Feelings vs facts- RW snowflakes don't get the difference. Don't waste time on them

One thing that has bothered me about the 2010s is how so many right-wing politicians and media figures refuse to act in good faith, and that Dems and "legitimate" media are so inept in countering these dishonest lowlifes.

Along those lines, In Vox's Sean Illing talked with Cal-Berkeley professor George Lakoff, who notes that it's a mistake for media and politicians to repeat Donald Trump's tweets and false claims. Even if it's to say "Donald Trump is lying when he says _____," Lakoff says it's a losing strategy that allows Trump's BS to fester in people's minds.

While I find Lakoff and followers to be simplistic at times, I think he is largely spot-on here. Lakoff says that instead of reporting in Trump's statements, media and politicians should use "truth sandwiches" that use a word structure "facts - why Trump is lying about these facts - and reiterate the facts."

A mistake that Lakoff says Democrats and others make with right-wingers is that they assume all people make their opinions based on facts and are flexible to new inputs, instead of being likely to stick with what they want to believe.

(George Lakoff:) People think in terms of conceptual structures called frames and metaphors. It’s not just the facts. They have values, and they understand which facts fit into their conceptual framework. You can’t understand something if your brain doesn’t allow it, if your brain filters it out in terms of your values.

Democrats seem not to understand this, and they keep trying to employ reason as a persuasive vehicle. I wish Enlightenment reasoning was an accurate model for how most people think and judge, but it isn’t, and we better acknowledge that fact.

Sean Illing: So on some level, you’re saying that Democrats have to accept that they’re playing a different kind of conversational game, in which truth and falsity are irrelevant. If that’s the case, what use is there for a free press, or for discourse at all?

George Lakoff: Well, that’s why the truth sandwiches are important. Let me say one more thing that’s really crucial in this respect. Kellyanne Conway talked about alternative facts at one point, so the phrase comes from her. When I heard that, it occurred to me that there’s a sense in which she’s right.

If you’re someone who shares Trump’s worldview, there are certain things that follow from that worldview. In other words, certain things have to be true, or have to be believed, in order to sustain that worldview. The things that aren’t actually true but nevertheless preserve that worldview are “alternative facts” — that’s what Conway was getting at, whether she knew it or not.

The conservatives use those alternative facts all the time, and so does Trump. If he’s talking to his base, he’s talking to people who have already bought into a picture of the world, and his job is to tell them things that confirm that picture — and he knows they’ll believe it for that very reason.

I think we have to understand “alternative facts” in this way, and understand that when Trump is lying, he’s lying in ways that register with his audience. So it may be lying, but it’s strategic lying — and it’s effective.

With this in mind, I wanted to also note this part from Saturday Night Live's open, where Kate McKinnon played Faux News host Laura Ingraham, and explained to us to the concept of "feel facts".

“Later on in the show: Celebrities in California are whining about wildfires while our heroic president is under constant attack from rain,” [McKinnon] said [as Ingraham]. “But first, let’s talk about the rampant voter fraud that allowed democrats to literally steal the election. Some have claimed that suburban women revolted against the Republican party. But doesn’t it feel more true that all Hispanics voted twice?”

The Ingraham character added them to her list of “feel facts,” which “aren’t facts but they just feel true.”

What the SNL skit and Lakoff's comments illustrate are reasons why we shouldn't waste our time arguing with people weak enough to still support Trump or get their "facts" from hate radio AM 620/1130/1310. All you can do is to mock them and repeat facts in different frames so that bystanders don't get tricked into thinking that Bagger trash shooting their mouths off actually have a clue.

The sooner we concentrate on the wants and thoughts of the honest 70% of this country that cares about independent facts and results, the better off we will be. And the more likely it will be that we can isolate and diminish the gutless 30% that are left.