“how does a Yale graduate not know the difference”
Knowing and knowledge is not the crisis. The crisis of understanding in the United States of America 2025 is that thinking systems are important. Reactionary thinking, mockery thinking, one-upmanship thinking is not the same as the science way of thinking. Twitter-thinking, meme thinking, isn’t the same as science thinking.
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less)” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995
sigh JD Vance and Carl Sagan debate would be like watching a grizzly bear dismantle an entire childrens party in a park, but in a fun way.
I think the only thing JD Vance really knows deep down is that women find him creepy and pathetic and everything he does to try to obtain a respectable sense of masculinity in whatever way he perceives it backfires because women (and everyone else too) can see right to the rotten, hateful heart at the core of his identity.
Imagine being such a pathetic incel you can’t even leverage the position of Vice President Of The United States to gain any sense of respect from… well really anyone.
Imagine having all the information in the world, and flocking to react-comment to JD Vance in 2025 without seeing the forest for the trees, 340 million people who are ignorant of Carl Sagan’s concepts and ideas, and even if they can repeat the words, they don’t comprehend or understand because they are so reactionary in their thinking values.
Of course everyone can see he is hateful. That’s why he is popular. Don’t you see how hateful content on social media systems is what is popular and gets all the upvotes since March 2013?
It is as if nobody here on Lemmy has ever studied media ecology from Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan.
Hate is trending, the United States of America year 2025 flocks to shit and flocks to hate
Hate sells. Attacking women sells. It’s popular. Popularity and trending.
::: _______________
“What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.” ― Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT computer science
You don’t know what you are talking about, on many simultaneous levels.
JD Vance is the most unpopular Vice President since the U.S. has been polling Vice Presidents, you are a cynical fool who has lost the plot if you genuinely think JD Vance represents what even something approaching a majority of USians want…
Hate doesn’t sell, yes hate is all over social media… because large U.S. corporations have decided the only way to monetize social media is by stoking hatred, pushing conspiracies and flooding conversations with hateful bots that encourage people to react in kneejerk ways… but that doesn’t actual mean hate sells more than kindness, you have just become cynically lost in your fear of that and it blinds you to the simpler truth that the current conditions are imposed upon us, they aren’t the inveitable end result of our humanity..
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/03/21/j-d-vance-is-the-most-disliked-new-vice-president-in-history/
You do not understand popularity, it shifts. And what has become popular since March 2013 is mass dehumanization and hate. Mockery and insults. Surkov / Surkovian information warfare an governing methods.
Rick Roderick in 1993 gave a lecture, he was a professor at Duke University, and he explains what you do not understand about media ecology of media systems. Why JD Vance’s popularity is popular.
You can see this every day on every social media network in May 2025. What is popular is mass dehumanization, mockery, hate, anti-science, anti-goodness. What is popular is Surkov / Surkovian governing methods.
Rick Roderick 1993
"And we get for the first time a phenomenon never known in polling which is the phenomenon of not liking a person, but of liking liking a person. This is a sign you are dealing with the hyperreal.
Let me go over that again: Reagan’s popularity was popular. When you went through the various traits of Reagan and what Reagan stood for and his policies and so on, ah, vast numbers of people disliked nearly all of them. What was popular was his popularity. And I don’t think that Reagan’s alone in this.
Show business figures had this same thing go on for years. I can’t remember the last Michael Jackson song that I even listened to. Or my kids, who also don’t like Michael Jackson. But he’s popular, but not in the old sense. It is a hyper popularity, if you follow me. It is popular that he is popular.
Madonna has learned to live and create herself on the curve of the postmodern by making it her goal to be more popular than popular; by having her popularity the topic of popularity. I mean, we have found out that she can’t particularly act or sing. She is not built well enough to be a true cybernetic sex symbol for this period, and yet she manages – because of her understanding of this situation that Baudrillard calls the hyperreal – to stay on this curve of popularity."
https://rickroderick.org/308-baudrillard-fatal-strategies-1993/
Hate of JD Vance is popular
Hate of Donald Trump is popular
Mocking and Total Mockery United States of America on the World Stage is Popular
You don’t understand what Rick Roderick is teaching. You can study and learn.
ok I am imagining, sounds great honestly!
I already got that sense from you, that you think JD Vance is great content to keep you entertained with hate mockery.
That’s what it all comes down to, you having fun enjoying JD Vance. That’s the very basis of his power, playing the wrestling heel (on media systems) for social media users to mock and insult - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heel_(professional_wrestling) - the Surkov / Surkovian governing methods. Twitter thinking, entertainment thinking, mockery thinking. JD Vance knows exactly how power works in United States of America 2025 social media society. JD Vance knows how to keep the notifications flowing over TCP/IP.
“An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth – scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the comics and many books – might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society would it be if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope?” - Carl Sagan, January 8, 1994
You are using a lot of words to say “you just like to hate JD Vance and feel good about it and not ACTUALLY do anything or pay attention to anything” and to that I don’t have a response other than to laugh in your face that you are picking this hill to die on.
