MAGA and Trump living in a fantasy world

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🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 20% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman -- David explores the connection between a chapter in his book "The Echo Machine" and the lack of a shared agreement on facts and problems in modern politics --- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow Book David Pakman: https://www.cameo.com/davidpakman --- David on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/david.pakman David on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/davidpakman.bsky.social David on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@david.pakman TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow/ Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow --- David's tech: - Camera: Panasonic Lumix G85 https://amzn.to/4fOir5a - Microphone: Shure SM7B: https://amzn.to/3hEVtSH - Voice Processor: dbx 266xs https://amzn.to/3B1SV8N - Stream Controller: Elgato Stream Deck XL https://amzn.to/4fOGJvE - Microphone Cloudlifter: https://amzn.to/2T9bhne  -Timely news is important! We upload new clips every day! Make sure to subscribe!  Original show date March 18, 2025  #davidpakmanshow #theechomachine #trump

Transcript

00:00As many of you know, my book comes out next week and leading up to it, I am going to use

00:05parts of the book to make new critiques of what's going on today. Now, these are not going to be

00:10repeats from the book, but rather it's ideas in the book applied to what we are seeing today.

00:18And one of the major arguments I make in the echo machine is that the right wing media ecosystem

00:26has made the concept of shared facts impossible. When one half of the country doesn't believe

00:34climate change is real, insists the 2020 election was stolen, claims vaccines contain microchips.

00:43There's really no conversation to be had. But here's the thing. Even when we do manage to

00:49agree on the facts, that doesn't mean that we agree on what the problem we're trying to solve

00:55is. And I believe that that's just as dangerous. So, for example, take climate change. Problem one,

01:03which I talk about in my book, is that we have no shared basis. In fact, a huge swath

01:11of the right resisted admitting that climate change was even happening when they started to

01:17admit, OK, climate change is happening. They resisted the idea that humans play a role.

01:23Humans aren't possibly powerful enough to affect the climate of the planet. It has nothing to do

01:29with what humans are doing. When they couldn't resist that any further, they said, well, humans

01:35may play a role, but that role is tiny and it's not worth worrying about. And it's definitely not

01:41worth doing anything about. But even if we agreed on the facts, we would still have an issue of not

01:49agreeing on the problem. Let me explain to you what I mean. Liberals, progressives, the left,

01:55even most of the world's scientific community agrees that rising temperatures, extreme weather,

02:03sea level rise is a threat to humans on this planet, to life on this planet.

02:09It's more than just humans. The problem, as we might say it, is that human activity,

02:15fossil fuel burning, deforestation, industrial emissions is destabilizing the planet. It's

02:21going to make life harder in some places. It's going to make life impossible. So life impossible.

02:26So our goal would be let's reduce emissions. Let's invest in renewables. Let's prevent a

02:31catastrophe. That's how we would define the problem. Remember, this is when we've gotten

02:36them to agree on the facts. Climate change is happening and humans are playing a role,

02:40which we haven't even gotten to yet. But imagine that we did. We define the problem as I just did.

02:47The MAGA people, you know, right wingers, whatever. Even when they acknowledge climate change

02:53and human role in that, they don't see the same problem to them. The real threat isn't

03:01a collapsing ecosystem. It's being forced to change their way of life.

03:06It's government intervention in stuff. When they think about climate action,

03:10they're not thinking about saving Miami from going underwater or preventing wildfires in California.

03:17They think about, do I have to give up my SUV? Do I have to give up my gas stove? Do I have to give

03:22up cheap flights to Florida? Their problem is not climate change itself. It's anything that

03:28threatens their immediate personal comfort and their consumption habits and their way of life.

03:32Even though, of course, over the long term, climate change will be very disruptive to their

03:36way of life. This disconnect is crucial because even when facts get through, the solutions are

03:43impossible when the problem is not agreed upon. Now, I've been talking about climate,

03:47but this happens across the board in the echo machine. My book, I look at how right wing media

03:54has systematically trained its audience to see entirely different problems than those outside

03:59the bubble. And when people don't even agree on what the issue is, you can't get to a solution.

