I see what you did there. 
6 Likes
We all have those older relatives who believe this stuff because they’re getting their news from dodgy sources, but this recent post crystallised something that has long bothered me about that explanation.
It’s like, you hear the weird and shocking “news” that Seattle has become an independent communist state. Well, OK, the “news” lied to you. But then your reaction to that is to pointedly not look at any other source to find out more?
That is not how I would react to surprising news. It’s how I would react to news that I didn’t believe for a second, but which some part of me wanted to pretend to believe.
So, when family reunions become a thing again, I will be trying out this line of inquiry on certain relatives if they come at me with certain talking points.
3 Likes
I’m so thankful both of my parents hate FOX news and the republicans. I refereed to my dad’s sister not as my aunt because at 50, I have never met the woman. He left his home town in his late teens and only returned for some funerals many years later.
Same for me, both for news I want to see and news I don’t want to see. I’d rather know the truth, even when it is painful or inconvenient. I’m baffled by people that can just invent a false reality and then jump in with both feet.
8 Likes
I don’t doubt that at all.
Yet, they do nothing about it, other than a token arrest every now & then.
Why, I am beginning to think they are in cahoots!
4 Likes
I’d be okey with Biden having the ceremony anywhere else.
I’d also be okey with paying for a hotel or airbnb room to not go to an insurrectionist.
I live in the Netherlands and on the net I still run across US Americans who think we are overrun by muslims with no-go zones and half in a civil war while all high on drugs while our state health-care system runs abattoirs for the elderly*.
FOX is playing that game for years now, painting other countries and even US states as dangerous, poor, horrible places to prevent (non-millionaire) Republican voters from finding out how badly they are served by their own government.
You get the same thing in countries like North Korea or the late DDR. The people there must carefully be led to believe the outside is a hellscape. This is key in creating a dictatorship: The more scary the outside and the others are the more a dictator can get away with to keep people “safe”.
(*Fun fact: the US ambassador here (Peter Hoekstra) was key in spreading these lies. Guess how welcome he is. I expect he will be replaced before spring 
)
14 Likes
It’s kind of amazing the lengths ignorant people will go to fuck themselves completely. As the year progressed far-right groups became more and more on the radar of folks who specialize in watching terrorists. After the failed coup, they are at the top.
Now, if they pull some shit in the next couple of weeks, I imagine they will easily become the task-at-hand for years to come. They were challenged with the characterization of being Brownshirts, and in response acted as Brownshirty as their wits could manage. That’s how you control the narrative, right there.
I am sure the black-bagging, kicking-down-doors-in-the-night types in our government will appreciate all the work. Thanks to the racist, 9/11-era policies crafted by these same sorts of people, nobody is gonna blink when we fill up the secret prisons with them. Kudos, you stupid assholes.
2 Likes
I thought that was Sweden /s
4 Likes
I think he can compete with former US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell for the “honour” of diplomat most hated by his host country in Europe.
5 Likes
Please don’t send that garbage human back to Michigan. We were just getting used to being rid of him.
6 Likes
Pete Hoekstra, the human Khian Sea…
(Too obscure? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khian_Sea_waste_disposal_incident )
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
