January 6 picketer gets teary eyed in court: "No one wants to hire me"

[VeronicaConnor]

@LDoBe

That may be part of it, but I think a much more significant contributing factor is they’re all stuck on Facebook living in their tiny echo chamber. They legitimately get no exposure to opposing viewpoints outside of the strawmen put in front of them on their social feed.

I think this is a huge factor. I have in-laws who literally only consume FB and Fox & Friends for their media. It’s been this way for a decade or more. Their world view is so twisted and bizarre at this point that I can no longer even have a conversation with them. We seem to have no facts at all in common and when they state a political opinion, there are generally four or five obvious falsehoods in a single sentence. It would take an hour to unpack it all with them (just that one sentence and why it’s all demonstrably wrong) but they wouldn’t listen anyway. If they were younger, I could see them doing what the insurrectionists did and being equally stunned into confusion by the consequences. Like waking up from a years-long delusion.

[8-p]

I have the same situation with my extended family. I actively avoid them, as it is impossible to have any conversation beyond the trivial without their twisted bullshit coming to the forefront. I don’t have the time or energy for that crap and I’m past caring what happens to them at this point.

[DonatellaNobody]

@fuzzyfungus

They also seem to be two flavors that the hard right has had some uncomfortable success in synergizing: you’ve got the thug types with the face full of white power tattoos; and you’ve got the boring middle/upper-middle class suburbanites who would actually care what the boy scout troop and the local church think about them and (had) a respectable and boring career of some sort. And they’re both storming the capital…

The boring suburbanites believe everything the White Power assholes believe, and everybody knows it, but call them nazis and they clutch their little pearls.

White conservatives and white liberals alike.

[marence]

@LDoBe

…a much more significant contributing factor is they’re all stuck on Facebook living in their tiny echo chamber. They legitimately get no exposure to opposing viewpoints outside of the strawmen put in front of them on their social feed.

I’ve been surprised by how many of our friends of the family get all their information from facebook and listicles. I’ve been hearing astounding second-hand accounts of family members trying to reason with their friends, who embrace their ignorance enthusiastically, and spout ridiculous “logic” when questioned.

[VeronicaConnor]

@marence

I’ve been surprised by how many of our friends of the family get all their information from facebook and listicles

I’ve gotten into political arguments with my dad who, for proof of his position, sends me a meme photo of the politician he hates with text over it saying a bunch of false things about what he’s done. I try to say, “Dad, these memes aren’t real. People just make them up. This isn’t information” But when he’s surrounded by emotionally reinforcing things he wants to hear, his brain shuts off. It’s sad because he’s an intellIgent rational guy in all other ways.

[Grendcvert]

I had to show him a meme about old people and how they use the Internet (something like that) and he would understand, or maybe not