Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:A poll based on the fevered imaginations of whomever conducted the poll. Democrats have just as much reason to fear Trump suspending the election as Republicans had to fear Obama doing so. Good grief, there's enough to fear in the world without creating things from imagination.
Thanks for the replies and insight, everyone. I enjoy discussing things with people who are not just copies of my own thought processes, because it leads to insights and perspectives I haven't considered before, and helps me to change my worldviews on all sorts of things. I am very distrustful of echo chambers.
I think this sort of thing points to a growing rift in the US. ( Yes, I know - what insight! ). Obama wasn't a popular president with conservatives and right-wingers. The whole birther thing bubbled up to delegitimize him as president, and conservative media and conspiracy theorists constantly stirred the pot about how he wouldn't give up power, etc etc. All made up out of whole cloth as well, of course, but there was a lot of believers, and I think one of the consequences of that particular fear mongering is Donald J Trump as president. One thing that one might argue was different was that Obama, despite what conservatives believed, respected the law and didn't call judges names, so it seemed unlikely that he would engage in the things the conservatives feared he would - whereas Donald Trump's twitter account suggests his view of matters may not be quite the same.
I also think you're right that it points to fear. Yes, there's a lot of fear in the world. And for a nation with its resources and power, America seems to be a fearful nation. I suppose 9/11 inflicted some of that on the collective psyche of the nation, but I can't say for sure because I did not live here at the time. I don't know what the on-the-ground mood of the nation was like at the time. I'm just guessing because to me the ratio of fear to power I see seems out of whack - too much fear.
I think about some other large nations in the world and how their histories differ from the US - for example European countries have the World Wars in their history, and generations probably transfer some of the fears and lessons and resilience learned after such national events. For myself I can only speak to South Africa's history, which is also filled with trauma and violence. I know in my own culture the trauma of the Boer Wars and England's scorched earth policies and concentration camps had a big impact on my culture. My grandmother spoke very bitterly of the English. As a whole, my culture was filled with hard, unsympathetic people who found enemies easily and readily closed ranks to protect their own. Not a whole lot of fear, though. Sure, you had the same sort of conspiracy theories and doom and gloom gossip and fear mongering, but people used it as an escape valve to blow of steam. Nobody elected officials based on it. If they did, the AWB wouldn't have imploded politically in South Africa.
Anyway, I digress into a corner of world politics that is profoundly uninteresting to people. Back to the topic at hand.
Fear, lies, rumors, and bad decisions. Where next?
( PS: I don't know if I would call the results of a real poll about a hypothetical situation "fake news". Mostly because I don't want to call real things I don't agree with or don't believe in "fake news". The poll was real, though the content of it was about a volatile hypothetical situation. Though I guess we've already got the horse out the barn on "fake news" and now we all fling it around at anything that upsets us. )
