The low-information voter begins his or her day largely unaware that any snippets of news they consume are likely to be spun leftward. Many don’t know any better, but some, with guarded comprehension, don’t want to know any better. They’ve subsisted on a diet of mainstream and Big Tech news for so long that biased reportage has become their media comfort zone.
A glance at Zuckerberg’s feed. Yahoo news. They may prepare for work with the montage of a major network morning show as background: cookbook authors and studies that show transgenderism in rhesus monkeys. The LIV’s sources are completely devoid of solid conservative content.
At their midmorning break they get another dose of fake news they don’t know any better than to believe in. They spent over a year absorbing Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell sound bites to the effect that President Trump had colluded with the Russians. In truth it was the candidate they likely voted for, Hillary Clinton, who had.
At noon the LIV mind remains firmly closed. If they get any news at all, it comes in drips from Facebook’s censorious ministry of truth or Biden-propping major network radio affiliate news directors. They know mostly that Republicans and conservatives “seem” bad (and Donald Trump the worst) and are exposed only to informational items that blatantly or subliminally reinforce that. As the media circus moves in a blur past their coopted consciousness, they register that Liz Cheney is the hero, a brave herald attempting to right the GOP ship.
They hear an elected Democrat suggest that January 6th was worse than 9/11, and feel the force of the statement even while grasping on some level that it is intrinsically false. Yes, they think, while waiting in the drive-thru at Wendy’s, a thorough investigation of Matt Gaetz is warranted. Hunter Biden never makes the feed.
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The LIV is never privy to buried media corrections. When a purported white supremacist defacement of a notable African-American’s statue is shown to have been a Jussie Smollett-style hoax, they never get the update, and thus believe there’s a white supremacist living on every block. The LIV is blissful in his/her ignorance, but it may be dawning on the periphery of their minds that Biden’s installment in the White House is a disaster for them and the nation. They’re paying more for pretty much everything, and the school their children attend is experiencing an uptick in immigrant students whose vaccination status is unknown. They’ve been vaccinated, but are keeping a package of disposable masks in the car because they heard George Stephanopoulos warning about “variants.” They go on believing, as they catch headlines while surfing for “COVID guidelines in Scranton restaurants” that sacrifice is necessary. The small business that provided them with a paycheck and benefits went out of business in August 2020, but they are soldiering on.
Everything has to be better now, doesn’t it, now that the Evil One, the mean one, the heartless one, the racist one, is out of office?
They are hearing what they have been conditioned to hear, lies about everything from January 6th to election integrity. Like jurisdictional courthouses across the land—all the way up to the Supreme Court–they are not interested in delving too deeply, or at all, into what happened on Election Day 2020.
As night falls, unlike committed leftists who glory in the alleged coup, LIVs might experience brief pangs of worry. They’ve heard things through inadvertent backchannels: was the election stolen?
They are not the heart of the new Democrat Socialist Party. Those people have plenty of information, and are looking to control the flow of information. Those people know how bad things are getting, and why it has to get bad: to bring down existentially racist, capitalist America as founded.
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No, the low-information voter, content with a faux understanding and of the way things are, is a pawn in the game. While there is such a thing as a Republican LIV, Democrat LIVs round-out the base of the Democrat Party. Lose them, and Democrats would never win again.
The great Rush Limbaugh often used the term “low-information voter” on his show to describe masses who are only exposed to liberal viewpoints and are thus woefully misinformed and in lazy lockstep with cultural liberalism. They are spoon-fed, undernourished people who have been propagandized into a mode of reactionary anti-Americanism.
Interestingly, unlike confirmed socialists who are ideologically honest, they think they love America, and at the same time may describe themselves as “not really political.” But the vision of this nation they think they love is a media-crafted abomination.
They’re pretty sure they don’t want open borders, but would never vote for a Republican freedom caucus member who advocates for sane immigration policy. They regard shills like Chuck Todd as credible journalists. They perceive politicians like Maxine Watters as “out there,” but essentially sympathetic. They hopefully cling to the idea that Biden won, despite mounting evidence the lays the question on every kitchen table in the nation.
They turn away from networks like Newsmax, or radio shows like Hannity, appalled, but left to wonder what would happen if they allowed themselves to take such media in, and consider alternate viewpoints and positions.
The LIV beds down at night with a look-in at the late local news, typically devoid of all but the “progressivism” of hard-left programming directors. Even the weather report is manipulatively laced with sleepy half-truths about climate change.