Analysts have gone over the world wide response to Covid 19 and determined that things went pretty badly. It’s difficult to argue that something awful like hoping that pediatric cancer is a good thing for controlling population growth. That’s unlikely to be a populist talking point in the near future. But a pandemic, that’s where the contrarians shine. It turns out there’s lots and lots of different ways to be contrary to an orderly pandemic response. Call it a hoax. Argue for letting it run its course. Jump on the fake cures like Ivermectin. And more. The only consistency in these narratives is that the right wing propaganda machine always paints the scapegoat as liberal policy instead of taking the blame for the mess that you’ve created.
https://newideal.aynrand.org/contrarians-of-the-new-right/
If, like me, you’d really not rather get dragged into a conversation with an armchair political science expert it’s pretty easy to tell by who they admire that it’s time to find an excuse to leave. The people that act as populist influencers inevitably end up being massive hypocrites and contradict themselves. Being contrarian, going against the grain and putting out contrary information is edgy and cool. Admitting you got caught and also put out information that’s just dead wrong, no way. Time to double down on the crazy.
A good bit of the populist nature of conservative contrarianism is from the elevation of Rush Limbaugh to conservative deity. Good money can be made by sprinkling in good ideas amidst some questionable ones. And over time, you end up with an entire news network dedicated to put out the wrong answer just because it’s popular with enough people. Any news network that by objective standards is center, trying fairly to put out both sides has to by simple comparison be far to the left of Fox News. The same applies to Twixter now. And Truth Social or Rumble before Twixter’s demise into Elon driven propaganda. Any social media site that doesn’t want a tarnished image loses advertisers and by default is far to the left.
Somebody that adored Rush Limbaugh is also likely to be a Joe Rogan fan now. There’s charisma behind the contradictions. The viewers have infinite forgiveness for one day early in the pandemic to having an actual medical professional talking about good science and then later hosting known internet disinformation grifters. Both times smiling and claiming both are good ideas.
Yes, contrarianism sells, and it’s part of upbringing and socialization that is a learned behavior by some. By being contrary, and being better at logical fallacy oriented debating tactics is good for getting attention. Just Asking Questions? No, you aren’t. You’ve already made up your mind and want to dazzle me with your fake intellect. Go back to your echo chamber that adores you.
Science literacy does marvels for critical thinking and looking for the right answer. Those without understanding have been trained, poorly socialized, into believing that being contrary is important to having a genuine discussion about proper handling of tough issues.
To finish off, let’s bring up gematria. There’s absolutely no way that there’s any value to gematria evidence. There’s never been a serious debate about the value of gematria as it’s used in conspiracy grifting. It’s a display of contrarianism. An effort to make a confirmation bias oriented brain to boldly speak out their contrarian ideas, while being contradictory - on the spot. No waiting around for months later to have to remember what you said and try to be consistent. Put out the wrong answer now, get it over with, and move on to the next legitimate news story and be contrarian about it. And if you do that right you might get yourself a piece of that sweet, sweet grifting pie including Russian propaganda money.
It’s amazing how many different wrong answers you get with gematria. It’s the ultimate short cut, the ultimate intellectual cop out. It’s much easier to just say, “I’m never wrong about anything.” without using gematria, but that’s what it does.
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