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You are using "believed" - past tense. Facts change nothing. This report means nothing. These people still believe. The report is wrong. They are right. The t

You are using "believed" - past tense. Facts change nothing. This report means nothing. These people still believe. The report is wrong. They are right. The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
riffraff 9mo ago
I have a friend who works with american tourists visiting europe, mostly older folks, mostly to religious sights. They are, for the vast majority, indoctrinated beyond any chance of reasonable change of opinion. Talking with him makes _me_ worry about my own beliefs, because if these people can be so blind, maybe I am too.
- dboreham 9mo ago
  The Americans visiting Europe are a sample very skewed towards sanity due to their socioeconomic situation and interest in history/culture. So this is either not true or highly troubling.
  - multiplegeorges 9mo ago
    > mostly to religious sights [sic] Don't be so sure.
    - wood_spirit 9mo ago
      Sightseers see sights at sites? So perhaps not sic in this case?
  - Sharlin 9mo ago
    Agreed, though the "religious sights" part likely does a lot of work here.
- jkaplowitz 9mo ago
  The kind of older tourist visiting a foreign religious site is definitely going to be relatively indoctrinated regardless of their origin country. But yes, many Americans are indoctrinated. They also tend to be dominant in wide swaths of US geography and highly motivated by their indoctrinators to vote, thus maximizing their electoral impact. Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.
  - aj7 9mo ago
    In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. Some are hundreds of years old, but nevertheless fake. This is not a comment on Christianity as a religion. Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created. This is operating in modern times. I was working as a contractor for Intel Israel. They took everybody on a day trip. To an LDS temple to “see the organ” (what else?). An American LDS church. Needed a place in Israel to “represent.” Now wait 100 years. You wait. I have things to do.
    - lostlogin 9mo ago
      > In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics. Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?
      - b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
        DNA tested for what, exactly? I guess things like fragmentary remains may not be human, but a full skull is not so easy to confuse for a donkey. Ethnicity would only be useful if the saint in question had origins that would be out of place in Italy or if they had a specific ethnicity(like St Peter's remains not having a Levantine origin).
- freetinker 9mo ago
  You’re self-questioning and self-reflective. Totally not worried for you or by you. Keep it up.
Aromasin 9mo ago
That is populism in a nutshell. It is anti-rationalism at its heart. There's no real ideology - that's how it applies to both Chávez and Trump, Corbyn and Orbán. People want to believe what feels "instinctively" correct, because the intellectual overhead of modern society leaves the majority of the population unable to deal with the reality that political and economic systems are incredibly difficult to understand without hours of study and thought. That is uncomfortable, so people rebel against intellectualism, because it's easier to be told lies through 30-second videos and feel well informed, rather than sitting through a 20-hour session that one might need to truly understand a niche of a niche. The more they read, the less they understand, so disengage from it altogether and go with their gut (designed for tribes of monkeys) because the cognitive overload is too much to bear.
- cheschire 9mo ago
  It's so exhausting having the same conversation every time. A friend reads something on reddit, flips out about it. Asks in our signal chat "can anyone explain this" as bait. Occasionally I take the bait and explain the extreme thing through a centrist lens. Now I'm instantly on the side of whoever did the bad thing and spend the next 90 minutes explaining rationality until we arrive at the center. Things calm down. 3 days go by, and my friend visits reddit again...
  - NetMageSCW 9mo ago
    You have a funny idea of what friend means.
    - cheschire 9mo ago
      Please don't reduce decades of friendship with a person to a couple dozen words I posted on a website and think you can judge what friendship means to me. I was talking about the impact of the current state of the world on existing relationships. Stop contributing to the problem.
      - phs318u 9mo ago
m4rtink 9mo ago
Even the strongest believes eventually collide with the hard cold solid wall of reality. But if you do believe hard enough, if you give it your all and exclude anything else than your believes, when you become one with it - then you can certainly increase the collision speed quite a bit! :-)
brightball 9mo ago
In fairness to this report, the report is about tariffs and their impact on...imported goods affected directly by tariffs isn't it? From an overall economic policy standpoint, missing facts that provide context are pretty important especially when you're trying to paint an entire side of the isle as completely brainwashed. Nobody can have a conversation when we create straw men to argue with. Other relevant context: - The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lowest-since-2009-imports-decline-2026-01-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lo... - US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-growth-since-2000/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-g... Q4 forecast https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow - US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022. https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-rate/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-r... - US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epmr_pte_nus_dpg&f=m https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e... - The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us - And the US stock market is at all time highs right now. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:text=Historically%2C%20the%20United%20States%20Stock,on%20January%2019%20of%202026. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:t... There's a lot of economic doom and gloom in the comments section here that's simply not reflected in the overall economic numbers. It's not perfect, but it's trending in the right direction.
- lovich 9mo ago
  > The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts. Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off. > US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year. I can find no mention of Q4 gdp results in your linked source, it appears to be looking at annual gdp rates over years and focusing on the US compared to China and India > US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022. Still above the feds target of 2% but it’s good to see it still trending down > US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago. It’s winter, prices for gas always drop in winter. Your own source shows that we’re still above pre COVID prices > The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years. I’m not sure if I’m reading your source correctly but it appears to be saying eggs are $0.45/ dozen That seems implausibly low but I can’t find other sources to compare as every source I’m finding has conflicting information internally, and the price given doesn’t match up with the lowest prices even if I multiply it by 12 assuming I misunderstood price per dozen for price per egg > And the US stock market is at all time highs right now. Yea but over half of that is mag7 and only propped up by the AI bubble. It’s nice temporarily but all the context around the stock market doesn’t make it look particularly healthy atm. The economy looks about as healthy as it did in 2024. I think a lot of people’s views on the health of the economy, whether it’s good or bad, are being more influenced by political leanings than by numbers. Fits with the zeitgeist of the era.
LexiMax 9mo ago
My pet theory, one that is borne out by some amount of anecdotal evidence, is that they don't honestly believe. Assuming they're not bots, they were bit by the 2025 cost of living increases just as much as anybody, they know what changed, they know in their gut that Trump is the reason for it. They are just so caught up in their culture war that they believe that shouldering such a burden, at least for a time, is worth it for all of the "positives" of the regime - especially the part where people they don't like are suffering. That's why trying to argue over tariffs is useless - not because they don't believe, but because that's not their underlying motivation. In fact, they would prefer to talk about tariffs, because they have a set of well-rehearsed talking points for arguing against that. It's better to figure out what they actually care about, as well as their motivations for why.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
impute 9mo ago
"Truth is not truth" - Rudy Giuliani
throw0101d 9mo ago
> The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control. "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
>The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control. Yes, this is what we call a "post truth era", for anyone who may still think this is some fringe conspiracy.
lencastre 9mo ago
believers explanations necessary possible and all…

