…whether it was by a cult, by propaganda, by an algorithm, etc…
And did the person ever recover from it?
My brother got fucked up psychologically from murdering Iraqis and Afghans and then came home and started “self-medicating” with meth while spending all day sitting in his house alone while listening to far-right propaganda like OAN. He tried to check himself in for treatment at the VA but they committed malpractice which nearly killed him, and he responded violently, which put a flag on his record making it difficult for him to get help in the future, while at the same time giving him a deep distrust of doctors. He was incredibly paranoid and accused everyone of being part of some sort of conspiracy against him and would make violent threats, veiled just enough to not be actionable. Eventually, he went over to someone’s house with a gun, but the cops had been watching his house and they showed up, he pulled a gun on them and got shot in the arm, which he lost the use of, but he eventually recovered somewhat on account of getting off the meth while in jail. He’s still a fascist and still listens to all the same shit, but he’s at regular fascist levels of paranoid-schizophrenia now.
I don’t give a shit about him but the pain he put my family through, a memory is burned into my mind of tears in my mother’s eyes as she gets another text and it’s another crisis and she can’t enjoy even a single night out at dinner because she has to act like a 911 operator 24/7 - and whenever I think about any of the people responsible for the stupid, pointless wars that caused all this, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump, and all the rest, I remember that we got off incredibly easy, that our suffering was absolutely nothing compared to the actual victims of our country’s wanton slaughter and pointless wars of aggression, and I multiply the pain I felt in that moment and the trauma throughout the whole experience by a thousand, a hundred thousand, by as much as my mind is even capable of comprehending which is still only a tiny fraction of the reality, and I focus it into pure hatred directed towards all the people responsible for the wars.
“Well, that’s just how it is”
Person attempting to justify an injustice they also suffer, without even a thought about whether it being “how it is” might actually be connected to all the people saying dumb stuff like “Well, that’s just how it is.”
I just respond “if that wasn’t how it is there’d be nothing to talk about.”
Uggghhh, nothing is more infuriating than hearing “life’s not fair” from people in a position to make a situation more fair.
I learned recently that there’s a word for this, which is “thought-terminating cliche”
Its all good, man
It Is What It Is
Fuckin way she goes.
This is one of the few acceptable ones IMO. Sometimes, something is bullshit, you know it’s bullshit, everyone else knows it’s bullshit, but you have no ability to fix or avoid said bullshit, so… it is what it is.
And it ain’t what it ain’t.
Ok Yogi
US Democratic voters unwilling to recognize systemic faults, perceive how they apply to their chosen politicians, or reason their way to incremental action beyond voting and virtue signaling. They’re the third of the country that watches while one third kills another third.
US Conservative voters unwilling to recognize systemic faults, perceive how they apply to their chosen politicians, or reason their way to incremental action beyond voting and virtue signaling. They’re the third of the country that kills one third while another another third watches
What’s your point by repeating this for conservatives?
its not repeated.
I’m asking seriously
The initial post says Democrats are the third that watch while one third kills the other third. The Conservatives are the third that does the killing.
im telling you seriously its not the same statement. whil it demonstrates that the entire country is at fault, but with a nod to those who are pulling the majority of the triggers in the human killing devices.
I think it was clear what I meant: what is the point of repeating the exact same phrase. Your explanation was quite halfassed. Anyway I was asking so to understand American politics better as a non-American. You have not brought me any closer.
How did the original comment enlighten you?
There is no point here as very few conservatives are reading this. It is likely that most of them are enlightened enough to see the faults in their own side. As opposed to the large number of democrat voters here who cannot see the flaws in their own side. There are of course democrat voters here who can see the flaws in their own side, but lemmy is in general an echo chamber of “left wing” and a large number cannot see their own flaws.
Seems counterintuitive, but I’ve had more productive arguments with conservative vs. liberal friends. By productive I mean to say, the conservative often changed his view, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, sometimes a complete reversal. In any case, they listened to my points and would reason with me. They would often shift my thoughts or, at worst, I came away understanding, if not agreeing. If one’s only experience arguing a political point is online, well, your mileage will vary.
