Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

But why did they put their faith in a celebrity grotesque to transform the nation?

Because you think he is grotesque

The magical thinking stuff goes back to norman vincent peale, the preacher at the church Trump attended growing up. Maybe the underlying illness behind all this—I mean America—is the notion that one is special and deserves to have their fantasies realized. You can’t really be an ethical human being if you’re a narcissist.

The lesson I'm taking away from this is that if you promise something, no matter what it is or how improbable it is that you or anyone else would be able to deliver it, there will be people who will believe you, because they want to. Trump could reach an unusual number of people with his promises because he had massive celebrity and the carefully constructed public image of an authority figure who could get things done.

I reckon that looking for a cause or looking for "the person" who triggers this stuff is misguided and there's too much of it in your questions treesh.

You're more than smart enough to know that trump doesnt rise to attention let alone power in an unsick society. A society with the symptoms displayed by the US since at least the tea party gained traction finds their trump, the more grotesque an example of a rejection of what a leader should be in the accepted incumbent regime that the malcontent rump are disaffected with the better

xp anvil otm

Trumps being hoisted in mockery of ordinary progress is mere evidence of his own inadequacy

Because you think he is grotesque

― anvil, Tuesday, January 12, 2021 3:40 PM (twenty seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean he is literally a grotesque, a cartoon, a self-parody. I feel like he knew this back when he was inventing his public persona in the 80s.

the notion that one is special and deserves to have their fantasies realized

This is a huge one, yeah. I don't think Trump-style fascism would work as well in more collectivist countries. Another kind of grifter is (and was) needed.

Maybe the underlying illness behind all this—I mean America—is the notion that one is special and deserves to have their fantasies realized. You can’t really be an ethical human being if you’re a narcissist.

Yes! 100% OTM

This isn't anything recent

Right,conspiracy theories aren't anything recent, but they sure seem to have recently grown in popularity. I think a lot of that is due to the internet, but the psychologist in me suspects the sense of powerlessness and ignorance, the feeling of being such a small thing in a big, uncaring complex modern world is driving it to some degree as well. The nature of the conspiracies lead me to think this ie nearly all involve explaining the true nature, controlling forces, and plot of global human society/economy. I This isn't anything recent def may be wrong!

I mean he is literally a grotesque, a cartoon, a self-parody. I feel like he knew this back when he was inventing his public persona in the 80s.

You look down on them, you look down on him.

You think you're saying "why do they think he is one of them he's rich he doesn't care about them"

You're actually saying "he is one of them".

No there is certainly something to this. I think the internet also collapses space and time in a way that is really disorienting to people. Metanarratives about how it all works can feel more real to people than the world in front of them, their communities, their families (if they’re lucky enough to have them).

Why am I the avatar of elite disdain all of a sudden? I agree that his followers like trump because they believe he is hated by the same people who hate them—the snobs. But i try not to be part of that.

I mean he is literally a grotesque, a cartoon, a self-parody.

So was Mussolini.

Conspiracy theorists also share a dystopian view of the ultimate endpoint of human nature that is deeply corrosive to whatever version of a soul one might believe in, and ofc taken to extremes is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Never mind that, have you checked the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland lately?

(xp)

Absolutely. This is a bitter vision of the world—the redemption promised by the storm isn’t a gentle one, there’s no redemption there

Xp

What’s really crazy is that many of them are longing for an america they never lived in. According to the q theory kennedy was the last “real” american president before the takeover of the cabal. The woman who was shot this weekend was born over two decades after kennedy’s assassination—the america she wants to restore is just a myth to her, like eden, all she’s known is the “fallen world” in her view

You reject a world that doesn't suit you if you have no other coping tools i guess

Anyone here heard about this "plandemic" the fake news dreamed up? Every time they want to cow the sheeple they up the daily death toll by 20%. It's all just big numbers and then even bigger numbers. No truth in it is what I hear people are saying.

longing for an america they never lived in.

myths of a golden era in the past have been around since the Garden of Eden

Seriously, that's the least 'crazy' thing about QAnon.

Yeah but there have been better and worse answers to the question of how to get back there. This is a worse one.

It's much easier to believe that the past was a golden a era if you weren't alive for it. Or if you were a child (with a decent childhood). It's no coincidence that the "good old days" of the 50s were when boomers were kids.

I used to think these reactionaries could be flipped by a Bernie type who emphasized a return to the “american dream” of prosperity, opportunity and stability. (Which never really existed, but in the decades of the postwar boom felt more attainable for white blue collar workers). Such a message need not be divisive or racist or mystical or even nostalgic—it could be tailored to an inclusive vision of a new working class that was disproportionally black and latino and more in service Industries than industrial jobs.

But now i think these people aren’t interested at all in material stability. They want transcendence, meaning, all the things one shouldn’t look for in politics, which is why racial grievance is more interesting to them than like shoring yo social security for a new generation. It’s very fucked and it honestly seems like this is a nation of spoiled children.

Millennials, my cohort, are open to social democracy as seen in the rise of the squad and others. The future lies with them but they’re always going to have to fight these people it seems—I don’t think we can ever have a unifying class politics.

I don't think we should expect millennials to maintain their core beliefs over the next few decades.

I don’t see us turning right unless we actually acquire savings and assetts

Maybe this kind of Q Anon fantasyland right, I guess. No one is immune because it’s not related to material reality.

Don't jinx it… a couple of decades is a long time.

xp yes, that's what I had in mind.

If that stuff grows though the country is fucked.