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

riffraff 9mo ago

I have a friend who works with american tourists visiting europe, mostly older folks, mostly to religious sights. They are, for the vast majority, indoctrinated beyond any chance of reasonable change of opinion. Talking with him makes _me_ worry about my own beliefs, because if these people can be so blind, maybe I am too.

dboreham 9mo ago
The Americans visiting Europe are a sample very skewed towards sanity due to their socioeconomic situation and interest in history/culture. So this is either not true or highly troubling.
- multiplegeorges 9mo ago
  > mostly to religious sights [sic] Don't be so sure.
  - wood_spirit 9mo ago
    Sightseers see sights at sites? So perhaps not sic in this case?
- Sharlin 9mo ago
  Agreed, though the "religious sights" part likely does a lot of work here.
jkaplowitz 9mo ago
The kind of older tourist visiting a foreign religious site is definitely going to be relatively indoctrinated regardless of their origin country. But yes, many Americans are indoctrinated. They also tend to be dominant in wide swaths of US geography and highly motivated by their indoctrinators to vote, thus maximizing their electoral impact. Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.
- aj7 9mo ago
  In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. Some are hundreds of years old, but nevertheless fake. This is not a comment on Christianity as a religion. Religions need relics, and if they can’t find them, they are created. This is operating in modern times. I was working as a contractor for Intel Israel. They took everybody on a day trip. To an LDS temple to “see the organ” (what else?). An American LDS church. Needed a place in Israel to “represent.” Now wait 100 years. You wait. I have things to do.
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    > In Israel, virtually every Christian relic is fake. The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics. Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?
    - b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
      DNA tested for what, exactly? I guess things like fragmentary remains may not be human, but a full skull is not so easy to confuse for a donkey. Ethnicity would only be useful if the saint in question had origins that would be out of place in Italy or if they had a specific ethnicity(like St Peter's remains not having a Levantine origin).
freetinker 9mo ago
You’re self-questioning and self-reflective. Totally not worried for you or by you. Keep it up.