Liberals, on the other hand, often won’t engage in real life arguments, at all. “This doesn’t bear discussion. I’m right, you’re an idiot, I’m out.” Try arguing a conservative take in a room full of liberals. You’re getting shouted down, and you’re not getting invited back. Winning hearts and minds here guys?
Both sides are religious in their online echo chambers, ears firmly plugged, “You will toe the party line, comrade!”. (Point goes to the online liberal, they’re a bit more lenient.) The echo is so strong around here, posts get down voted for having the impertinence to ask a clarifying question or so much as explaining a conservative view, even if not holding it. Fuck me, I’ve seen dozens of buried posts, posts that only stated a single, inconvenient fact. Hell, I check the negative posts because I often find an interesting take or new thought. Watch the down votes roll on this post merely because I related positive personal experiences with conservatives. No value judgements, just stating what I’ve seen in real life.
(Here I’m going to ramble around a bit, hoping I can get back on track at the end…)
Funny story, I was at a house party and wandered upstairs to find my dad moderating a debate (I forget the topic) in a room full of drunk college kids. After a few minutes he called a halt. Pointing to the debaters, he said, “You’re going to argue his view and you’re going to take his. Switch sides.” Momentarily taken aback, they wholeheartedly jumped into their new roles. I suspect dad timed that to teach me a lesson, he often said, “If you can’t argue both sides, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Pre-Obama, I used to be fairly conservative, thought I was anyway, listened to talk radio while delivering or eating lunch. One afternoon I realized dad would be ashamed to hear that I got all my views from one side. So I started reading CCN, that hotbed of radical-left boogeyman I had heard so much about. Let’s see what these liberals have to say. Well, CNN was anything but a hotbed of whacky liberalism, even back then. Terrible journalism, yes, opinions rampant in every “news” story, but nothing like the bias I had been listening to. (And here we are, back to experiences differing in real-life arguments vs. online, or on-air as the case may be.)
About the same time, Limbaugh turned me off like a light switch, never listened to another word after snapping off my radio. A caller was relating his experience with purchasing and installing a wind turbine at his home. Rush laughed, on cue, at the silly liberal notions of clean energy. OK, that sucks, but to be expected. The caller starts talking about the expense and hassle of hooking it to the grid. Limbaugh went off, over and over again, “You mean to tell me the windmill needs power to function?! Har, har, har!” The man was only trying to explain that he wished to pump excess back into the grid, get paid, but all in all, the system was a loss for him. Rush was a very intelligent man, knew exactly what the caller was trying to say, knew if would be construed as a benefit, cut him off every time he opened his mouth to explain. Fuck you Rush.
That last anecdote seems to contradict earlier statements. I guess what I’m getting at it that conservatives are close-minded when they’re in their echo chambers. Confronted with a live human being, they’re mostly pleasant to argue with. Bet money that, one-on-one, Rush would have argued in good faith. When contradicted, liberals come with “tell it to the hand”.
/rambling-nonsense
The Democrats are not left wing.
i put left wing in quotes for that reason. when you have two sides - republicans and democrats - then in the us the democrats are the left. However there are a large number of different issues and it is safe to say no two people agree on 100% and so dividing into two sides is wrong. Still calling the democrats left wing is often a useful simplfication even if not very insightful.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, who rejoice in the deaths of children. The whole thing is utterly bizarre.
Worked with one a while back. She was trying to get out. Her whole family abandoned her. She finally went back and agreed to the arranged marriage temple leadership was demanding. Was immediately pregnant after the wedding. Forced to quit her job to be a stay at home mom.
Firmly believe such behavior should be in our modern concept of slavery.
This shit should be documented for court and the temple leadership can lead the jailhouse from inside from then on.
Not anyone I know, or even the most brainwashed, but I did watch this video last night on YouTube that was pretty disturbing and although the events are now 15 years ago they ended not long ago and the court case only ended last year.
Guy who is extremely good at manipulating people ends up manipulating like 6 or more of his daughters college friends into somehow dropping out and living with him and forced to do all the requests he has.
