I live in a red county and am surrounded by conservative neighbors. It's pretty exhausting hanging out with them, because they're constantly mad/afraid of something that literally is not happening. A few weeks ago, I had a few too many drinks and told one of them that they need to quit letting things dictate their lives that weren't real. He didn't take it very well.
They also can't shut the fuck up about it
And if you try to tell them it doesn't happen they insist their father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate saw it with their own two eyes.
I've found the best way to talk to people like this is to come more from a place of caring than from rebuke of the content itself.
"Dude, you seem really bothered by this stuff. What's it like living in fear everyday? Assuming all this stuff is true, what can you do about it? If you can't do anything about it, then why worry all the time? You sure there's not something else going on that's causing this upset?"
A lot of these people who subscribe to extreme views are hurting in ways that are completely unrelated to the extreme content they consume. Most likely some type of trauma or experience or relationship that is resonating with the consumption of this content.
I've used that opportunity to point them to FOSS and other privacy tools. But most don't want to take control of their own data. None of them have switched to Arch Linux yet.
Despite their love of fearmongering, Fox News also flat out tries to cover up things that are actually happening if it is done by them, like Roger Ailes' sexual harassment of Fox News' woman employees.
And this even pre-dates Fox News. SNL from 1995: Old Glory Insurance
It seems like they're trying to map out utopia by building a fence around it to keep it out.
nah just hammerin nails, using power tools to put in screws here and yonder
"news"
"Americans circa 2011" --> "Qaddafi doing genocide"
A new report by the British Parliament shows that the 2011 NATO war in Libya was based on an array of lies.
Less than a decade after "Iraq has WMDs." Now there are open-air slave markets in Libya and two of their dams just broke and killed thousands of people.
Nailed it!
Y u watching Fox News?
Nobody says OP is. They might have loved ones who are or be bombarded with links or just following media critics or anything.
Sounds like OP had afternoon tea with my grandmother.
I spent an afternoon at my in-laws, who watch Fox 24/7, fact checking the nonsense spouted. They were not happy with me.
I really only get this shit third-hand (occasional visits to my parents, and they tell me about the stupid shit said by one of their close friends, who has the crazy fears and politics put into her head by her Trumper son), and it's exhausting then.
I cannot imagine living an existence where I'm subjected to it daily.
I'm very thankful that I work in an office where political shit is expressly forbidden, that at my last job, my Trumper coworkers usually at least tried to keep it to themselves, and the one job I worked with a true conservative lunatic (like...it would be zero surprise to me if I saw the news tomorrow that he'd shot up a place or barricaded himself in his home and had a standoff with govt agents) was well before the trump era.
Where else are you going to find deals on colostomy bags and shitty pillows?
If you have shitty pillows you might want to check your colostomy bag.
This is Canadians, IMO. It's like we've internalised bureaucracy. I work with volunteers, and I have never met board members more concerned with making rules to prevent things that no one is doing. "Yes. That would be a good rule, IF we were having problems with people doing that thing, but we're not right now, so let's table that until that problem actually arises." Such good imaginations.
It’s a good thing these things that are not happening are happening.
Yeah, like the white replacement theory, the "Biden Crime Family" led by an old man that is somehow a criminal mastermind at the same time he isn't mentally competent, or how someone is coming to take our guns away, or the liberal teachers turning their students gay, or all those stolen elections, or the dozens of other stuff normal people laugh at conservatives for blindly believing in like a bunch of sheep.
???
Well the thing is right wing chuds are worried about things that are definitely not happening. However it’s a good good thing that these things are happening, were they happening, which they are not. So it’s very bigoted of the chuds to be worried about things that are not happening but should they happen which at this moment they are not it would be a good thing if they were to happen yet clearly they’re not happening.
??? ?
This really isn't difficult to read at all.
It's not happening, but would be good if it did.
They're just saying that same thing over and over. Where is the struggle?
Look all I am saying is that these things are not happening. It’s a good thing they’re happening were they possibly to happen and in some ways they have happened and this is a good thing but not in the exact ways that the chuds are worried about so it’s silly of them to be worried about these things that are simply not happening and it’s good they’re happening if they were to happen which is my hope but just to state very clearly are currently presently not taking place in the ways specifically described.
