Non political memes: [email protected]
It's astounding how accurate this is. I spent 2016 - 2024 playing this game with a friend that I eventually cut off.
He'd parrot something insane that he didn't fact check.
I'd point out the flaws.
He'd come back with his google search results.
I'd actually read them and point out half of them disagreed with him and the other half were verifiably trash.
He'd run away from the conversation and refuse to respond to anything political I say until he forgets; cuz he never learns.
Same. I lost my 15 year best friend over this earlier this year. It still hurts and it sucks but I'm not friends with fascists
It's sad cuz I've watching this guy pick up and put down 30 different interests all in a desperate search for external validation.
MAGA is a cult.
Do we know the same guy? My guy bought a bass and a bunch of music production equipment and never learned to use any of it. He's got dreams of being a writer and he hasn't written anything.
Overall he's lived in several big cities and never made friends, eventually moving back to where we used to live to be closer to his college friends (he's 30). He has struggled in his career, love, and social life and turned to Jordan Peterson. He likes reading. I think if he just joined a book club 7 years ago all of this could have been avoided because he would have made some friends.
Bruhhhh. If it weren't for the bass guitar / production equipment I'd say yes haha. Did your bro also join the trucker convoy?
No. That would be doing things. He doesn't do things. Except one time he drove two hours to visit our friends for the weekend. Except he was actually just crashing at their place so he could see Jordan Peterson live. He didn't tell them that until he was there. He's been super cagey about his politics. I got hints over the years but I figured he was starting to mellow out after the pandemic settled. Turns out he just learned not to talk politics around his friends. In January I finally confronted him about his beliefs on specific issues, hoping that I was over-extrapolating and actually he just had a few mixed views. Nope, full on fascist. We used to talk on the phone every couple of weeks. I've completely cut contact since. Sorry for venting.
Nah all good. I don't think my bro is full on fascist. I asked him directly and he acted incredulous. He's always gotten off on the being different kick; albeit out of spite. We were raised in a proto-maga church environment. Now that he perceives Christianity as anti-establishment he's got the koolaid on iv.
Him and my sister are how I know MAGAs don't listen to trump, or engage anything for that matter, directly. They've all been conditioned by their church pastor to get their opinions from someone else. That's why we're seeing this phenomenon of MAGAs waiting for their opinion on every breaking story. They don't seek knowledge, or do a single ounce of fact checking.
Some people will only learn the hard way, if that.
That's why we're seeing this phenomenon of MAGAs waiting for their opinion on every breaking story. They don't seek knowledge, or do a single ounce of fact checking.
It's worse than that, I think. From my experience with my guy, critical thinking, reason, and evidence are enemies of truth. Any authoritative voice on a subject is evidence of falsehood. The entire establishment is meant to hypnotize us into submission of the elites. The frustrating thing is, that's kind of correct. Capitalism has pushed mainstream media to be spun into propaganda. Elites (the rich) are holding increasing levels of control over society. Maga is taking this grain of truth and telling a compelling narrative about elite democrats using immigrants to get more votes. All of academia is left-wing propaganda, etc. It conveniently shifts the focus from class issues to demographic and anti-intellectual issues.
I can't disagree with any of that. All I'll add is the saying, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
Cuz I cannot ignore the connection between evangelical/charismatic Christianity and people susceptible to MAGA bullshit.
Yep. My guy is also "getting more christian" (aka christo-fascist) despite not going to church since he was a kid. Turns out, thinking a specific ideology is not only correct, but ordained by God, allows you to dehumanize anybody who isn't completely falling in line.
At least we're no longer alone bro
So true. Hope you've been able to make some more deep connections with people who aren't crazy. Thanks for giving me the space to vent about this.
That's why I'm on lemmy.ca... Trauma bonding with my fellow Canadians lmao!
It was cathartic on my end as well. Thanks my dude!
i cut off my own mom bc she thinks being trans is a jewish conspiracy and refuses to talk to me about literally anything else because i'm trans, and burnt a 15+ year friendship because he refused to have a conversation that wasn't some stupid debate-me bro culture war bullshit, even when i literally cried and begged. sucks but i can't save them, and i won't be bullied for the sake of a relationship that's clearly already over for them.
you did the right thing. stay strong, friend. 🫂
You did the right thing too. I hope you've made some new friends since all that. I've cut off the one friend and had to distance myself from other friends that enabled him. You invited both of us to your birthday party? Guess I'm not going. The good news is that this has pushed me to value my friends that aren't crazy and make more deep connections with new people. I hope you were able to make the same shift.
Tangent: I swear the best way to break down the narratives around trans people is to just make casual friends with a trans person. You naturally want to respect your friends and see them as normal people and then all the talk about bathrooms, grooming, etc just seem so silly. Years ago I felt like the bathroom arguments held water. Then I watched my trans friend just walk into the bathroom and it seemed like such a non-issue after that. Now she's one of my best friends.
they often posts links that easy to discredit or debunk, because they dont check the contents of the links themselves.
