31 thoughts on “Musk calls for Impeachment over Epstein!”
Shocking. Two man sized toddlers are acting out because their plot to take over the world unraveled. Who could have foreseen this?
The frightening thing is right before the election I was being extra especially crazy and said the plot is to impeach Trump and put in Vance. That’s the real play. I had about 25 half formed conspiracy theories as to why and my dad told me I was insane.
Yet, here’s musk calling for that very eventuality.
Granted, I know I was being crazy. But I still can’t help wondering if maybe there’s still something there I just am missing through the trees.
Man, I hate being conspiratorial. I tend to be right enough to freak myself out and wrong enough to feel crazy.
I am doing pretty good, thank you for asking. How are you?
Vance isn’t so bad.
He’s certainly not good. And he’s certainly horrible, but he’s at least been fairly quiet since the election. I’ve had a chance to not actively throw up in my mouth when I think of his name. Seeing his face, however, reminds me and the feeling is back.
That said, because he’s been so quiet, I find him slightly less offensive than musk or Trump. Both of whom give me the dry heaves just thinking about them and when I hear or see them I want to scream and just jump out a window.
Based solely on that reaction, Vance isn’t so bad.
In a world of shit, he’s not Trump, musk, Kennedy or MTG.
There’s levels for how much the nations poop
Can stink. They are top tier. Vance is a quarter tier lower. So better but not even remotely good. If that makes sense.
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Glad you’re OK.
We get quite a lot of Vance attacking the UK and EU with conspiratorial nonsense – claiming we don’t have free speech (because we fact check) and that we’re being overrun. He’s a Nazi stirrer. I think he’s very dangerous and ambitious.
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Oh, I don’t doubt anything you’re saying. You probably know more about him than the average American, honestly.
Here, he makes the headlines like….never. We just had to deal with the X/Truth battle between morons. That was front page news, followed by some actress saying she doesn’t let her kids watch children’s tv because it irks her soul, so clearly she hates Ms Rachel and wants Palestinian babies to die — and they sent her and her kids death threats to protest babies dying…
This is what we deal with on a 24 hour cycle. Hopefully, you guys hear as little about this bs as we hear about Vance.
But great. The knowledge he’s up to no good elsewhere and we don’t hear about it… yeah, that’s by design. Crap.
And I’m back to conspiracy theories. Wonderful.
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not sure it is conspiracy
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Oh, I know. Doesn’t stop my pattern seeking brain. If they make Trump and musk seem loony here and never mention Vance, of Trump is to be ousted, Americans will be tired of their shit and ok with it. It will seem like a better option to just have Vance. Setting the ground work. That kind of thing. Like public perception is all a game (it is) and they’re expertly playing it.
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I blame social media for all this. They are spreading lies and setting agendas. The billionaires deflect attention from their own gross exploitation on to immigrants.
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That’s the thing, you can’t solely blame social media. Newspapers, magazines, tv news, entertainment news — everything covers the bull not the substance.
Oh, I can tell you what Bruce Springsteen said in concert halfway around the world, but I can fine nary a word about what our vice president is up to unless I specifically search for it.
If I go to my news feeds, or I look at the front page at the store, I should know. Instead, I know Trump threatened a rock star. I know a bunch of other rockstars support the first rock star. I know a different rockstar just died. I know a pop star just released an album cover that is really unpleasant to look at. Tons of information — literally none of it pertinent.
I shouldn’t have to specifically google my vice president. He’s VICE PRESIDENT! I should know what he’s saying, almost like it was downloaded into my skull by some random force I can’t even describe. I mean, every time Trump farts we get the updated information, even if we’ve force-quit the stupid update app.
There’s a reason you have to put in far more steps to find out what our VP is up to than we do to find out about what some actress said about a kids television host.
