Fetterman is nothing if not amusing.

  • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    116
    ·
    1 year ago

    I sometimes wonder if I live in an alternate reality where a significant subsection of the population has gone absolutely insane. The insanity all seemed to take off around 2016.

      • RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        27
        ·
        1 year ago

        Social media is a turbocharger to the misinformation engine that is corporate media (especially Fox ‘News’ and shit like Limbaugh, Beck, Infowars, Rogan, et al) post-Fairness Doctrine.

        The idea that the FCC shouldn’t A) reinstate the doctrine, and B) have its regulatory boundaries extend to ubiquitous cable and streaming services is fucking nutballs. Thanks, Reagan!

      • clearedtoland@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        Some day we’ll look back at rage bait (and social media, in general) the way history looks back at opium. The tech and connectedness have remarkably advanced humanity - but unchecked, the algos and constant need for engagement have been ruinous and criminally detrimental to society.

    • callouscomic@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s a town hall video with John McCain around 2008 where an elderly woman tries to suggest to him she’s worried about Obama because he’s not white. John McCain shot her down and defended Obama and stressed we should only focus on the political differences of opinion, and his own supporters booed him. This all had been coming for so long.

      • JamesBean@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        33
        ·
        1 year ago

        If we’re thinking of the same clip, you’re slightly misremembering it. The woman was insisting Obama was a Muslim, and that’s what McCain was shutting down. But yes, the crowd booed him for clarifying that.

        • crashoverride@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It was from at least Reagan. But it was when we elected a black man that got things sped up pretty quick, and then when we elected a fuckind Cheeto that’s when things really got super charged and turbocharged and all the other charging until what we have today

          • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            You could go back to Nixon and the Southern Strategy.

            Feb 4, 2004, was the beginning of Facebook and the beginning of foreign powers using the platform to undermine democracy.

    • dmonzel@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      1 year ago

      It actually started really ramping up in 2008-2009. Tea Party, birthers, so on. It’s amazing what happens when someone who wasn’t white was elected president.

      • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        21
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It actually started with Newt and his bullshit back in '96…well, actually it started with fucking Reagan and his trickle down bullshit back in '80…then again, maybe it started when

        • agentsquirrel@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          This is the correct answer. It’s just that the crazies, racists, and terrorists in the Republican party stopped being scared to come out in public around 2008 and even more in 2016.

        • Cabrio@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          1 year ago

          From an outsiders perspective if you really want a catalyst point I always look to the failure of the Union to subject the slaver capitalists of the Confederacy to Nuremberg style trials for sedition and treason.

          Instead there was compromise and appeasement. The problem was swept under the rug.

          • ultranaut@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            There’s a lot of truth in this. The elites at the top of the South weren’t rooted out after their civil war and all of the bullshit going on in US politics today is a direct consequences of that failure.

            • callouscomic@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              It would have existed regardless of who you got rid of. An argument can be made that fierce retribution by the North would have only further sowed anger in the South and a divide.

              There’s also the possibility that the chance at a productive reconstruction era likely died right at the start the minute Johnson became president.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        We can go back further, but that’s where I put my finger on the map.

        Fox News was a conservative news outlet until then. Overnight they went batshit crazy.

        Between them and social media, we spiraled down into where we’re at now.

      • babyphatman @lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think it was even earlier… 9/11 really broke the safety of America (and even the “western” world) and pushed so many people down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Social media amplified this fear and brought them together giving them power.

      • Fisk400@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        My head canon is that the fixed point event in earth history is that humanity should have ended in nuclear war with the cuba crisis and the timeline has been unravelling ever since.

    • Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      1 year ago

      Sometimes I think the end of the world actually did happen in 2012, it’s just that the fallout is happening over a longer time scale than anyone anticipated.

      • shadowSprite@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        That’s what I keep saying. That the world ended, but to save humanity some brave but misguided hero somehow ported us all into this slightly different but really fucked up reality. This is my explanation for the Mandela effect, that we remember our old timeline but when we look things up the research shows what happened in the new timeline so it’s all wonky lol

    • 4am@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      1 year ago

      The most soul crushing part is when you realize it’s not an alternate reality; this is where you’ve been all along and you feel betrayed by everyone you’ve ever known for hiding it from you, even about their own stupidity.

    • dezmd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think it started the moment Obama was elected, or at least the moment the ACA was able to pass. It just took a time for the ‘batshit crazy’ to scale up to mass adoption among conservatives.

      • DickFiasco@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        For me, it started right after 9/11. Republicans were quick to use the general fear and anger from the attacks to justify wars, spying on citizens, eroding personal freedom, etc. They’ve been using this same playbook ever since, just with a different boogyman, e.g. Antifa, BLM, trans people.