"But he was only friends with Epstein because he was a Democrat back then"
As somebody said yesterday, why did Epstein kill himself since there's no evidence that he did anything wrong?
Is the last line a reference to 'There is no war in Eastasia'?
*Ba Sing Se
The American King invites you to Mar-a-Lago
This is funny, but it's not really what I'm seeing from them. They all seem real upset that the Epstien files aren't being released. So far they're mostly blaming Pam Bondi, but if Trump keeps telling them to forget about Epstien, they might abandon him. They'll bend their conspiracy theories around Trump, but if tries to break them, they'll turn on him (...or say he's been replaced with a deep-state body-double clone).
they might abandon him
Lmao. What exactly about the past decade of American politics makes you think that this is even remotely possible? There could be real video evidence of him raping a child posted all over Twitter and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. It would be fake news, AI generated, etc. Let me be clear- these people will worship Trump no matter what. There is NOTHING that will drive the true believers away from him. Even when he dies a decent number of them will believe he faked his death and is fighting evil from the shadows and fewer still will believe he ascended to become a divine being.
What exactly about the past decade of American politics makes you think that this is even remotely possible?
I significant amount has changed over the last 10 years, including how Trump has engaged with QAnon and the conspiracy-element of his base. Early on, he didn't address or acknowledge Q, and only started dropping small dog whistles towards the community late into his first term. It was enough to keep them holding on without making direct promises.
The Q account evolved as well; they started off making bold predictions, like the imminent arrest of Clinton and other Democrats. When that became less tenable, they pivoted to vague, meaningless predictions like, "Watch the Water," or just throwing out a date with no context. The account functionally died after Trump's 2020 loss, and hasn't really been relevant since.
During the Biden years, the community pivoted towards Epstien, with promises of unredacted files, flightlogs, client lists, and video evidence proving that prominent Democrats were all part of a Q-like conspiracy. The problem is, unlike the original Q conspiracy, which was based on imagined, malleable nonsense, this was based on real events with tangible evidence, which Trump directly promised to reveal. That means that, while the conspiracy has more credibility, its goal posts are harder to move.
This is already making it hard to keep the conspiracy-pilled MAGAs happy. Early on, Bondi gave a bunch of Q influencers copies of, "the Epstien files," and when it turned out to be a bunch of information that had already been disclosed, they got pissed. They've also ripped Kash Patel and Dan Bongino apart for saying Epstien didn't kill himself and Bondi for claiming she already had the client lists. So far, it hasn't trickled up to Trump yet, but if he doesn't figure something out, it will eventually. The only thing more important to these people than Trump is the conspiracy they created around Trump, and if he doesn't find away to keep that alive, they will leave him.
I like your optimism but most MAGAts aren't conspiracy theorists. Sure, they will believe the conspiracy when it's regurgitated by Faux News and the like, but probably the vast majority don't even know what 4chan is or think that "he's a hacker" if they have heard of it.
Yes Conspiracy brained MAGAts have been focused on Epstein, but because they could use that information to 'own the libs', not because they actually give a fuck about children. If they did they wouldn't have spent the last 10 years trying to prop up a sexual predator and probable pedo.
Even if the Q Cult turns on Trump, it's unlikely that the right wing media MAGAts consume will report on it, or if they do they'll make it look like he's being attacked by evil degenerate 'hackers' online. It's not like it would be at all hard to make the case that 4chan is full of degenerates.
There will be a bit of whining from the more vocal faithful, as there always is, but I don't think that this time is the time they'll really turn against Trump when they're already 11+ years brainwashed and have accepted and *'art of the deal'*ed his backtracks and flip-flops so many dozens of times in the past.
It's a cult and Trump is the cult leader. They won't stick firm to their demand for the files, because the great orange one has told them that demand isn't important anymore and is giving them new things to focus on. Epstein's files aren't core to their identity, but MAGA and Trump are - one will give.
once MSMs stop reporting the magats will forget right away, or drump up another conspiracy, that they were silenced by the dems.
Or the most likely scenario, target the names other than Trump while in the same breath giving Trump a pass... Like they do with everything.
Prediction: someone on the right is going to assassinate Trump for covering up the Epstein files and the left will get blamed.
Its either admit they were fooled and reassess their critical though process and political choices, or pick someone to blame for tricking them and shoot at them - so yeah it's likely.
Gotta crack some eggs
🤞
Ill happily take the ~~credit~~ blame for this one.
I'd rather not. I'm gonna get it. They blame trans people for all political violence in this country these days. But jeez I'd really rather not take the blame. It won't go well for us.
How did they ever think he's not in the Epstein files? It's like thinking that the Covid-19 didn't start from Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Clever.
how does he manage to be the ugliest mug among drawings purposefully made to be ugly
"...to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them..."
Hey, that sounds really familiar!
Trump and Epstein had close ties without the files. There trail of evidence is sketchy without the files. Normal people don't need more to conclude Trump and Epstein shady ties. But here we are.