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I think what has happened is that the story coming in from SM has normalised hate. It has scapegoated immigrants. There is a problem and they have exaggerated it. They’ve demonised socialism, caring, empathy and compassion – these are seen as weakness. It’s all about strength, winners and losers, black and white. The real culprits – the billionaires who have been siphoning off more and more of the wealth – are controlling the narrative. The result is to empower racism, white supremacy and Nazis. Where these groups were a small minority they, due to the fear narrative of immigrants, Muslims and terrorism, soaked in conspiracy, deliberate undermining of authority, science, education and the media, have been sucking in more and more of the desperate, stupid, gullible and displaced. They blame immigrants instead of billionaires. Trump is orchestrating the fear and hate and targeting liberals. They like that. They have an enemy. It’s black and white. Trump puts forward a simplistic answer and a consistent set of lies. He’s in it for the power and money and is creaming the system – making millions. His family are raking it in.
Draining the swamp!!! He’s created a whole new swamp!!
He’s tapped into the white supremacists, gun lobby, evangelicals, Nazi groups and ‘We Will Not Be Replaced’ movement.
These deprived idiots who make up MAGA just hate. They see themselves as strong, macho types who despise the educated. They think the educated look down on them. Trump gives them a voice and simple answers they can understand. The fact that it’s populist nonsense doesn’t matter. They’ve bought into it. If it doesn’t work they deflect the blame on to sabotage from ‘liberals’.
Vance is an opportunist who bought into a road to power and wealth. He changed his tune and has become the attack dog, the sounding bell. He’s positioning himself to mimic Trump with more virulence. He’s going to take over MAGA and displace the old man. Vance has seen that the more extreme his shit the more the MAGA nuts lap it up. Whereas Trump is a narcissist with psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies, Vance is a calculated psychopath. The ambush in the White House showed his nature. He’s cruel.
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That’s an interesting take. It’s different than a lot of what we see and believe in America. Not all of it. But some of it.
“The story coming in from SM had normalized hate.”
Yes, and no. The reality is that this has always existed. People were just better able to pretend it didn’t. I am 43 years old. There HAS NEVER been a time where someone I have known didn’t hate immigrants, scapegoated them, made lies about them, or exaggerated their claims. There have always been people demonizing socialism, caring, empathy, compassion and kindness. There have always been people who see this stuff as just black and white, strength and weakness, winners and losers. Whether it has always been millionaires yanking those strings, I don’t know. But I’ve been hearing it most of my life. My great uncle used to spew the same rhetoric during the Clinton years.
It’s not new, it’s not even stronger. It’s just reaching a new audience than it ever did before.
“These groups were a small minority they, due to the fear narrative of immigrants, Muslims and terrorism, soaked in conspiracy, deliberate undermining of authority, science, education and the media, have been sucking in more and more of the desperate, stupid, gullible and displaced.”
I have lived here my whole life. It’s not new. None of it is. It’s been nearly a quarter century now of just literally constant Muslim hate and conspiracy theories, with an ever increasing hatred of authority. Science and education has been consistently on the chopping block since I was in school, with discussions about textbooks removing information being an issue since the first time I ever heard this conversation in first grade. My parents chose the school they did because the state had no say in the education. Text books were any materials that taught the material in full, not some state mandated text that Texas was able to alter.
There has never been a time in my entire life where sex education was actually promoted in my country. Not one. My state and a few others refuse to bend to the will of these folks, and we don’t ban books either, but that shit is spreading here like a virus too. I went to grade school at a school that actually spent three days teaching about sex education. It was extremely in depth. A husband and wife came in, both doctors, and they took the class and the first day was a general lesson in basic anatomy and information about how to protect from STDs and pregnancy. The second day the wife took the girls and the husband took the boys and we did very specific education on our own bodies. The third day, the two groups were together again to ask any questions we had about the last two days or in general. I was in 6th grade. I had to wait until 11th for the public school version. We spent an entire semester on it and learned about 1/10th of the information. 11th grade. I’m not even beginning to joke when I say that I know for an absolute fact that 3/4 of the class I was sitting in was already sexually active and had been for years. It was the FIRST time half of them heard of a condom.
