I’m so sick of the different realities right wing media has set up

The BBQ Pit
1

I almost put this in the mini rants thread, but it didn’t seem so mini compared to the other entries, so I decided to let this sink or swim as its own Pit, because I’m pissed off.

So that libertarian acquaintance of mine I’ve mentioned in other posts has gone too far in my eyes. We have a mutual friend that I, on my end, have known for half my life now. He is very active in the community I met the acquaintance, and he and said acquaintance have some non political beliefs in common that I was really glad my friend was able to talk to someone like minded about. But my friend is much more left than the acquaintance (leading to conflict over stuff like COVID), but it apparently came to a head recently, with the acquaintance calling my friend names and saying he was aiding and abetting the millions of deaths Democrats wanted to bring about through their gulags.

My friend had defended the acquaintance to me several times in the past when I expressed discomfort over his apparent belief in right wing media. And this is how he gets repaid, by being screamed at and basically accused of murder. Even worse, the political discussion channel this went down in had others in it who apparently are also conservative of some stripe and didn’t raise a single peep in my friend’s defense. After all the work he’s put in to make that community a good place to be.

I’m disappointed and angry. If I thought I had the slightest chance of making any of them care what I thought, I’d be hounding them mercilessly and demanding they make things right. As it is…

Another friend of mine is going through something similar with relatives lately, and that’s put him in a hell of a mood. It’s frustrating how helpless I feel. Makes me see why the MAGA-ites are so easy to manipulate with anger.

Which brings me to the subject line. I put 100% of the blame for this fiasco on Fox News, Breitbart, the conspiracy subreddit, and all their ilk. The whole thing is a microcosm of what’s going on nationwide (perhaps even worldwide), and I wish I knew whether there was any way to attack any of it. These past few weeks have seen me get more politically involved like making my first monetary contributions ever (baby steps for most, but even that much is pretty significant for me), and it’ll probably be thinks like this that motivate me to do more in the future, like the money I plan on sending to Georgia.

I just wish it wasn’t necessary. I think my friend is right that the acquaintance is a decent dude, if he weren’t so brainwashed; I think that tragedy just makes it even worse.

And I realize that not a word of this is new or novel or rare. I just had to scream at somebody in a place where I had a decent chance of getting some sympathy. My apologies for the well trod ground, and have at it. I’m going to bed.

2

Nah…put the blame on your acquaintance.

Do you think listening to Fox News would make you that nuts? Probably not.

For your acquaintance just try and get them to see what they are saying:

Democrat gulag? Really? Really really?

Does he think half the nation has a secret pact to put people in secret prisons and claim they have a made up disease called COVID that no one else knows about because 150 million people can keep that secret?

If that doesn’t work the guy needs to be hospitalized. Really. That is paranoia run amok it seems to me with my armchair psychology non-degree.

3

I work with a Trump supporter who yesterday claimed that covid was contrived so that mail in voting could be made easier. I didn’t ask him how the people in Italy, Spain, the UK, France, Germany, Central and South America etc. feel about that, because I try not to engage in political talk at work. He’s a good machinist. If you talked to him about mechanical things, you’d swear up and down that he was smart.
I can’t explain it. These right wingers are fed this bullshit from right wing lunatic sources, and they somehow are suckers that fall for it, can’t see right through it. They say you have to compromise with the other side to come to a resolution. I will never compromise with fucking douchebags who believe what Trump supporters believe.
Remember “Give me liberty, or give me death”? There was no compromise in that statement.

4

I think Whack-a-Mole has the right of this, they aren’t dupes falling for random right-wing stuff, they want to believe it, it resonates with something inside them. Fox News and the others are successful because they have a big audience. They didn’t make the audience, they found it and fed it what it wants.

5

Can’t say this often enough: Ya can’t fix the congenitally stupid.

6

In before someone says “Oh yeah? Well, some lefty once said something against nuclear power (or vaccinations or GMOs or some shit), so they’re equally bad.”

The QAnon and other stuff is really crazy. Didn’t a QAnon supporter just get elected to congress?

7

No, no, no, no, no, no…

There were two.

8

Trump is gone, and that is good, but the forces that got him elected are very much still present, I’m afraid.

9

If you’re a victim, then there’s somebody else to blame for the fact that you’re a failure. That’s the allure of neo-right wing philosophy in a nutshell.

10

Seriously? That’s awful. That stuff is straight-up nuts.

11

In my case it’s my older sister and BIL. Both highly intelligent people, university educated in Humanities, both I looked up to in my youth, and now I just shake my head and wonder HOW the hell they ended up being morons. In Australia. And both have drunk the Kook Aid (pun intended) and believe every fucking conspiracy meme, despite the fact they don’t actually hang out on the regular social media sites. Weirdos.

It saddens me, but it angers me as well. I feel sorry for their kids who are trying to live a relatively normal life…except their folks have gone full-on freakazoid CT.

12

As strange as it sounds, there is probably some degree of psychological ‘comfort’ that people find in conspiracy theories. Obviously, whatever disturbing realizations they come to are not that kind of comfort, but knowing the truth, and having an answer that explains in its own way the answers to the problems that they observe…there’s probably some comfort in that.

It’s like a twisted form of religion, a set of beliefs that explains phenomena that don’t have simple, observable, rational explanations. And with the ubiquity of social media they can also find the same kind of ‘community’ that religion may provide. They can connect with other similarly paranoid people, who feed off of each others anxieties.