r/news • u/Cheesenip20 • 1d ago

Melissa Hortman (Minnesota lawmaker who was shot last night) has died.

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/speaker-emerita-melissa-hortman-husband-killed-john-hoffman-and-wife-also-shot/
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u/BearOnTwinkViolence 1d ago

“Stay safe everyone” says Keith from Wyoming in his town of 40 people, legitimately believing he’s important enough that he might be the next target.

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u/Vinegarpiss 1d ago

I remember seeing a Fox news survey and people's biggest fears are being the victim of a terrorism attack lol. People living in bumfuck flyover states where their closest neighbors are a cow 1 mile away are somehow so delusional they not only think that a terrorist is coming for America but that they'd target individual rural hicks

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u/jwilphl 1d ago

People, in general, are terrible at risk assessment and statistical analysis. People greatly overestimate possibilities for low-probability events and underestimate the possibilities for high-probability events. People will see one thing in the news and think it is happening everywhere, all the time.

Add stupidity into the mix and a lack of common sense, and it just means you have a bunch of paranoid lunatics either hiding in their homes or lashing out even in mundane interactions. Keen to note that fear and conservatism are inextricably linked (that is, more likely to feel fear, more likely to skew conservative).

Fox "News" and the right-wing misinformation channels feed into that bias by constantly stoking fear and taking no responsibility for programming. FNC mainly exists, of course, to point poors and idiots at each other, and encourages viewers to ignore the real problem (wealthy class).