And there has always been a mentality of blaming the immigrants. My country willingly set up concentration camps and placed citizens in them because they were people who looked like they immigrated fairly recently and probably were on the side of our enemy during a war. That was during my grandparents time, but we’re not doing much better now. Attacking families — mothers and children — at the mall because people who looked like them crashed a few planes on the other side of the country. It’s always some version of “us vs them.”
“Trump puts forward a simplistic answer and a consistent set of lies.”
No. He doesn’t. He never has. Nothing about his BS is consistent ever. The reality is he’s a rambling, angry, incoherent bag of meat. Has been for at least 20 years. But every time he says something that doesn’t fit, someone else jumps in and says “that’s not what he meant” or tries to fix it to make sense.
The simple part of it is not because of Trump, it’s because those that are willing to agree or to back him, are constantly switching what he did say, or explaining it, to make it be simple. But none of it is actual simple or even close to consistent. It’s just a whole lotta “look over there!”
Your last paragraph is right in line with the conspiracy my brain has been cooking up since Vance first stepped onto the stage. He is… biding his time, and will be far worse than the tangerine traitor we have now. But that has always been the plan. They got the election because the orange orangutan was the recognizable face that emphasizes all of these big feels. The plan was always to oust and put Vance in. I feel it in my bones and have since the minute I first heard the man speak and saw him on tv.
I was hoping maybe I was wrong and that’s why it’s been so quiet with him. That he was more like pence. Just quietly doing what he was supposed to with little to no… mess. Instead, I’m pretty sure it’s been quiet by design. Makes it easier to shove him into a space he didn’t earn, like musk and Kennedy.
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I see this as magnification. These things have always been there but now they are being magnified! It’s the empowerment of the obnoxious. Like an inferno drawing in more and more fuel and oxygen. Trump orchestrates the fear and hate. His consistency is to oppose liberals and scapegoat. The message changes but the underlying hate is consistent.
I taught Biology in the USA and taught sex ed and evolution. I taught sex ed for thirty odd years in the UK. An experience teaching sex ed and evolution in the States. That’s a story.
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I can only imagine.
I went to a private religious school. They taught me in depth sex Ed and also evolution. High school (public), we had a teacher say that evolution was a theory that G-d allows us to believe.
WHAT?! That’s so backward! I spent half my day in my childhood studying the Bible in depth, and the other half learning science. They are not mutually exclusive!
That’s the thing: I’m not 100% it’s being magnified so much. I think that’s one of the things people are missing. It’s always been there, and it’s always been this loud and this strong. My entire life. The difference is, people would tell the strange uncle and cousins to shut up. Now, they are the ones emboldened to say shut up.
To me, from my perspective, that’s really the only difference. SM doesn’t create these thoughts, neither does Trump. They have been there since before I existed. The difference is only that the pendulum swung back.
80 years ago, the wrong people had the right to tell others to shut up. Then we spent a long time with the right people being able to tell folks to shut up, and now it swung back.
Throughout history, that’s sort of how it has always gone. SM and Trump are just symptoms. SM becoming increasingly toxic is because the wrong people are on it screaming to shut up to protect their feelings. Trump is the king of the shut up folks. They’re just louder.
I just hope that we break the cycle before 80 years ago repeats.
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Maybe magnified is the wrong word. I see it as an empowering process. They have given that minority a voice and empowered them to speak. They used to be quiet. The received wisdom was that racism was wrong; now the racists think they are not only right but have the upper hand.
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Maybe it’s empowered, but I don’t know what it is. It’s just the shit I’ve always seen and it’s not really different. It’s just not possible to ignore it anymore.
Even the folks that keep their heads firmly in the sand just can’t anymore. Not that it’s helping, but at least, ya know?
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It is like it is being magnified and sucking more people in!
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Only people who are so self centered as to think that as long as it doesn’t affect them, it’s all fine.
“Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up”.
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I think there is a big degree of selfishness in the MAGA movement. They’ve lost all empathy and compassion!
