Alex WildAug 16, 2023

It's not that Americans themselves are getting more fascist, more hateful. If anything, Americans are becoming more tolerant.

It's that a small set of extremely rich people is getting bolder about funding extremism, bolder about supporting coups, bolder about buying courts.

Show threadAlex WildAug 16, 2023
Recognize that the Texas oil billionaires are a national security risk, people who are willing to spill a lot of other people's blood to get their way.
Show threadStaid WinnowAug 16, 2023
@alexwild Then recognize that a majority of Texans will elect legislators who empower the oil magnates even more.
Show threadSam Adams
@staidwinnow @alexwild I question if it's really a majority or if gerrymandering makes it seem like a majority.
Aug 16, 2023 at 6:22pmWeb
Show threadDaedalous ErosAug 17, 2023

@Sameagle @staidwinnow @alexwild I play a lot of video games. And sometimes I read/hear something in a game that sticks with me. Very recently, it's a line in Guild Wars 2 that's pretty relevant to this: "Propaganda doesn't have to be convincing. Just pervasive."

And I think that really rings true: as long as propaganda is spread as far and as wide as it can, it will eventually find ears that will listen. Those that know better will eventually tune it out. Eventually still, become demoralized by its ever-present nature, losing the will and energy to argue with its mouth-pieces, to debunk its fallacies, or even just deal with the emotional toll it takes.

Before long, it piles up and it becomes impossible to find the truth buried under all that shit, and it begins to look like you're alone and out-numbered by the ones propagating the lies. I don't think it's just gerrymnandering. I think it's the relentless propaganda machine they've set up.

Show threadSam AdamsAug 17, 2023
@daedalousilios I agree. I have always blamed a lot of our current mess on the 24-hour news cycle. When cable news started, they had a lot of air to fill and they filled it with the newly empowered right-wing -- empowered by Ronald Reagan. The religious right was very small in those days. The Moral Majority was tiny, estimated at just a few thousand members, but Jerry Falwell refused to release actual numbers, spreading the propaganda that there were millions of them. 1/
Show threadSam AdamsAug 17, 2023
@daedalousilios With cable news being complicit in order to fill dead air and broadcast networks in a panic that cable would have something they didn't, it created a false equivalence between the Moral Majority and normal Americans. Their propaganda was spoon-fed to the entire nation. 2/
Show threadSam AdamsAug 17, 2023
@daedalousilios
The same thing happened and continues to happen with Trump. He's a train wreck we can't look away from, and the national media and now social media continue to give him a platform for his propaganda in exchange for ratings and clicks. 3/3
Show threadDaedalous ErosAug 17, 2023

@Sameagle Anything to turn a profit. The greedy are absolutely carnivorous. They'd burn the whole damn nation themselves and aalt every square inch of our own soil if they could profit off it.

But now it's not just news. Now you have mega-churches with congregations in the thousands on any given Sunday being fed right-wing extremism wrapped in holy scripture. Pastors, who legitimately believe Trump is a Messiah (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Me07dg2VBmU), able to change entire political and religious sentiment in a single sermon, and now they act as propagandistic mouth-pieces.

The good news is, as the OP showed, these people are losing support. These groups always follow a cycle of becoming ever-more radical, and as they do, they lose members, and become more desperate, and therefore more extreme, making them lose more members as they become more radical, and the cycle repeats until only the most loyal and extreme remain. Then they do something truly unbelievable, and they burn out.

THIS Is Why (Unhinged) Pastors Think Trump Is MESSIAH

YouTube
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Aug 17, 2023
@Sameagle @alexwild @staidwinnow Hasn't it also been shown that election outcomes pretty much tracks campaign funding?