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Notes -
I agree and disagree that it was just normal games elections games in 2020 (excluding discussions on mail-in ballots). I feel like the information environment in 2020 still has my head in a blender.
Trump isn’t great at this either but it just felt like no one even cared about telling the truth anymore. It was all narrative building all the time. I remember reading articles of lab leak proponent doctors/researchers being afraid to publish because their career would be destroyed and then after the election coming out. All of mainstream media joining into “peaceful protests”. COVID being a don’t go to Church and then a week later gather downtown and protests with a million people is ok. And I thought we always had a real in America that the CIA doesn’t propagandize the American people on domestic politics and then we had 50 former CIA agents saying Hunters laptop was Russian (with small print that they had no evidence but the media never mentioned the small print). I thought some of the left biased media like the NYT still mostly tried to get to the truth. I thought the msm would call out Joe Biden on the Charlottesville hoax and his claims being inaccurate. That ABC reporters or the supposedly little biased big cable news would asks Joe a few hard questions about Hunters laptops contents.
Something just feels different in that election. Politicians misinform and tell white lies etc. But it felt like trusted institutions began to play sides in politics and went full narrative regardless of facts. If a Harvard researcher discovered good evidence that COVID was a lab leak and even though the politics might help Trump I would have assumed they would tell us the evidence. And the CIA wouldn’t propagandize Americans. And NYT and WaPo would tilt to their side but mostly tell the truth. Twitter might be all leftist but they wouldn’t get in the way of factual information.
I felt these things were the rules before 2020. After 2020 every and any American institution is a spook pretending their the CIA working some colored revolution in South America except now their doing it to Americans. And that colored revolution was the removal of Donald Trump from office at any costs.
That being said if the Dems just played 2020 normal like say 2008 I think they win in a landslide. Every thing in 2020 that put my mind in a blender made me want to vote Trump instead of being a non-voter. Should have just been like 2008 when losing side accepts defeat because something bad happened on their watch. I think a lot of Americans felt information games were played all around them in 2020 and a lot of those people would have been non-voters or voted Dem just because of COVID existing.
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