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I’m. It 100% sure there ever was any. Their dear leader certainly never had any. Neither has anyone else that had anything to do with it. The closest we ever had to MAGA + empathy was pence. But he was neither compassionate or truly a maga.
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There always were a minority of the selfish but my experience of America has always been (for the most part) friendly, generous and helpful. I think people have been taught to be selfish and callous.
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I’m not speaking of the Americans as a whole in any way. I am one, I know how kind, generous and friendly we are (when we want to be). I’m specifically speaking of true blue MAGA. I don’t think they have ever had empathy or kindness within them.
They are the folks that threw rocks at children trying to go to school, find no issue with children being shot down in school as long as THEY have access to their guns, and are completely ok with dead women being used as incubators. There’s nothing human or decent about them.
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Yes. I know what you mean. There has always been that ignorant element. They are tied up with nationalism, obsessive patriotism and religion. An obnoxious mix in my opinion. Somehow they see their conformity as freedom. It’s a weird mentality that always seemed tied in to the frontiers mentality of the Wild West. There’s a macho, self self self mentality and an emphasis on strength not intelligence. When I taught there I thought it was a joke but it’s not, is it? They really have this cartoon view of reality. God is looking out for them, America is the greatest country on the planet, they can beat anyone and everything is black and white. They’ll beat the hell out of anyone who disagrees.
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Sadly, it is real. I know people who have this caveman mentality.
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Reality and rationality does not intrude on their distorted logic!!
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It doesn’t even share the same zip code!
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What creates this phenomenon?
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I have a number of theories. But I think the biggest one is likely that there is something very innately distrusting within these people. Anything they deem slightly official is immediately to be disbelieved.
Reality is only what they perceive, rationality can only be found between the covers of one specific book. If that book doesn’t tell them that what is being said is real, and their perception is that they’re being lied to, then REALITY dictates that it’s all some giant lie and only they can comprehend the deeper truth. Which is always somehow some half-baked, cockamamie nonsense that has no quarter in reality or in logic.
If this is pointed out to them, they cannot comprehend a situation where this person that is using different thinking and different foundation can be right or accurate, therefore, they’re LYING to them.
So now, anyone that is saying anything different than what they believe is actively and intentionally lying to them, and therefore has a justifiable and very real reason to not listen — because they are bad, evil deception throwing monsters out to hurt and harm.
Therefore, the only truth is that which repeats and amplifies what they already think. And anger and resentment builds toward anyone who disagrees, not because it requires that, but because the act of disagreeing is also an act of overt lying and manipulation for the purposes of harm. Therefore, evil.
The book says evil bad. Therefore, this whole
Person is completely bad. Because they disagree.
Imagine living like that for a single week. How angry, miserable, and completely insane would you be?
Imagine a world where every single person who disagrees with you has now PROVEN themselves to be the enemy who is out to harm you. Could you make it a day? A week? A month? An entire lifetime??
I don’t know if this is at all accurate, but that is my best guess as to why reality and rational don’t seem to play any part in their world.
They start from a place with a faulty premise, and then they simply live an entire life based on that premise that they never once challenge independently. As a result, they become increasingly distrusting and by the time they hit their 30’s or 40’s, everyone, literally everyone in their world who speaks up and opposite any single thing they believe has now painted themselves as a betraying enemy out to hurt them.
It explains their snowflake mentality too. They have literally set themselves up to be emotionally burned and scalded every single interaction they have.
In the off chance one of them even starts to think maybe there’s a different way to live, every form of media they consume reminds them that everyone else is a “them” and evil and to be distrusted. The media even sows distrust in itself to make sure no real information can penetrate!
It’s your echo chamber only, everyone else is the enemy.
I don’t even know if that makes sense, but it feels like it does.
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Hence the conspiracy theories and gullibility. It was so easy for Trump to tap into this well of distrust, stir it, reinforce it, and tell them he understands, they are right about everything. They are being lied to by evil politicians, scientists and media. But he has their back. He’ll drain that swamp and tell the truth!
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What I don’t get: how in the world do you trust no one, but you do trust the world’s best known grifter?