Read my comment history, making easy high school level jokes at how pathetic JD Vance isn’t the only thing I focus on or care about, it is just one of the more enjoyable things I do.
No, I’m not saying that.
I’m saying you don’t understand Surkov / Surkovian information warfare, you enjoy that your nation lost to Putin and Russia since March 2013. If I’m not being blunt enough for you:
[email protected]
[email protected]
It is clear as day you find pleasure and joy in the United States of America Total Mockery created by the Kremlin using Internet media systems since March 2013. that you find it enjoyable that there is so much hate and mockery, that you want to contribute more and more each day.
Exactly what Carl Sagan said in 1995: “The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media”
That means Lemmy.
Hey, newsflash, sometimes hate and mockery being used to tear down evil people is EXISTENTIALLY necessary to regain a peaceful, kind status quo.
Maybe you are right though, maybe I am just making this all worse…but unlike you I feel like I can actually convince people to be agitated, to want to act, my words are better at finding solidarity with average people.
Your words are a bunch of intellectual posturing and condescension to people reacting emotionally as if emotions are not a valid part of our understanding, and processing of how we understand the world.
I AM VERY angry, and when other people see that they also feel like their anger might be more valid than they have been made to feel too.
If you knew ANYTHING about political organization you would know agitation is the first step to opening up the door to change, and you would probably also just stop talking because your arguments make me want to take the other side even though many aspects of your points are right, fundamentally you have taken a position that will only push people away.
It seems like you think any expression of negative emotion is a form of losing against fascism, when the truth is much more nuanced and often very much the opposite case.
Yes, I knew this, but you are in such a state of reactionary mocking you haven’t read my last 100 posts on Lemmy, all you can do is engage reactionary thinking and reactionary mocking. Like JD Vance. Twitter-thinking. Nor have you seem to studied / understood / comprehended what Peter Pomerantsev has been publishing on the Internet since year 2011.
Of course I know this, I teach it over on:
“Hybrid War Lost” to Russia, Russia is the Political Organization
[email protected]
Anger is the very basis of the Russian information warfare. Mass dehumanization via Lemmy social media, Twitter social media, Facebook social media, Reddit social media, Instagram social media, TikTok social media, etc. Hate-filled and angry.
We have a crisis of “media ecology”, the topics of Neil Postman at New York University, Marshall McLuhan of University of Toronto, among other extremely serious crisis situations.
Again, that’s the basis and outcome of the Russian information warfare that was launched on the World Wide Web Internet in March 2013.
Professional psychologists and psychiatrists worked with Russia to create 5,000 alternate reality screen games for media consumers to be constantly hate-filled, shallow, reactionary, anti-goodness, dehumanizing, and angry.
“In one experiment, CA would show people on online panels pictures of simple bar graphs about uncontroversial things (e.g., the usage rates of mobile phones or sales of a car type) and the majority would be able to read the graph correctly. However, unbeknownst to the respondents, the data behind these graphs had actually been derived from politically controversial topics, such as income inequality, climate change, or deaths from gun violence. When the labels of the same graphs were later switched to their actual controversial topic, respondents who were made angry by identity threats were more likely to misread the relabeled graphs that they had previously understood. What CA observed was that when respondents were angry, their need for complete and rational explanations was also significantly reduced. In particular, anger put people in a frame of mind in which they were more indiscriminately punitive, particularly to out-groups. They would also underestimate the risk of negative outcomes. This led CA to discover that even if a hypothetical trade war with China or Mexico meant the loss of American jobs and profits, people primed with anger would tolerate that domestic economic damage if it meant they could use a trade war to punish immigrant groups and urban liberals.” ― Christopher Wylie, Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, 2019
More mocking, more insult
My message at the very top said: “The crisis of understanding in the United States of America 2025 is that thinking systems are important. Reactionary thinking, mockery thinking, one-upmanship thinking is not the same as the science way of thinking. Twitter-thinking, meme thinking, isn’t the same as science thinking”
Your “newsflash” electric message, mocking of me fits:
You keep going the high road bud, I will continue to pick whatever road I want to fight fascism and I will continue to switch roads whenever I so choose.
Further, you have a very simplified, childish view of how intellectualism works as if there is a simple continuum from bad, kneejerk thoughts to sophisticated good intellectual thoughts devoid of emotion.
IF YOU DO NOT FIGHT NOW with EMOTION and with One-Upmanship in mocking those in power, there will be no space for your precious intellectual diatribes that is just how it political power works. Speak with your heart, appeal to people’s emotions honestly and directly and mercilessly make fun of fascists in every way possible.
To see emotions as seperate from intelligence as you do is a tragically limiting way to see the beautiful potential of your own mind, maybe try socializing with others a bit more and focusing less on reading about all of these things you are referencing?