologically safe, and habitable zones.

A huge part of the consumption-based economies of urban areas is health services. In the last century the corporate dominating notion that scaling up leads to cost-efficiencies created health industry models that have stripped lower population rural areas of hospitals, clinics and private Dr.s and dentist offices. The result is a statistically significant lowered life-expectancy and 'period of good-health' in the lives of America's rural population. They are forced into less desireable solutions urban citizens are not. This has led to significant problems with self-diagnosis, self-treatment/health abuse, and startling use of illegal drugs, and dangerous off-prescription use of left-over and shared legal drugs in unexpected demographics and age groups in rural areas. And so 25-40 year old males in rural areas have terrible reductions in life-expectancy in the past 20 years.

Rural people, and their elected representatives aren't unaware of all these things. Rural people feel left behind by outcomes they are powerless to control. Ant that shows up in -authentic- reality-based different desires and preferences among political choices. And yes, also in a bias toward accepting 'disinformation' that appears to be empathetic to their sentiments.