Shocking. Two man sized toddlers are acting out because their plot to take over the world unraveled. Who could have foreseen this?
The frightening thing is right before the election I was being extra especially crazy and said the plot is to impeach Trump and put in Vance. That’s the real play. I had about 25 half formed conspiracy theories as to why and my dad told me I was insane.
Yet, here’s musk calling for that very eventuality.
Granted, I know I was being crazy. But I still can’t help wondering if maybe there’s still something there I just am missing through the trees.
Man, I hate being conspiratorial. I tend to be right enough to freak myself out and wrong enough to feel crazy.
Hi Marla. Good to hear from you. Hope you are well??
I hope you’re wrong. Vance is a nightmare!!
I am doing pretty good, thank you for asking. How are you?
Vance isn’t so bad.
He’s certainly not good. And he’s certainly horrible, but he’s at least been fairly quiet since the election. I’ve had a chance to not actively throw up in my mouth when I think of his name. Seeing his face, however, reminds me and the feeling is back.
That said, because he’s been so quiet, I find him slightly less offensive than musk or Trump. Both of whom give me the dry heaves just thinking about them and when I hear or see them I want to scream and just jump out a window.
Based solely on that reaction, Vance isn’t so bad.
In a world of shit, he’s not Trump, musk, Kennedy or MTG.
There’s levels for how much the nations poop
Can stink. They are top tier. Vance is a quarter tier lower. So better but not even remotely good. If that makes sense.
Glad you’re OK.
We get quite a lot of Vance attacking the UK and EU with conspiratorial nonsense – claiming we don’t have free speech (because we fact check) and that we’re being overrun. He’s a Nazi stirrer. I think he’s very dangerous and ambitious.
Oh, I don’t doubt anything you’re saying. You probably know more about him than the average American, honestly.
Here, he makes the headlines like….never. We just had to deal with the X/Truth battle between morons. That was front page news, followed by some actress saying she doesn’t let her kids watch children’s tv because it irks her soul, so clearly she hates Ms Rachel and wants Palestinian babies to die — and they sent her and her kids death threats to protest babies dying…
This is what we deal with on a 24 hour cycle. Hopefully, you guys hear as little about this bs as we hear about Vance.
But great. The knowledge he’s up to no good elsewhere and we don’t hear about it… yeah, that’s by design. Crap.
And I’m back to conspiracy theories. Wonderful.
not sure it is conspiracy
Oh, I know. Doesn’t stop my pattern seeking brain. If they make Trump and musk seem loony here and never mention Vance, of Trump is to be ousted, Americans will be tired of their shit and ok with it. It will seem like a better option to just have Vance. Setting the ground work. That kind of thing. Like public perception is all a game (it is) and they’re expertly playing it.
I blame social media for all this. They are spreading lies and setting agendas. The billionaires deflect attention from their own gross exploitation on to immigrants.
That’s the thing, you can’t solely blame social media. Newspapers, magazines, tv news, entertainment news — everything covers the bull not the substance.
Oh, I can tell you what Bruce Springsteen said in concert halfway around the world, but I can fine nary a word about what our vice president is up to unless I specifically search for it.
If I go to my news feeds, or I look at the front page at the store, I should know. Instead, I know Trump threatened a rock star. I know a bunch of other rockstars support the first rock star. I know a different rockstar just died. I know a pop star just released an album cover that is really unpleasant to look at. Tons of information — literally none of it pertinent.
I shouldn’t have to specifically google my vice president. He’s VICE PRESIDENT! I should know what he’s saying, almost like it was downloaded into my skull by some random force I can’t even describe. I mean, every time Trump farts we get the updated information, even if we’ve force-quit the stupid update app.
There’s a reason you have to put in far more steps to find out what our VP is up to than we do to find out about what some actress said about a kids television host.
