Donald Trump's decision to declassify evidence given by ex-British spy Christopher Steele over the former president's alleged links with Russia led to the disappearance of two sources, Steele said.
“Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination”
Will never not be gross to read. I know way too many good people poised by the non stop lies and they’ll never be the same after. Yes, I said good people who got caught up during the pandemic and now get news from some dude in his basement. Certain people I can’t even have simple conversations with because even the most basic things dip into complete nonsense based on this guy and his circus clowns.
Most of my relatives are in this camp. Some have disowned more centrist or leftist relatives, and two of them are no long around after soaking up so much crappy 24/7 Fox News and OANN and whatever nut job they can find on YouTube or Twitter to back their opinions, to get anxiety, deep depression, have mental breakdowns and off themselves.
People are complicated. A person can be “good” in some aspects while simultaneously being “very very very not good” in others. It’s more likely that the people you’re referring to have not changed at all, but have just been given the opportunity to express how very very very not good they are in aspects that they previously kept hidden.
They definitely dove off the cliff during the pandemic and I agree with what you said. I can accept complications but not fully brainwashed. These are people I had great in person politics talks with. The openness to admit they might be wrong, accepting new ideas, was all replaced with word for word GQP kool-aid.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Carl Sagan
I’m not disagreeing with you btw, just felt this quote from one of my favorite people ever was appropriate. I can literally hear him speaking this in my head.
It’s a good quote, but something that doesn’t sit quite right with me is that it seems to be excusing people for being bamboozled. I get that there are situations where the charlatan has some existing power over their victim - the victim depends on them for food, shelter, security, something they really cannot do without for very long, and have limited capability of acquiring without the charlatan providing it.
These American Fascists are not that. They watch TV. They listen to the radio. They go online. They seek out the content that resonates with them. They are not victims.
Many of them are looking for comfort in the otherwise precarious economic existence that out capitalist society has imposed on most of us. There are a lot more victims of bad circumstances that make them vulnerable to propaganda, than a lot of us want to admit. But there are also a lot of bigots, racists, and high scoring sociopaths in the mix.
The right wing has embraced most of the latter group. And the not insignificant bamboozled group may be stuck for the reason Sagan described.
I always took Sagan’s quote to be about religion, and that’s the tactic the Right has taken in their indoctrination too.
There is, I suppose, a certain level of control when an “in group / out group” mentality has been created, and where failure to join the in group excludes you from it in essentially all aspects of your life. Or when the in group makes it clear that they are willing to perform acts of violence against the out group.
Maybe that’s where we are now, but that’s not where we started.
I think Carl would be disgusted with where we’re at today if he were still alive, and he may want to revise the quote to be more fitting in today’s landscape.
Some of them are victims though I believe. Victims of being uneducated, which, of course, is by design. Many, or most, probably, are not victims, and choose to be ignorant, malicious, and filled with misplaced hatred.
Yeah, this really resonates with me. I have family and friends who I would describe as good people in general but for whom the maga era has completely unhinged their rational faculties. It’s really sad to see. It also makes it such that there’s really not much to discuss with them, because so much has been impacted by the MAGA lies. Politics, religion, current events, weather (it’s cool in the fall, so global warming isn’t real), local matters, what my kids are doing in school, the list of things that the MAGA infection has affected is stunning. I guess technically the MAGA movement has just exposed some of the brain rot that was already there in my family, but I also think it has actively made them less rational. Fucking populism.
“Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination”
Will never not be gross to read. I know way too many good people poised by the non stop lies and they’ll never be the same after. Yes, I said good people who got caught up during the pandemic and now get news from some dude in his basement. Certain people I can’t even have simple conversations with because even the most basic things dip into complete nonsense based on this guy and his circus clowns.
Most of my relatives are in this camp. Some have disowned more centrist or leftist relatives, and two of them are no long around after soaking up so much crappy 24/7 Fox News and OANN and whatever nut job they can find on YouTube or Twitter to back their opinions, to get anxiety, deep depression, have mental breakdowns and off themselves.
This sums it up perfectly. Just and endless loop of watching nothing but this.
People are complicated. A person can be “good” in some aspects while simultaneously being “very very very not good” in others. It’s more likely that the people you’re referring to have not changed at all, but have just been given the opportunity to express how very very very not good they are in aspects that they previously kept hidden.
They definitely dove off the cliff during the pandemic and I agree with what you said. I can accept complications but not fully brainwashed. These are people I had great in person politics talks with. The openness to admit they might be wrong, accepting new ideas, was all replaced with word for word GQP kool-aid.
Literally destroyed families, blew apart friendships, wrecked marriages and all for what in the end?
To be a Zlist celeb on some random podcast.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Carl Sagan
I’m not disagreeing with you btw, just felt this quote from one of my favorite people ever was appropriate. I can literally hear him speaking this in my head.
It’s a good quote, but something that doesn’t sit quite right with me is that it seems to be excusing people for being bamboozled. I get that there are situations where the charlatan has some existing power over their victim - the victim depends on them for food, shelter, security, something they really cannot do without for very long, and have limited capability of acquiring without the charlatan providing it.
These American Fascists are not that. They watch TV. They listen to the radio. They go online. They seek out the content that resonates with them. They are not victims.
Many of them are looking for comfort in the otherwise precarious economic existence that out capitalist society has imposed on most of us. There are a lot more victims of bad circumstances that make them vulnerable to propaganda, than a lot of us want to admit. But there are also a lot of bigots, racists, and high scoring sociopaths in the mix.
The right wing has embraced most of the latter group. And the not insignificant bamboozled group may be stuck for the reason Sagan described.
I always took Sagan’s quote to be about religion, and that’s the tactic the Right has taken in their indoctrination too.
There is, I suppose, a certain level of control when an “in group / out group” mentality has been created, and where failure to join the in group excludes you from it in essentially all aspects of your life. Or when the in group makes it clear that they are willing to perform acts of violence against the out group.
Maybe that’s where we are now, but that’s not where we started.
I think Carl would be disgusted with where we’re at today if he were still alive, and he may want to revise the quote to be more fitting in today’s landscape.
Some of them are victims though I believe. Victims of being uneducated, which, of course, is by design. Many, or most, probably, are not victims, and choose to be ignorant, malicious, and filled with misplaced hatred.
Yeah, this really resonates with me. I have family and friends who I would describe as good people in general but for whom the maga era has completely unhinged their rational faculties. It’s really sad to see. It also makes it such that there’s really not much to discuss with them, because so much has been impacted by the MAGA lies. Politics, religion, current events, weather (it’s cool in the fall, so global warming isn’t real), local matters, what my kids are doing in school, the list of things that the MAGA infection has affected is stunning. I guess technically the MAGA movement has just exposed some of the brain rot that was already there in my family, but I also think it has actively made them less rational. Fucking populism.
Some of them were already lost in 80s and 90s even, but this dingle has only made it worse.