this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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If my argument nullified the capacity for agency then propaganda could not exist.
I am saying that propaganda was used to make people vote for Trump. Without that propaganda, they may have voted in their own interests, like protecting bodily autonomy and basic human rights.
Propaganda is the thing that swayed them.
Some people are defenseless to it. They never stood a chance against the billion-dollar machine built specifically to win their vote. I feel sorry for them because they were tricked into giving away their futures.
I absolutely agree that propaganda and misleading information in general has a significant impact and most people don't have the neccessary literacy skills to navigate conteporary information environments. And to be fair - they're not easy to navigate. However, I do not agree that "they [people] are not to blame" in that ultimately adults must take responsibility (and blame) for their own actions and words, even if they are victims of disinformation or other types of misleading content. Because to argue the opposite would basically take away any responsibility from wrongdoing (intentional or otherwise) and would also mean that justice systems based on rule of law are meaningless and unnessary. Which is obviously not true.
We can't have a stable system of governance where nobody can be blamed because everyone is some manner of stupid, ignorant, misled, uneducated about something, etc. Such a system simply wouldn't be able to work in practice for the reasons I mention above.
Mind you, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't study or aknowledge the power that conditioning and misleading information have on collective political perceptions, and try to counter that as far as possible. But that is very different from saying "they are not to blame" and absolving people of their decisions and actions. It is a catch-22 but that is what the human condition ultimately is.