I think what has happened is that the story coming in from SM has normalised hate. It has scapegoated immigrants. There is a problem and they have exaggerated it. They’ve demonised socialism, caring, empathy and compassion – these are seen as weakness. It’s all about strength, winners and losers, black and white. The real culprits – the billionaires who have been siphoning off more and more of the wealth – are controlling the narrative. The result is to empower racism, white supremacy and Nazis. Where these groups were a small minority they, due to the fear narrative of immigrants, Muslims and terrorism, soaked in conspiracy, deliberate undermining of authority, science, education and the media, have been sucking in more and more of the desperate, stupid, gullible and displaced. They blame immigrants instead of billionaires. Trump is orchestrating the fear and hate and targeting liberals. They like that. They have an enemy. It’s black and white. Trump puts forward a simplistic answer and a consistent set of lies. He’s in it for the power and money and is creaming the system – making millions. His family are raking it in.
Draining the swamp!!! He’s created a whole new swamp!!
He’s tapped into the white supremacists, gun lobby, evangelicals, Nazi groups and ‘We Will Not Be Replaced’ movement.
These deprived idiots who make up MAGA just hate. They see themselves as strong, macho types who despise the educated. They think the educated look down on them. Trump gives them a voice and simple answers they can understand. The fact that it’s populist nonsense doesn’t matter. They’ve bought into it. If it doesn’t work they deflect the blame on to sabotage from ‘liberals’.
Vance is an opportunist who bought into a road to power and wealth. He changed his tune and has become the attack dog, the sounding bell. He’s positioning himself to mimic Trump with more virulence. He’s going to take over MAGA and displace the old man. Vance has seen that the more extreme his shit the more the MAGA nuts lap it up. Whereas Trump is a narcissist with psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies, Vance is a calculated psychopath. The ambush in the White House showed his nature. He’s cruel.
That’s an interesting take. It’s different than a lot of what we see and believe in America. Not all of it. But some of it.
“The story coming in from SM had normalized hate.”
Yes, and no. The reality is that this has always existed. People were just better able to pretend it didn’t. I am 43 years old. There HAS NEVER been a time where someone I have known didn’t hate immigrants, scapegoated them, made lies about them, or exaggerated their claims. There have always been people demonizing socialism, caring, empathy, compassion and kindness. There have always been people who see this stuff as just black and white, strength and weakness, winners and losers. Whether it has always been millionaires yanking those strings, I don’t know. But I’ve been hearing it most of my life. My great uncle used to spew the same rhetoric during the Clinton years.
It’s not new, it’s not even stronger. It’s just reaching a new audience than it ever did before.
“These groups were a small minority they, due to the fear narrative of immigrants, Muslims and terrorism, soaked in conspiracy, deliberate undermining of authority, science, education and the media, have been sucking in more and more of the desperate, stupid, gullible and displaced.”
I have lived here my whole life. It’s not new. None of it is. It’s been nearly a quarter century now of just literally constant Muslim hate and conspiracy theories, with an ever increasing hatred of authority. Science and education has been consistently on the chopping block since I was in school, with discussions about textbooks removing information being an issue since the first time I ever heard this conversation in first grade. My parents chose the school they did because the state had no say in the education. Text books were any materials that taught the material in full, not some state mandated text that Texas was able to alter.
There has never been a time in my entire life where sex education was actually promoted in my country. Not one. My state and a few others refuse to bend to the will of these folks, and we don’t ban books either, but that shit is spreading here like a virus too. I went to grade school at a school that actually spent three days teaching about sex education. It was extremely in depth. A husband and wife came in, both doctors, and they took the class and the first day was a general lesson in basic anatomy and information about how to protect from STDs and pregnancy. The second day the wife took the girls and the husband took the boys and we did very specific education on our own bodies. The third day, the two groups were together again to ask any questions we had about the last two days or in general. I was in 6th grade. I had to wait until 11th for the public school version. We spent an entire semester on it and learned about 1/10th of the information. 11th grade. I’m not even beginning to joke when I say that I know for an absolute fact that 3/4 of the class I was sitting in was already sexually active and had been for years. It was the FIRST time half of them heard of a condom.
