I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is | What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

The last time Donald Trump was President of The United States of America, a viral pandemic emerged out of China, he did not stop flights coming in, he did not enact the war powers to manufacture PPE for our first responders, health workers, or public, he eschewed the use of ventilators, and openly mocked those who wore masks.

A Million fucking Americans perished from COVID during his Presidency, the largest per capital, and total of any nation on gods green earth.

What's happening is not the result of misinformation, it's informed self immolation.

Republicans realized they cannot win on their arguments, so they wish to burn it all down, themselves and their children included.

yeah its called capital accumulation, here's how it works:

A cabal conservative institution of international rich people don't want to pay taxes on their enormous wealth so they're spending some of their money to prop up nazis, religious freaks, and insane conspiracy theorists to drown out common sense economic policy and pin the blame on minorities and a departure from religious orthodoxy.

Obviously persecuting people on these grounds makes the situation worse and people don't want to be the next scapegoat so they fall in line (face eating leopard logic, etc.) but because we're removing the most exploitable workers from the economy the economy spirals, creating the need for more scapegoats. Fascism in a nutshell.

In the long term its self destructive to every society that allows it but in the short term they get another hour of power.

Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own.

Oh, you mean like how the orange turd's administration in 2020 was legitimately very literally seizing shipments of critical PPE in 2020 at the height of COVID and selling it to fellow grifters for them to auction off to hospitals?

What is the common thread that links almost all of these crazies? I mean, even more than religion.

Conservatism. Almost all of them vote for, or are elected representatives of, conservative parties.

And conservatism encourages divisiveness and bigotries like this. To be suspicious of and actively hate others, to find “evil” where none exist. To believe in falsehoods even when they have been demonstrably debunked.

Conservatism of all stripes is fundamentally evil. Conservatism is what will destroy civilization, and eventually, humanity.

First they politicized a pandemic, now they're politicizing a hurricane.

When will it end?

We were watching Rings of Power and my wife kept being like "How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense."

I legitimately cannot even. These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago, and that is just the version on my TV today. The danger of populism, the deception of the demagogue... It's all fucking right there... Impossible to ignore. Yet here we are, dealing with the same shit in a different age.

The article mentions people are willing to suspend their belief in understandingthe truth in order to further their "team" or party objective, but I think this whole thing is simply foreign adversaries vying to destroy us from within by sowing contempt and spreading lies on social media and news outlets.

Occam's Razor.

While riding home with my son this evening, I found myself apologizing to him. This world today--the people--are a profoundly unbelievable mess. He brought up things he's read in the news and I hardly know what to say. We both understand how insane it all is, but people still believe it... truly...

I get it. The world has always been a mess. This mess today is simply uniquely ours at this time in history.

But...

My gods...

What...

The...

sighs

we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging

yea

Is anyone else starting to wonder whether Orwell was a time traveler trying to warn us?

It couldn't possibly be that Trump and his handlers are using it (edit: 1984) as a road map and his followers are stupid enough not to notice.

This runs in parallel to tribalism and being part of an "in" crowd. Some people are so bound by their tribalism that they'll stare at facts and cry that it's not true because their tribe told them differently; they will reject the facts to continue to be a part of the tribe.

To them, being "in" is more important than being right, or even being logical.

Tribalism can take all sorts of different forms, from politics, to your local sports ball team. Even religion is a form of tribalism.

When everyone you know is a part of the conservative/republican/christian/whatever tribe, even if you don't agree with any of it, it's difficult to face the consequences of being ostracized or excluded from the only tribe you've ever really been a part of, by following what your mind and heart actually believe. In time, you might actually convince yourself of the bullshit you have to say you believe, in order to maintain your status in the tribe.

Tribalism is a survival trait. It's what has divided us into nations, countries, states, provinces, cities, towns, etc. Looking back, if we need to do something that will screw over the survivability of the neighboring village, so that we can ensure the continued prosperity of our village, then the answer is yes, do it. It's rewarded to be greedy and selfish in those circumstances.

Tribalism in the form of villages and towns like that is basically non-existent today, so instead we divide ourselves along other boundaries for what tribes we partake in. Whether that's religion, sports teams, political ideologies, conspiracy bullshit..... It doesn't really matter, the tribes are all still present, they've just taken a very different, more abstract form.

All of the MAGA hats, Trump flags, big trucks rolling coal on "hapless" EV drivers.... It's all just parading around your tribes colors, announcing your affiliations so others will know (the same way that marine vessels sail under a countries flag, or an army marches carrying the flag/colors of a country or whatever). All this showboating is the same as a peacock trying to attract a mate. All these fancy colors, and not a hell of a lot more going on.

They're baboons waving their big red buttocks around so everyone knows their butt is more red than yours.

I believe the framework Warzel is looking for is something like:

'Mass Delusional Narcissistic Sustained Psychosis at a Societal Level'

Funny thing about humans is that they only really have their own life’s frame of reference for evaluating their experiences. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the decline of the American empire is unique, I am sure when other empires were experiencing similar levels of decline they had just as much douchebags to contend with. But the threat posed by increasing natural deterioration is a unique factor of our current era. Well that, and the specter of large scale nuclear war. Other than that, the culture wars have always been raging. Honestly, there’s no war but class war. I sound like a broken record now

Gotta have the ol double-think.

I just tell myself that the ones saying the hurricanes are fake are bots just doing it for lulz

And the ones that repost it and assert that the conspiracy theories are real are also bots.

See someone in a grocery store who is ranting about chemtrails? She's a bot.