Originally published at: Good Liars revels bizarre beliefs of MAGA Cultists
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For those who are tempted to express deep concern over Boing Boing liberal elitists mocking MAGAts and not giving them a fair hearing, a topic just for you:
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The world is too scary and confusing for a lot of people, and there are a lot of suggestible people.
May Rupert Murdock rot in heck.
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I’ve said this for years.
We can’t have a reasonable debate on most things anymore because we don’t even have ground rules for what constitutes “reality.”
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You correctly identified why a lot of people find the world scary, much less confusing. Though this particular example of hustler is one of the worst, it does go back to how we worship wealth since Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and all the other tycoons who used their lopsided profiting off the backs of others to convince the rubes that by the gods, they deserve their wealth.
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These Chrump supporters should just get shirts that say “I reject your reality and substitute my own”, at least then they would make sense.
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My uncle is a staunch Trump supporter, and even moved from a blue state to a red state to be sure his voice could be heard. Amusingly, said move also ended up giving him several days where he had no water and multiple power issues during 100+ temperatures, but his choice.
His mother, before she passed, frequently described Trump as the biggest asshole she’d ever seen and also wondered quite often where she had gone wrong that her son loved Trump so very much. It was a rather severe rift that lasted right up to her death.
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It’s a real conundrum. One of my cousins (41 y o) is a Trumper even though his mom and dad are so kind and reasonable, and also just don’t get where they went wrong.
Seeing it more from the outside, if I could identify any cause, it would be my cousin’s lack of life experience outside his own safe, homogenous bubble. But I wouldn’t blame his parents for that, that’s on his own lack of curiosity about the world and other people.
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…yep
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^^^this^^^
the incurious, the willfully uninformed, the woefully “locked-in” to the “dummy bubble”, those are dangerously deluded in thinking that their tiny, blinkered worldview based on their own simple experience of a small section of territory, life involvement or people known can be extrapolated to society at large.
i have far too many freinds and relatives (hello, gramma!) that fall into this group.
it cannot be familial or my acutely socialist ass could not exist!
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Trump was faked. Sure there are several crises actors who portray him occasionally; but he’s mostly a flat, two dimensional AI construct.
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Education is absolutely the answer. Advancements in education in the 1960s and 1970s turned out more critical thinkers than ever before (see the Minnesota Miracle of 1971 where they showed the effect of statewide funding helped close the gaps in impoverished school districts.) And it’s why so many MAGAts are trying anything to get elected to school boards where they can disrupt or destroy the public schools, funnel kids to religious schools, or get kids to give up.
Don’t give up on it because it only “reaches a subset”. The bigger the subset, the more critical thinkers we get.
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Doublethink is a hell of a drug.
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I am finding this is increasingly common when I talk to folks here: heavy-duty MAGAs migrating to Texas like moths to a big ol’ fReEdOm® candle-flame. I should add that some of these folks are coming from outside the U.S. I did not even know there were MAGAs from other countries but… ok…
It’s amazing how freaked out the newly arrived and the long-timers all freak out when there’s no power, no water, violent weather (tornadoes, flash flooding, ice storms that fell trees across the roads and pull down powerlines), and no help in sight. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Wall-to-wall-bugger-all.
What the hell were they expecting?
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If him nearly quoting hitler word for word has yet to make it clear to you, MAGA is a fascist movement. Calling it a “mental illness” does not help and in fact downplays just how dangerous a movement this is.
Conspiracies have always been a core part of fascism, because it gives the followers a sense of their connection to something larger (that they have some greater knowledge than others) and it gives them a target for their anger. But it’s not a mental illness.
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Shall we also review the fact that those with mental illnesses are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators? Or that evil is, in fact, not a mental illness? But for some folks, it makes it all less terrifying if they can paint the fascists as “just crazy” and therefore no real threat at all. They are not crazy. They are, in fact, coming for you and yours. And me and mine. We can stand up to them now, or downplay it and wait until they have the power of the state behind them. We dodged a bullet in 2020. Let’s not give them a second bite at the apple.
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And not too surprisingly, this tends to come from people who are not being directly threatened by the fascists, too. But they will get there eventually… the truth is that, as you say…
They maybe focused on the LGBQT+ community and on immigrants, but they’ll get around to everyone who doesn’t agree with them eventually given the chance. We have seen this time and again in authoritarian states (which is why studying history matters)… it never stops at the vulnerable groups, but will eventually encompass everyone who isn’t in power (and sometimes those in power).
We take them seriously or we’re all fucked.
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There is some sense where these people are not well, and it is entirely unlike mental illness. I don’t suppose “ethical disorder” is likely to catch on but that’s where the problem lies.
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