And there has always been a mentality of blaming the immigrants. My country willingly set up concentration camps and placed citizens in them because they were people who looked like they immigrated fairly recently and probably were on the side of our enemy during a war. That was during my grandparents time, but we’re not doing much better now. Attacking families — mothers and children — at the mall because people who looked like them crashed a few planes on the other side of the country. It’s always some version of “us vs them.”
“Trump puts forward a simplistic answer and a consistent set of lies.”
No. He doesn’t. He never has. Nothing about his BS is consistent ever. The reality is he’s a rambling, angry, incoherent bag of meat. Has been for at least 20 years. But every time he says something that doesn’t fit, someone else jumps in and says “that’s not what he meant” or tries to fix it to make sense.
The simple part of it is not because of Trump, it’s because those that are willing to agree or to back him, are constantly switching what he did say, or explaining it, to make it be simple. But none of it is actual simple or even close to consistent. It’s just a whole lotta “look over there!”
Your last paragraph is right in line with the conspiracy my brain has been cooking up since Vance first stepped onto the stage. He is… biding his time, and will be far worse than the tangerine traitor we have now. But that has always been the plan. They got the election because the orange orangutan was the recognizable face that emphasizes all of these big feels. The plan was always to oust and put Vance in. I feel it in my bones and have since the minute I first heard the man speak and saw him on tv.
I was hoping maybe I was wrong and that’s why it’s been so quiet with him. That he was more like pence. Just quietly doing what he was supposed to with little to no… mess. Instead, I’m pretty sure it’s been quiet by design. Makes it easier to shove him into a space he didn’t earn, like musk and Kennedy.
I see this as magnification. These things have always been there but now they are being magnified! It’s the empowerment of the obnoxious. Like an inferno drawing in more and more fuel and oxygen. Trump orchestrates the fear and hate. His consistency is to oppose liberals and scapegoat. The message changes but the underlying hate is consistent.
I taught Biology in the USA and taught sex ed and evolution. I taught sex ed for thirty odd years in the UK. An experience teaching sex ed and evolution in the States. That’s a story.
I can only imagine.
I went to a private religious school. They taught me in depth sex Ed and also evolution. High school (public), we had a teacher say that evolution was a theory that G-d allows us to believe.
WHAT?! That’s so backward! I spent half my day in my childhood studying the Bible in depth, and the other half learning science. They are not mutually exclusive!
That’s the thing: I’m not 100% it’s being magnified so much. I think that’s one of the things people are missing. It’s always been there, and it’s always been this loud and this strong. My entire life. The difference is, people would tell the strange uncle and cousins to shut up. Now, they are the ones emboldened to say shut up.
To me, from my perspective, that’s really the only difference. SM doesn’t create these thoughts, neither does Trump. They have been there since before I existed. The difference is only that the pendulum swung back.
80 years ago, the wrong people had the right to tell others to shut up. Then we spent a long time with the right people being able to tell folks to shut up, and now it swung back.
Throughout history, that’s sort of how it has always gone. SM and Trump are just symptoms. SM becoming increasingly toxic is because the wrong people are on it screaming to shut up to protect their feelings. Trump is the king of the shut up folks. They’re just louder.
I just hope that we break the cycle before 80 years ago repeats.
Maybe magnified is the wrong word. I see it as an empowering process. They have given that minority a voice and empowered them to speak. They used to be quiet. The received wisdom was that racism was wrong; now the racists think they are not only right but have the upper hand.
Maybe it’s empowered, but I don’t know what it is. It’s just the shit I’ve always seen and it’s not really different. It’s just not possible to ignore it anymore.
Even the folks that keep their heads firmly in the sand just can’t anymore. Not that it’s helping, but at least, ya know?
It is like it is being magnified and sucking more people in!
Only people who are so self centered as to think that as long as it doesn’t affect them, it’s all fine.
“Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up”.
I think there is a big degree of selfishness in the MAGA movement. They’ve lost all empathy and compassion!