04:06Here's some other examples. Health care. The left sees the problem as millions of Americans are

04:13unable to afford basic medical care, and the left wants to get everybody at least some coverage.

04:21The right would define the problem as government overreach into health care,

04:26socialism, taking away private insurance. And so we aren't even on the same page as far as

04:33the problem goes. How do you fix a problem if you don't agree what the problem is on wealth

04:38inequality? On the left, we see much of the problem as corporations and billionaires hoarding resources

04:45while workers struggle. The right sees the problem of inequality as lazy people not working hard

04:51enough. If the lazy people worked harder, there would be less inequality because they would have

04:55more money. One a couple other examples. Crime. The left sees the problem of crime as systemic,

05:05related to poverty, and all of these circumstances lead to crime. The right sees the problem as woke

05:12days being soft on criminals who are just born to be criminals and are immutably going to be

05:20criminals. Hard to solve a problem when that's the way you see it. And then last example,

05:24education. The left tends to see the problems in education as public schools are underfunded

05:32and we need to invest more in education. The right sees the problem as woke teachers,

05:38indoctrinating kids, and they oppose, in many cases, even the concept of public education.

05:45They want to privatize. They want vouchers, charter schools, private schools, et cetera.

05:49Every single one of these issues follows a really similar pattern, which is that even if you get

05:56past the misinformation, even if you get the MAGA voters to acknowledge the facts as they are,

06:02their definition of the problem is completely different and you still have no way to really

06:07solve anything unless we can agree on that. One of the most damaging effects of the right wing

06:13media ecosystem, the, the, the echo machine, as I call it in my book, the echo machine,

06:18is that it hasn't just taught people to believe things that aren't true. It has taught them

06:26to focus on the wrong problems. MAGA voters have been conditioned to see these manufactured crises,

06:34woke M&Ms, trans athletes, CRT in elementary schools. By the way, nobody talks about CRT

06:41anymore. Now it's DEI. They, they have been taught to see these contrived issues as existential

06:48threats and they ignore the real problems, economic inequality, climate change, healthcare costs,

06:53poverty, et cetera. The result is perpetual outrage with no progress. The right gets to

06:59campaign on fighting woke ism, banning books, uh, getting men out of women's sports while avoiding

07:07the fact that they have no serious solutions to the real problems Americans are facing.

07:12This is a circle. It's, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. If the right wing base is

07:18constantly focused on the wrong threats, they won't ever demand real change of the kind that we

07:25need. And if they never demand real change of the kind that we need, the people at the top, so Trump,

07:30you know, Republican elites, right wing media moguls, they get to keep their grip on power

07:35and nothing changes. So the message here and part of what I talk about in the book is that if we

07:41want to break out of this cycle, we can't just correct falsehoods. And intuitively we've known

07:47this for a while. The conversation has to be reframed around actual problems. And one of the

07:53additional wrinkles that I've kind of thought about that's not in the book, but that I'm now

07:57kind of elaborating is that we really need to connect policy to what happens in the real world.

08:04Sort of ironically, those two recent stories we did, man votes, Trump wife gets deported. And

08:11then yesterday man votes, Trump wife gets arrested by ice while awaiting citizenship papers. Those

08:19stories really connect policy to real world consequences. And so that's another aspect of

08:25this. It's something that corporate media has failed to do. It's something the left hasn't

08:31always really done well either because getting someone to accept reality is step number one.

08:37The further challenge is often getting them to care about the right things. If this is all

08:42generally interesting to you, consider getting my book, the echo machine. It's out in seven days.

08:49I'm told that pre-orders are going to start shipping this week. You could have your book

08:56very soon. Get a signed copy at David Pakman dot com slash booksmith or otherwise order the book

09:02anywhere that books, eBooks and audio books are sold.

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