Guy who is extremely good at manipulating people ends up manipulating like 6 or more … to do all the requests he has.
That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_phone_call_scam, which is so fucked up on so many levels.
What did I just read! Wow that was a wild ride, thanks for sharing. Someone could write a PhD thesis on how this worked
I think the worst thing about it is that it works every day, in so many different ways. Appeal to authority (not the fallacy, just the act of) is an enforced value in most societies, and it will drive people to do the most horrific shit. Always question authority.
Best episode of Law and Order as well. Robin Williams was a fantastic actor.
Wait, what? I’ve seen the movie, but didn’t know about this. Will have to look it up.
E: ok so saw Williams plays the caller in it, think I’ll pass, I don’t need that memory of him in my brain lol but good to know it made the show either way.
Yeah it’s essentially a cable tv episode of Compliance. Definitely dark Robin Williams. He’s really good at it. I would also recommend One Hour Photo if you want to see the best creepy Robin Williams.
Yeah, I’ve seen One Hour Photo a few times (also Insomnia and The Final Cut), it’s how I know he did creepy so well and probably why I know to avoid that episode lol
What a terrible day to be literate.
Idk if it’s hindsight bias or what, but I feel like if some guy called my place of work claiming to be a cop and told me to rape my 14-18 year old coworker I would suspect something is up
Also, that caller must’ve had OJs lawyer.
Idk if it’s hindsight bias or what, but I feel like if some guy called my place of work claiming to be a cop and told me to rape my 14-18 year old coworker I would suspect something is up
I do too, but then you look at society, and the individual and mass abuses and atrocities that have been and still are committed (or even just not objected to) under the influence of one or a small group of manipulative exploiters (some with little other power, but some who control the very systems that govern our lives), and you realise that if nothing else, you have to be constantly aware and vigilant to their manipulations, and even then, no one is immune.
Magats
Does dehumanizing them help?
Edit: From the downvotes it seems that most people here think “yes!”
They don’t care. They are so deep in their cult, nothing can pull them out. If tomorrow, Trump came out, completely lucid, and admitted everything was a hoax, his supporters would just shift to another cult leader.
Also, at one point, they referred to themselves as Centipedes. They probably got tricked into it, but they still did it proudly. Calling them Magats isn’t much different.
Can you tell me how to say that differently? If people from America are Americans, people who believe in Catholicism are Catholics, people who believe in MAGA are what exactly? It isn’t Republican, because they are a subgroup, like Jacobites. It isn’t to dehumanize them, it is just what they would be called from what I would expect.
Maggots has a different spelling, which is what i know you are referring to, but maybe they should have choose a different name/slogan to go under
I don’t think so, because dehumanization is kind of their whole mantra, and I’d rather not stoop so low.
They’re people, just not very bright people.
In all fairness I went there to see what the issue is, the top post was about ants and most things that popped up were good memes. Which communities are you referring to? I’m guessing not c/earth or something…
Threads like this, with highly upvoted comments like
americans are more propagandized than they think citizens of the DPRK are
They also use sarcasm try to push the narrative that North Korea is actually just fine, OK?
Guys you don’t understand; the West has spoken; we MUST hate North Korea, our governments have already decreed it so.
Many of them are also seemingly physically incapable of communicating without hexbear’s custom reaction images, which is a weird behavior common to many cults. Makes it harder to communicate with the outgroup.
I think LW is defederated from them (or vice versa) so you can’t post over there, but for further examples, try making an account over there and saying that maybe, just maybe, Putin did a bad thing by invading Ukraine, and they’re defending an imperialist.
Yeah these things sound awful. Thanks for the pointers.
Maybe not the worst but the most recent one is my father in law. You know the type: baby boomer who had every advantage growing up but didn’t avail himself but still managed to eke out a comfortable life while working at the business his dad started and he inherited. He doesn’t take in the bucks but it allows him and my mil to own a comfortable home in an area that is only going up in value. Anyway…
As you can imagine super religious, super right wing, trump loving, gay hating (has a gay brother that he’s estranged from), you know… the usual. What gets me is remember trump did an interview a week or two ago where he said that all federal employees are “crooked and dishonest and must be held accountable”? He couldn’t agree more! Guess who my wife (his daughter) and I work for? Yeah…
Have you tried being less of a crooked, dishonest Deep State?