I’m. It 100% sure there ever was any. Their dear leader certainly never had any. Neither has anyone else that had anything to do with it. The closest we ever had to MAGA + empathy was pence. But he was neither compassionate or truly a maga.
There always were a minority of the selfish but my experience of America has always been (for the most part) friendly, generous and helpful. I think people have been taught to be selfish and callous.
I’m not speaking of the Americans as a whole in any way. I am one, I know how kind, generous and friendly we are (when we want to be). I’m specifically speaking of true blue MAGA. I don’t think they have ever had empathy or kindness within them.
They are the folks that threw rocks at children trying to go to school, find no issue with children being shot down in school as long as THEY have access to their guns, and are completely ok with dead women being used as incubators. There’s nothing human or decent about them.
Yes. I know what you mean. There has always been that ignorant element. They are tied up with nationalism, obsessive patriotism and religion. An obnoxious mix in my opinion. Somehow they see their conformity as freedom. It’s a weird mentality that always seemed tied in to the frontiers mentality of the Wild West. There’s a macho, self self self mentality and an emphasis on strength not intelligence. When I taught there I thought it was a joke but it’s not, is it? They really have this cartoon view of reality. God is looking out for them, America is the greatest country on the planet, they can beat anyone and everything is black and white. They’ll beat the hell out of anyone who disagrees.
Sadly, it is real. I know people who have this caveman mentality.
Reality and rationality does not intrude on their distorted logic!!
It doesn’t even share the same zip code!
What creates this phenomenon?
I have a number of theories. But I think the biggest one is likely that there is something very innately distrusting within these people. Anything they deem slightly official is immediately to be disbelieved.
Reality is only what they perceive, rationality can only be found between the covers of one specific book. If that book doesn’t tell them that what is being said is real, and their perception is that they’re being lied to, then REALITY dictates that it’s all some giant lie and only they can comprehend the deeper truth. Which is always somehow some half-baked, cockamamie nonsense that has no quarter in reality or in logic.
If this is pointed out to them, they cannot comprehend a situation where this person that is using different thinking and different foundation can be right or accurate, therefore, they’re LYING to them.
So now, anyone that is saying anything different than what they believe is actively and intentionally lying to them, and therefore has a justifiable and very real reason to not listen — because they are bad, evil deception throwing monsters out to hurt and harm.
Therefore, the only truth is that which repeats and amplifies what they already think. And anger and resentment builds toward anyone who disagrees, not because it requires that, but because the act of disagreeing is also an act of overt lying and manipulation for the purposes of harm. Therefore, evil.
The book says evil bad. Therefore, this whole
Person is completely bad. Because they disagree.
Imagine living like that for a single week. How angry, miserable, and completely insane would you be?
Imagine a world where every single person who disagrees with you has now PROVEN themselves to be the enemy who is out to harm you. Could you make it a day? A week? A month? An entire lifetime??
I don’t know if this is at all accurate, but that is my best guess as to why reality and rational don’t seem to play any part in their world.
They start from a place with a faulty premise, and then they simply live an entire life based on that premise that they never once challenge independently. As a result, they become increasingly distrusting and by the time they hit their 30’s or 40’s, everyone, literally everyone in their world who speaks up and opposite any single thing they believe has now painted themselves as a betraying enemy out to hurt them.
It explains their snowflake mentality too. They have literally set themselves up to be emotionally burned and scalded every single interaction they have.
In the off chance one of them even starts to think maybe there’s a different way to live, every form of media they consume reminds them that everyone else is a “them” and evil and to be distrusted. The media even sows distrust in itself to make sure no real information can penetrate!
It’s your echo chamber only, everyone else is the enemy.
I don’t even know if that makes sense, but it feels like it does.
Hence the conspiracy theories and gullibility. It was so easy for Trump to tap into this well of distrust, stir it, reinforce it, and tell them he understands, they are right about everything. They are being lied to by evil politicians, scientists and media. But he has their back. He’ll drain that swamp and tell the truth!
What I don’t get: how in the world do you trust no one, but you do trust the world’s best known grifter?
That’s the art of conmen!