Aromasin 9mo ago

That is populism in a nutshell. It is anti-rationalism at its heart. There's no real ideology - that's how it applies to both Chávez and Trump, Corbyn and Orbán. People want to believe what feels "instinctively" correct, because the intellectual overhead of modern society leaves the majority of the population unable to deal with the reality that political and economic systems are incredibly difficult to understand without hours of study and thought. That is uncomfortable, so people rebel against intellectualism, because it's easier to be told lies through 30-second videos and feel well informed, rather than sitting through a 20-hour session that one might need to truly understand a niche of a niche. The more they read, the less they understand, so disengage from it altogether and go with their gut (designed for tribes of monkeys) because the cognitive overload is too much to bear.

cheschire 9mo ago
It's so exhausting having the same conversation every time. A friend reads something on reddit, flips out about it. Asks in our signal chat "can anyone explain this" as bait. Occasionally I take the bait and explain the extreme thing through a centrist lens. Now I'm instantly on the side of whoever did the bad thing and spend the next 90 minutes explaining rationality until we arrive at the center. Things calm down. 3 days go by, and my friend visits reddit again...
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  You have a funny idea of what friend means.
  - cheschire 9mo ago
    Please don't reduce decades of friendship with a person to a couple dozen words I posted on a website and think you can judge what friendship means to me. I was talking about the impact of the current state of the world on existing relationships. Stop contributing to the problem.
    - phs318u 9mo ago

m4rtink 9mo ago

Even the strongest believes eventually collide with the hard cold solid wall of reality. But if you do believe hard enough, if you give it your all and exclude anything else than your believes, when you become one with it - then you can certainly increase the collision speed quite a bit! :-)

brightball 9mo ago

In fairness to this report, the report is about tariffs and their impact on...imported goods affected directly by tariffs isn't it? From an overall economic policy standpoint, missing facts that provide context are pretty important especially when you're trying to paint an entire side of the isle as completely brainwashed. Nobody can have a conversation when we create straw men to argue with. Other relevant context: - The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lowest-since-2009-imports-decline-2026-01-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lo... - US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-growth-since-2000/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-g... Q4 forecast https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow - US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022. https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-rate/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-r... - US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epmr_pte_nus_dpg&f=m https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e... - The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us - And the US stock market is at all time highs right now. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:text=Historically%2C%20the%20United%20States%20Stock,on%20January%2019%20of%202026. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:t... There's a lot of economic doom and gloom in the comments section here that's simply not reflected in the overall economic numbers. It's not perfect, but it's trending in the right direction.

lovich 9mo ago
> The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts. Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off. > US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year. I can find no mention of Q4 gdp results in your linked source, it appears to be looking at annual gdp rates over years and focusing on the US compared to China and India > US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022. Still above the feds target of 2% but it’s good to see it still trending down > US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago. It’s winter, prices for gas always drop in winter. Your own source shows that we’re still above pre COVID prices > The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years. I’m not sure if I’m reading your source correctly but it appears to be saying eggs are $0.45/ dozen That seems implausibly low but I can’t find other sources to compare as every source I’m finding has conflicting information internally, and the price given doesn’t match up with the lowest prices even if I multiply it by 12 assuming I misunderstood price per dozen for price per egg > And the US stock market is at all time highs right now. Yea but over half of that is mag7 and only propped up by the AI bubble. It’s nice temporarily but all the context around the stock market doesn’t make it look particularly healthy atm. The economy looks about as healthy as it did in 2024. I think a lot of people’s views on the health of the economy, whether it’s good or bad, are being more influenced by political leanings than by numbers. Fits with the zeitgeist of the era.

LexiMax 9mo ago

My pet theory, one that is borne out by some amount of anecdotal evidence, is that they don't honestly believe. Assuming they're not bots, they were bit by the 2025 cost of living increases just as much as anybody, they know what changed, they know in their gut that Trump is the reason for it. They are just so caught up in their culture war that they believe that shouldering such a burden, at least for a time, is worth it for all of the "positives" of the regime - especially the part where people they don't like are suffering. That's why trying to argue over tariffs is useless - not because they don't believe, but because that's not their underlying motivation. In fact, they would prefer to talk about tariffs, because they have a set of well-rehearsed talking points for arguing against that. It's better to figure out what they actually care about, as well as their motivations for why.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

impute 9mo ago

"Truth is not truth" - Rudy Giuliani

throw0101d 9mo ago

> The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control. "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."

johnnyanmac 9mo ago

>The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control. Yes, this is what we call a "post truth era", for anyone who may still think this is some fringe conspiracy.

lencastre 9mo ago

believers explanations necessary possible and all…