Happened recently actually.
TW: Talks of SA, Maga
Tap for spoiler
In class we somehow got into a debate of politics and it went as you expect. Teacher asks if abortion should be legal, which she agrees but the two guys in the class disagree. The idiot guy starts arguing that the anti abortion laws are warnings for “”““the girls who can’t keep their legs shut””“”. Even when the teacher tried to give examples of rape cases, he just kept repeating it like he was right. The girl, which I’ll call Jessy, tore his shit up. Teacher stops the debate and we take a break. I have a lot more respect for Jessy.
I sincerely don’t understand how someone can be that fucking deluded, and not see a problem with it.
Less people using public libraries (and reading books to learn stuff) around me because 'who needs to read books when there is everything on the Internet and I can Google anything’?
And, at least as saddening and frightening to me, seeing more and more people willing to censor whatever book, author, or idea, they hate or even they just don’t agree with (most often, without even reading it). It’s even worse when I see librarians supporting that — it doesn’t matter how ‘good’ their motivation is, censorship’s only success is in the promotion of stupid ideas (if not of sheer ignorance), hate and fear.
To be fair, you can find nearly any book for free online.
On a related note, I think libraries do need a bit of a facelift, and not just be “the place where books live”. It’s important to keep that function, but also expand to “a place where learning happens”. I know lots of libraries are doing this sort of thing, but your average person is probably still stuck in the “place where books live” mindset, as you allude. I’m talking stuff like 3D printers, makerspaces, diybio, classes about detecting internet bullshit, etc.
I went to a library the other day to do some work on my laptop. I had A2 prints I was transcribing notes for.
100%.
How is it not going to a library because of brainwashing? Who is doing the washing?
pro tip for anyone who wants to read books but doesn’t have access to a library
https://annas-archive.org is the largest library on the internet, 100% free
Koodo Reader is a eBook reader for PC
Librera is another eBook reader but for Android
everything linked is completely FOSS
I’ve seen people who would act like the sky isn’t blue if they had so much as a friend say it wasn’t. Sadly the same friends who would go on to successfully erase people’s innocence out of existence via gossip, in contexts that rank up there with asking for someone’s ID at a bar out of skepticism and then getting the ID and saying “I don’t care about your ID, you’re still not in the required demographic”. And these channelers of peer pressure who outweigh the issue of cults wonder why I am deep into misanthropy.
The Goebbels speech for total war:
That shit is so scary. Those people were ready to exterminate others out of pure hate and brain washing. It made me think about how the more extreme MAGA people today refer to liberals/Democrats. It’s like they’re heading down the same path. It’s insane that that many people can fall into that type of mentality with the freedom of information we have today. They’ve been trained to only believe a certain narrative, but instinctively disbelieve and see as enemy anything that goes against it. Freedom of thought is not an option for them. Crazy af.
Pandemic.
Person who I used to consider a friend was relentlessly posting anti-vax and anti-lock down stuff constantly. I would continually refute what he posted, with references and data etc but he wouldn’t listen.
Highlight was when he posted pictures of an anti lock down protest in “Lisbon” and I went to the lengths of finding the pictures that had been stolen and they were of a dance music festival he attended.
Even though I cross referenced his own photos with those that had been posted, including one that showed him next to someone who was in on of the pictures from the supposed protest, he still wouldn’t listen to reason.
He is no longer a friend or even an aquaintence.
I’m so sorry.
Covid. People are still pretending there’s no pandemic in 2024.
I meaaan, there is no pandemic in 2024. We fucked the whole thing up and it’s just a regular ol’ endemic disease killing people every year that could have been prevented. Weeeeee!
COVID, MAGA, Q Anon, support by poor people for defunding of schools and infrastructure even as bridges collapse and water systems are becoming poisonous while supporting building new tactical nuclear weapons that the country doesn’t even have a use for unless the intend to start nuking Mexico which would mean more refugees, not fewer…etc.
