But the upside is they’re very helpfully signposting themselves now !
Living in a southern state that is solid red - it’s just difficult to exist. Much more than half of the people I interact with would not view me as a human being if I weren’t stealth about my transness - if I didn’t pass. These people voted against my rights and safety. I’m surrounded by people who think people like me are subhuman.
And I’ll bet that every one of them calls themself a Christian. Fucking joke religion that doesn’t even follow its own tenets.
I already knew that there were plenty of awful people in the US since I studied the civil rights movement in school. Watching white people use fire hoses against Black people and white people being ok with that was a clue. For me the worst part has been watching my friends and family be brainwashed by the MAGA movement. People who I know to be otherwise wonderful people.
For me it’s the answer to the zombie question. Do zombies have some part of their former personality still inside? The answer is definitely yes, and not some part, but 100% of their former selves.
I’ll be talking to my Mom and she’ll be her old self again for a whole conversation. Like the last decade never happened. Then something political will come up and she’ll be gone again. And I’m stuck arguing with this zombie.
Fox News has taken multiple family members and I’m sure many more friends. Unlike zombies there was no attack or infection. The brainwashing happened through radio, television, and social media. And unlike zombies there is hope, because people do get out of cults.
My neighbour is a totally pleasant lady, but she believes the craziest shit. Like that Joe Biden was replaced by an actor, or that the autodoc (like from the movie Elysium) is real. Also just goes on about how beautiful the weather in Russia must be.
We’re not even American ffs. She’s getting got by second hand, like, collateral propaganda.
Honestly there could be really simple autodocs like the ones from the OG The Fallouts but if they do exist they are extremely simple prototypes that can probably stitch up a wound real good at best. Something I’ve noticed about conspiracy types be them creationists, Alien nuts, or maybe big foot enthusiasts is that they will take the plausible and make it implausible.
Though some of them do accidentally break the programing because they either gain the requisite knowledge that starts to disprove the conspiracy element or because they are shown enough evidence to the contrary. A good example is Lore Lodge who used to be all in on bigfoot years ago but now think that it’s just wildmen, hermits, or crackheads.
A good example is Lore Lodge who used to be all in on bigfoot years ago but now think that it’s just wildmen, hermits, or crackheads.
I guess that’s bound to happen if you’re genuinely seeking knowledge.
The big realisation, for me, was during Covid. I haven’t recovered since. My view of people, in general, has changed forever.
It’s also amazing just how incredibly tacky the MAGA movement is.
The Nazis were evil, but at least they wore clothing designed by Hugo Boss. At least they borrowed from impressive looking Roman-style banners and eagles. They understood how to use colour, light and so-on to project strength. Even if you acknowledge that the Nazis were evil, at least you can sort of understand why the German people were drawn in.
But the MAGA movement is so weak, so tacky. Even if I were somehow 100% aligned with their beliefs, I wouldn’t want to associate with them in public because their whole aesthetic is so embarrassing. I can’t understand how anybody can look at Trump and see competence, intelligence and strength. I also can’t understand how anybody can look at a typical MAGA rally and see anything other than a design scheme that would make even Wal*Mart cringe.
They had propagandists that used actual skilled artisans and people actually the “best” in their fields. Not drunk Uncle Jim and AI slop.
In modern day America, it seems like 99% of artists are anti-Trump. That isn’t really surprising because fascism is about conformity and falling in line, whereas art tends to be about self-expression and challenging norms. So, it seems like in the modern world, very few artists or other creative people are willing to work with the Trump admin. I wonder if back in Hitler and Mussolini’s time that wasn’t the case.
Yeah, the Nazi socialist party had some gereally well received ideas and were able to grow an identity around it without shoving it in people’s faces until they were well established all ng the path. Maga started at the end and thinks they can just push people around and throw baseless accusations around and people would believe them. Some do, but only the fringe folk and truly rabid followers. This is not full of quality people, usually the opposite actually.
The best advice I can give to anyone regarding MAGAts is to take advantage of them.
They’re letting us know how stupid they are. They’re marking themselves.
So take advantage of them. Run some scams on them. They’ll fall for it. Don’t let Daddy Trump be the only one robbing them blind.
I thought about running a far-right merch store selling shirts and stickers with all of their shitty little half-brained slogans on them and donating all the profits to left-leaning organizations. Make them indirectly fund the people they’re trying to harm.
My baby insanity wolf self already does a variation of this.
When my conservative family and acquaintances give me gifts, I donate the gifts to charities or political groups that I know those folks would hate to support. Uncle Ben gives me a debit gift card? That’s going to Bernie Sanders and the ACLU. Cousin Jen gave me a digital photo frame? That’s getting sold and the money’s going to Planned Parenthood.
The fact that I repeatedly tell these people not to give me any gifts and yet they still do is the icing on the cake.
If you see pop-up shops selling Trump merch, they’re often run by immigrants. Money is money.
I was thinking about writing something for one of those alt right self publishing companies.
I’ll never recover, personally. The way my world-view was shattered by how many not just nameless strangers, but people I actually know and interact with, are the worst sort of hateful monsters.
My world is a different place now, and I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same.
It’s stupidity and immaturity more than maliciousness, at least in the case of the US lumpen. The results might be more or less the same but the reframing helps with living in this world and believing in people’s ‘well-meaning nature’.
I appreciate this, and it does help turn the ire into pity a bit, but I do worry that unfortunately the effect sort of remains the same regardless
And then they wonder why I try to escape from the reality.
Not as malicious but covid opened my eyes up
I like to look at it this way: There are not many bad people but weak people who fall for propaganda. The real bad people are just a few but those are the ones manipulating the weak.