You'd be amazed trís a mhic but ppl do, yknow

do they want transcendence or do they want whiteness which does give them significant material / psychological benefits

I still think a leftish national populism could "work" on some of these people if it ever managed to cut through the noise but it couldn't ever not be racist (see: UK 2015-2020) because in order to be inclusive of such a heterogenous working class it would have to downplay (reproduce) the divisions that exist within the class and across (unquestionable) national borders

this is very much a problem within millennial socialism which is sadly still the most convincing alternative to this mess (liberals seem to believe in absolutely nothing these days)

Millennials, my cohort, are open to social democracy as seen in the rise of the squad

This framing irritates me because half the Squad (Pressley, Tlaib) are Gen X, who were previously thought to be the generation who would usher in a wave of progressive change and well... we are now here

Well, idk

Point taken. As is left’s. I think the key thing is for the left to act locally a put people in local government where they can work with constituencies united by geography as well as class interest. Starting at the top with a national candidate didn’t work—it fractured due to these competing interests. The left didn’t have any real roots. That’s my theory anyway

People don’t have local newspapers or unions anymore though mostly so this bottom up strategy will also be a struggle

In other words, solving puzzles is extremely rewarding from a biochemical standpoint and the thoughts we gain from them are special to us.

This part of the article is something I've been thinking about since it was used as a plot device in some novel I read years ago - the villain throws people off the track by planting false information but well hidden as though it's not meant to be found *and also* planting more easily disprovable false information weakly pointing to the opposite effect - the 'investigators' need to work harder and smarter to find the hidden info and therefore place far more value in it and are less inclined to disregard it whatever else happens. (It's not really akin to the 'the baddie is somehow always one step ahead and knew we'd do xyz so was constantly doing things to their detriment just to trick us' that seems to form the basis of loads of detective/spy tv shows)

Yeah that bit is cool. I'd love to hear more about how/why discovered (or "discovered") ideas are particularly special.

I’ve been reading (listening to) The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, written in the Bush years & shows its age a bit as well as being a bit too smug. Still useful to understand why pointing out their hypocrisies or destroying them with facts & logic (TM) will never ever ever ever work — their minds just don’t think like that. It’s all, 100%, about tribal loyalty. No real revelations in the book but it’s crystallized some of my recent thoughts & concerns.

this is from September 2020 and was probably posted here already (can't find it but am on my phone) -
https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

Facts and logic will always be a dead end. As you say its now about what is said, its about who says it. But even within that, it's about how its said. But also why start from the area of disagreement instead of starting out with establishing where there's consensus, and build up from there. Building up is always easier than knocking down. Stories are always better than facts

But really, we all know people to varying degrees who have this. If you want to know, just ask them! But you have to remove not just any judgement, but anything at all, if there is anything to react to, they'll go there instead. There has to be nothing to react to for it to work. This is good to do anyway, with anyone

I'd love to hear more about how/why discovered (or "discovered") ideas are particularly special.

In general, learning in general works better this way because the dots are connected and cemented in a way that works for that particular person. Again, stories are more memorable than facts, less abstract, more connecting. Isn't this the case with following online tutorials vs having to work something out where the tutorial doesn't quite fit?

The Game design article is really good

Dr Bob Altemeyer is writing an updated book with John Dean

So, I'm not terribly close to my extended family, not for any particular reason, just that we're not a terribly sentimental bunch. My dad (who died back in 2014) grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood, the child of a bartender and a homemaker; he and his brother (my uncle) were the first to go to college. Needless to say, my dad harbored some reactionary (at best) conservative tendencies his whole life, even if he usually kept them to himself, but he was a smart guy and far from doctrinaire, so was always at least open to debate and discussion. His brother (my uncle) and my aunt, on the other hand, apparently kept creeping farther and farther to the right, a transition I never really witnessed, because they live somewhere else and I never interact with them, though my mom told me she more or less had to cut them off in recent years. Now, I always suspected one of my uncle's daughters, my first cousin, to at least lean Republican, but she stopped posting any remotely political stuff to social media years ago. Her sister, my other first cousin, isn't on social media at all, so I have no idea. But I just learned that cousin's husband, it seems, follows all these assholes on Instagram (extended Trump clan, NRA, etc.), which I find kind of shocking, since he's a nice, smart guy, but also makes me sort of assume my cousin must lean that way, too. Which is too bad and makes me kind of shocked and saddened that that entire side of my small extended family might be right wing assholes, which is ... weird. The entire other side of my family, on my mom's side (and my wife's own entire family), are lifelong liberals, which just goes to show there must be some sort of nature/nurture thing going on here. I kind of feel like my sister and I dodged a bullet having a dad that could have pushed his opinions but instead encouraged us to come to our own conclusions about stuff.

An acquaintance who was otherwise normal (if libertarian) up til now has been infected by brain worms after Twitter/etc. banned Trump.

He still hates Trump (seemingly) but the tech lords powers seem to have him ready to start stockpiling MREs.

i don't know which numb nut racist / right wing thread to put this on and i didn't want to spend a minute more searching tbh (bundy is not my friend).

this is honestly so fucking bizarre i can't make my brain go in any of these cursed directions

2. Bundy, who occupied a federal wildlife refuge by force in 2016, has created a new org called People's Rights

People's Rights wants to enable people to "call a militia like they’d call an Uber and stage a protest within minutes."https://t.co/GCzcMppofD

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 11, 2021

hear me out:

an uber .. for don't tread on me

the netflix of assholes