I’ve been trying to think of something to say that is both true and helpful. These days, that’s a real challenge. There’s a sad farmer on TikTok who has been putting in the effort to try to understand politics, and he’s come up with an explanation (which doubles as a defense) for why Republican voters supported Trump and continue to do so. I’m having trouble finding the sad farmer’s name; the more often posted video is a response to the sad farmer from Will Westmorland.

Anyway, the sad farmer’s explanation for why Republican voters are the way they are is that they are in a media bubble and so they never heard about Project 2025 or any of the other many, many issues with Trump and his ilk. If I’m following the story right, he only ever found out that Project 2025 was real because people were telling him about Project 2025 after he posted a video about how he might lose his farm because of the Trump administration. I think he’s sincere and I think that he is correct, but being correct doesn’t necessarily paint a complete picture of reality.

Let’s dig into this a little.

First off, if you are a leftist, you know that liberals are not leftists and that liberals have their own media bubble that they inhabit. I wanted to say, “that they are trapped inside of” but nobody is trapped. Not really. The liberal media bubble tends to lean into lying by omission whereas the conservative media bubble tends to lean into bold lies. If you take Gaza as an example, the liberal media will say that an aid camp “was bombed” but will never tell you that Israel bombed it or that they did it on purpose. Conservative media is likely to take it one step further by blaming the bombing on Hamas. However, this isn’t a clear cut distinction. Conservative media also lies by omission (e.g., failing to report on Project 2025) and liberal media will promote blatant falsehoods (e.g., the 40 dead babies lie from late 2023).

Are leftists in their own bubble? Mostly, they are not. Leftist news feeds are full of information about what both the enemy and the other enemy are up to and what they believe. To the extent that there is a leftist bubble, it’s mostly a bubble that keeps conservatives and liberals out rather than a bubble that keeps leftists in. The existence of that bubble mainly has to do with having a worldview that is so radically different from the two dominant worldviews that nothing the left believes can be explained concisely. It takes pages and pages to explain what we believe because it does not correspond with the average person’s model for reality. In a world of 15-second sound bites, anything a leftist says sounds insane. In world of people who are accustomed to high speed, low content media, asking someone to read a book so they can understand your point is a conversation ender.

Second, as I mentioned above, no one is trapped in these media bubbles. Everyone is free to pursue the truth, and it is a tragic mystery of our times that nearly everything you need to know is constantly available to everyone, and yet people somehow manage to believe absurd falsehoods, such as:

• Donald Trump is a Christian who loves America
• 40 babies were decapitated by Hamas on October 7, 2023
• Lady Diana was assassinated by the Windsors
• Fred Hampton was assassinated by the FBI
• Climate change is a ruse created by communists
• Trans women are dangerous
• The Democratic Party’s billionaires are good
• The COVID-19 vaccine causes COVID-19
• We can get out of climate change by growing the economy
• The Biden administration caused hurricane Helena
• Trump staged one or more of the 7 attempts on his life
• China is a dirty, impoverished country that is about to collapse
• Immigrants are eating people’s pets
• In 2021, 2 men in southern Missouri tortured, killed and ate a woman

Actually, two of those things are true. I’m not telling you which two because if you don’t already know, then you need to learn about each of those things and figure it out yourself.

Why are people in these bubbles of ignorance? Why don’t they simply “google it” and release themselves from their mental prisons? Obviously, there are many people who chose not to be limited by an information bubble. It is easy to take the opposite position from what the sad farmer guy on TikTok has chosen — you could take the Red Guard’s position that people who take right wing positions are intentionally deluding themselves at best, and likely straight up lying about their motivations as a strategy. From that point of view, claiming that working class conservatives are victims is really an insult to working class people, generally. So, is the sad farmer an ignoramus or a bigot? Neither is a great option.

Like most things, the answer is more nuanced than either the sad farmer’s position or the Red Guard’s position. I’ve learned a lot by talking with both Democrats and Republicans about their worldviews, as well as spending the last 20 years trying to help my parents (Republicans who became Democrats) understand some important things that have been obfuscated by the mainstream media. In essence, their minds are actively rejecting any information that doesn’t fit with what they already know. This isn’t something they are doing with the goal of being ignorant, but it is something they are doing.

I don’t think trying to integrate new information into what you already “know” is a bad idea. The more troubling thing is that both Republicans and Democrats are willing to reject information that doesn’t fit with what they already know even if what they already know does not make sense to them. My dad keeps pointing out that what the billionaires are doing is crazy given what he knows about how politics and economics work. My response is always, OK, here is the answer. Here is an essay. Here is a book. Here is a video. Were he to attend to this new information I have provided, then he could rebuild his worldview into something that makes sense, but he’s rejecting the new information and seems to forget that he ever saw it. A month later, he will be asking me the same question again, confused as ever about what “they” could be trying to do.

This is the essence of the problem. The answers are right in front of them, and would make far more sense than the incoherent bullshit they’ve been told, but they consistently drop that new information because they simply do not like it. I suspect this reaction is entirely based on emotion. “If I believe that, then I would have to be a communist!” or “If I believe that, then I’ve probably participated in ending human civilization!”

How do we solve this problem? Unfortunately, I think the answer is that we do not. If someone has placed themself inside an information bubble (either liberal or conservative) and they’re unwilling to discard the central truisms of American culture (which are bullshit that has been manufactured by malicious people over many decades), then they’re not coming out — they’re probably going to eventually die in that information bubble. The rest of the world must move on without them. The good news is that a good portion of the 152 million Americans that voted for either Trump or Harris are ready to move on, and most of the 90 million US voters who declined either of those options are as well.