Glad you started this conversation. Allow me to just add: if we are to repair our republic and restore our constitution, we are going to have to find a common ground where these feeble minded followers can see that the world they reject is one that benefits them more than the dystopia they embrace.
This is going to require restraint and tolerance on our part.
You don’t have to be stupid to follow an authoritarian. In fact, your characterization is a huge driving force in their radicalization. People with legitimate grievances watched globalization leave them in the dust in pursuit of a multicultural, pluralistic society. This left them vulnerable to narratives that espoused their “historical” superiority amongst other groups and their subsequent entitlement to world primacy. It’s more a function of a lack of diverse perspectives as a result of continued divestment from public services and goods, as well as geographical concentration of wealth and resources and other confounding variables.
I agree that the world before Trump was marginally better for these voters than the alternative they’ve elected, but your heirarchical paradigm is condescending, reductive, simplistif, obnoxious, short-sighted, and exemplifies why so many people swung that way to begin with.
Also, I can’t underestimate how incredibly dumb and dense you have to be to consider that the previous paradigm was good for anyone outside of the West who was not already someone of considerable financial means.
Looks like one of us already has that common ground I was talking about in abundance. Thanks for leading the way.
I know a lot of people who are pissed off and struggling yet don’t blame minorities for their troubles while actively voting against their best interests at every possible turn. I also know people who, even if it took some time, realized that conservatism is actually fucking awful. I even know some conservatives who are just really stupid or bad at economic policy but who are genuinely good people(so long as he can see you or even just hear that you’re a friend of someone he knows my dad will give you his shirt, and he doesn’t have ill-intentions towards minorities, for example).
Trump people are just fucking terrible. Their entire “ideology” is so rooted in being terrible that even if they were just weak morons sweat away by the propaganda I still cannot fathom how they weren’t tipped off by any of the thousands of moments which gave them the opportunity to reflect.
You nailed it though. They lack the ability for introspection and self reflection
All this is not new. It started with Reagan and I’m confident you will soon have it worst than Trump, given that your country managed to fall lower 3 times already.
I want to respond to this but it sounds so disconnected from what I said I think the best way to do so is to ask: Did you reply to the wrong person?
Too weak to have any morals? I doubt it. They are just given permission to let their inner racism out.
That’s too easy and excuses us from the work needed to rescue these people, content in our own moral superiority.
Nah, a lot of people are cunts.
Tetraethyl Lead has a lot to answer for, but yes, a lot of people are just selfish arseholes.
I think it’s about time that the progressives start pandering to the dumbass class. Promising to do all sorts of dumbass and unconstitutional things and then supporting actual progressive policy when they get into office.
If this worked for the current Manchurian dumbass candidate - progressives can surely get their deception game in order.
Wouldn’t work.
That is unless they go all in and start carrying crosses around and talking about Jesus nonstop and somehow convince those folks that their opposition are all secret Satanists.
Makes my stomach hurt.
To be fair, when was the last time you had as much fun as this guy?
Pretty recently, honestly. Last Thursday the girl I’ve fallen in love with asked me to be her girlfriend.
Congrats!
that guy isn’t having fun, he’s having a manic episode with violent fantasies.
nobody with that look in their eyes is in control of themselves.
Its a funny jogge bro, he is probably influenced by the whole “lead=profit”-thing or his parents were, its murrica after all. But still, when was the last time you felt this happy? Being serious in non serious posts lowers your life expectancy, we need to laugh more even though its hard nowadays.
See! Maybe he’s just dumb! I bet he’s a fun guy at the bar.
He certainly looks the part, even though I don’t think I’ll agree with him politically.
It is escapable. It’s propaganda. Show them different news and they are communists.
The worst part of the Trump era is the realization of just how few people don’t fall for the divide and conquer manipulation.
When I examine my German family tree, this is the kind of shit they fell for too. The only difference, the USA had a healthy economy before Jan 2025, while Germany was a wreck.
I think it’s a different kind of unhealthy economy.
The US were exporting dollars. That’s not healthy.
the kind of people who dont give the least bit of fuck about pretty horrible things until it happens to them after which they love to play the victim
I don’t understand how the US is so prop-full of hateful, ignorant, angry people. Is it because of all the lead they ingested towards the end of the 20th century?
Its because conservatives have actively meddled in the educational system, and kept kids from learning and practicing Critical Thinking Skills. At the same time, they used the vast Conservative Propaganda Machine to teach people to rely on Faith-Based Thinking, where they believe whatever they are told, no matter how absurd or outlandish, as long as it comes from someone in authority, such as a radio/tv talk show host, a politician, a preacher, a cop, a boss, etc.
Thats why they went so hard after evangelicals. They have already proven that they will build their entire lives around the most bizarre mythology and fairy tales written by neolithic goatherders, so all they had to do was get them to accept their political fairy tales, too.
Critical Thinking Skills are the most important part of any person’s education, and Conservatives have actively suppressed it. That’s why the Department of Education has always been one of their worst enemies. The 'liberal indoctrination" they are always screaming about are Critical Thinking Skills.
Look around the world… It’s not just the US, the US are just a big example of it
…the baby boomer generation were raised on television and consider it an authoritative source of information; fox news made them a captive asset…as for younger folks on the fascist train, it’s likely sensationalist social media echo chambers, and unfortunately more and more countries are fostering the same pathology…
It’s because those in power will always make sure the masses are blaming the “others” and that there will always be "others"to blame. They don’t want people looking too closely and seeing that it is them who make life hard.
THAT has been the most demoralizing part
That half of my fellow Americans willingly embraced Nazi Fascism
The voter turnout was very low, Trump’s active supporters are more like a third of the country, which is still too much, but not insurmountable. And many of those were just one issue voting dummies. I think Trump’s hardcore base is closer to 20%.
