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@wdlindsy@toad.socialIt's being reported now that Trump's approval rating is the highest it has ever been.
I watch, unsurprised at the widespread approval of my fellow Americans as the federal government is dismantled, websites taken down, Black and female history erased from government websites, trans people erased, foreign-born people are targeted, hounded, rounded up, shipped out, economic policies that will inflict huge pain on us are enacted, etc.
As I watch, I think of what the Milgram experiment proved about us over 60 decades ago.
A majority of us will, told by an authority figure to harm someone else, willingly comply with the order. Even (or especially?) when we witness the pain we're inflicting….
Milgram was brutally attacked for publicizing the results of his experiments.
#Trump #MilgramExperiment #authoritarianism #dictator #cruelty
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This is America! he was told. Germans may have acted that way. We don't, not in America.
His experiment has been replicated over the years in different periods of time and different cultural-social circumstances. Each time, the results are the same.
There is a deep lust inside us to demean, attack, harm, erase targeted others.
#Trump #MilgramExperiment #authoritarianism #dictator #cruelty
/3
When a cunning dictator-to-be harnesses that lust to attain power and inflames that lust in a large sector the population, the consequences are always beyond brutal — including for the very people who applauded him, voted him into office, told him he was doing a splendid job as he hurt their "enemies."
#Trump #MilgramExperiment #authoritarianism #dictator #cruelty
/4
We will only learn the hard way, it seems, when things fall apart and we ourselves are hurt by the cruelty we have freely, gladly chosen for others — many of us, choosing it, even as we brandish our bibles and our crosses and trot off to church to sing and pray.
#Trump #MilgramExperiment #authoritarianism #dictator #cruelty
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Who is reporting this? I think it's a matter of picking and choosing which source you feel like believing. #Polls #Trump
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5116132-trump-approval-rating-gallup/
I prefer to believe The Hill.
@KathyLK I myself do not prefer to believe that nearly half of American citizens approve of what Trump is doing.
But I prefer to seek the truth and the facts even when they offend me. And it may well be that he's now overreaching and what's being reported as a rise in his approval rating is now going to go the other direction.
My point was that the polls are reporting different results, so you can take any or all of them with a grain of salt, instead of declaring one to be the last word.
@KathyLK I'm not in the business of declaring. I'm in the business of reading and sifting and trying to figure out what media reports are reliable.
"Slightly more Americans approve than disapprove of the job President Trump is doing, even as they have mixed views on the actions he has taken in his attempt to reshape the federal government, the first set of polls after his inauguration show."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/politics/trump-approval-polls.html
And which poll is the NYT citing? Their own Siena/NYT poll? The way the NYT picked at Biden because of his age and normalized Trump (and still is reporting on Trump as though he's a legitimate president) makes me inclined to take whatever they say with another grain of salt.
3 polls were mentioned in the NYT article that I read, one of which the NYT admitted was biased towards Republicans.
Of course, we all know how accurate polls are, so let's just take an average across all polls and bingo, reliability and validity served up on a silver platter!
@KathyLK @wdlindsy Newsweek cites Quinnipiac, You Gov, The Economist, Echelon Insights, Mclaughlin and Assoc, Gallup, AtlasIntel...and you have the NYTimes 3. So actually 10 polls from across the spectrum were handed to you on a platter... but you have to use the spoon all by yourself. 
Muting now. Pearls before swine and all that.
@wdlindsy It is so dark, what you are writing! but I understand. 
I send to you some friendship from France.
@wdlindsy I am now an atheist, but I cannot understand how Christians who enjoy Trump so much read Matthew 25:31-46.
@wdlindsy Wasn't the Milgram experiment debunked?
@dalias @wdlindsy from a keynote address at an annual conference of the British Psychological Society:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/why-almost-everything-you-know-about-milgram-wrong
"....overall 58 per cent of people actually disobeyed.....when we consider the goings-on during the actual experiment and look at the experimenter's four prods to encourage participants to continue, they reveal that people really do not like following orders."
@muddyfields @dalias @wdlindsy The Milgram experiment has been thoroughly debunked: https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf
@dgoldsmith @dalias @wdlindsy thanks for sharing this
@wdlindsy Agreed. That finding is spot on. Those who inflict the pain have no remorse for what they do because their life is one big mirror, in which they see only themselves. Humanitarians on the one hand oppose the anti-humanitarians while keeping up the effot to help those who need it. The question for them seems to be where to apply & how to apply that effort to defeat those who would destroy the life, humanitarians make so much better in this world we live in.
I don't feel Milgram has been debunked.
- In the US, Orange T wiped out non-suggestible early by making medical mask wearing political instead of medical, bleach enemas, veterinarian pseudo-cures, etc.
- He's also the era that invented "stocastic"; he has "plausible deniability" for saying something but not knowing who will do it.
- Targets Eponymous Other who's never had full personhood; LGBT+, women, black / brown / yellow / red people, Democrats, educated, handicapped, etc.
@Anonomouse1981 Instead of debunking him, subsequent studies mounting the same experiment at different periods of time and in different cultural settings replicated the results of the original experiment.
@wdlindsy
That's good to know, thank you.
@wdlindsy Wait until those tariffs on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese goods hit the shop shelves. That should #MakeAmericaGrateAgain.
@wdlindsy His latest approval rating is 49%, his exact share of the vote in November.
An important train of reflections, thank you. Lots to think about.
Some of my followers try to limit politiics on their timeline and to tailor their exposure to different aspects of politics. Thus instead of boosting direcly, I posted a link to your thread, with additional hashatags and a CW. Here:
https://mastodonapp.uk/@the_roamer/113929623411078510
You raise important and troubling questions, thank you!
@wdlindsy Polls are used heavily in purposeful disinformation campaigns and for voter suppression to make people feel like all hope is lost. They should be treated like the radioactive turds that they are.
@JustinDerrick I think anyone who is even passingly informed and pays attention to the news recognizes that polls are flawed and are put to many maleficent purposes. At the same time, ignoring such valid data as they offer us would be fooliish, if we seek facts-based understanding of the world.
@wdlindsy @JustinDerrick Bold to assume people are that aware of how polls are weaponized. Just look at the last Ontario election — every day a new poll showing people there was no point in turning out at the polls. And that election had one of the lowest turnouts in recent memory, handing the OPCs a 66+% majority government with only 17% of eligible voters choosing them, and ‘did not vote’ was the largest group.