I agree on all points, and you laid them out well. For all her faults – and they are real and many – MTG was one of only four Rs to cross the aisle for legislation releasing the Epstein files, which is to say that she was willing to stand up for something outside the orange leader’s demands.
And people outside the US don’t get, and I mean have ZERO idea, how we have had propaganda BLASTED at us from all corners 24/7/365 for over a decade, even as successive courts have shot down the idea that anything labeled “news” need contain factual, verifiable information and adhere to some minimal level of journalistic standards. I have observed for myself that it it literally not possible to sit in a waiting room in this country that is not playing some form of right-wing political “infotainment” propaganda. You wanna get your teeth done? Well, you’re gonna have to listen to that shit until the dentist is ready for you – and even he might have it going in his treatment room. It’s bad.
Combine that with rural and small communities where that propaganda has been extended to churches and any other places of community, and it’s a high price to pay for an individual to break with that crowd: they can lose their families, their church, their friends over it, even when there are no other differences between them.
Yet the breaks are happening, and I am grateful. I’m with you. We HAVE to welcome them back, those who are just misled and want to return to the side of sanity. And we have to do it not only for them, but literally for the survival of our country.
All of this is Authoritarianism 101: divide the people, create in-groups and out-groups and set them against each other.
If we do not heed the warnings of history, if the sane among us insist on massaging our own egos because of the offenses delivered and refuse to welcome back the penitent, we are just collaborating with the authoritarians in a different way that feels good to us, but is equally as wrong and as misled.
We Americans are all Americans. I’m not going to get sucked into the hole of hating other Americans, just for reasons that feel better to my ego. Aside from those Americans who are complicit, who absolutely knew all along that the whole thing is and always was a scam, I won’t hate anyone who wants to come in from the cold. It takes guts – real courage and honesty and humility – to be able to say, “I was wrong.” Speaking personally, any American who comes that far I will welcome with open arms.
Not sure MTG is there yet, though. She’s complaining about the superficials of receiving threats that she was all to happy to stoke the flames of herself (Parkland school shooting survivors, for example) and I have not heard anything more honest than that from her. Even so, the enemy of my enemy and all that . . . I guess time will tell how legit her U-turn is.
I agree on all points, and you laid them out well. For all her faults – and they are real and many – MTG was one of only four Rs to cross the aisle for legislation releasing the Epstein files, which is to say that she was willing to stand up for something outside the orange leader’s demands.
And people outside the US don’t get, and I mean have ZERO idea, how we have had propaganda BLASTED at us from all corners 24/7/365 for over a decade, even as successive courts have shot down the idea that anything labeled “news” need contain factual, verifiable information and adhere to some minimal level of journalistic standards. I have observed for myself that it it literally not possible to sit in a waiting room in this country that is not playing some form of right-wing political “infotainment” propaganda. You wanna get your teeth done? Well, you’re gonna have to listen to that shit until the dentist is ready for you – and even he might have it going in his treatment room. It’s bad.
Combine that with rural and small communities where that propaganda has been extended to churches and any other places of community, and it’s a high price to pay for an individual to break with that crowd: they can lose their families, their church, their friends over it, even when there are no other differences between them.
Yet the breaks are happening, and I am grateful. I’m with you. We HAVE to welcome them back, those who are just misled and want to return to the side of sanity. And we have to do it not only for them, but literally for the survival of our country.
All of this is Authoritarianism 101: divide the people, create in-groups and out-groups and set them against each other.
If we do not heed the warnings of history, if the sane among us insist on massaging our own egos because of the offenses delivered and refuse to welcome back the penitent, we are just collaborating with the authoritarians in a different way that feels good to us, but is equally as wrong and as misled.
We Americans are all Americans. I’m not going to get sucked into the hole of hating other Americans, just for reasons that feel better to my ego. Aside from those Americans who are complicit, who absolutely knew all along that the whole thing is and always was a scam, I won’t hate anyone who wants to come in from the cold. It takes guts – real courage and honesty and humility – to be able to say, “I was wrong.” Speaking personally, any American who comes that far I will welcome with open arms.
Not sure MTG is there yet, though. She’s complaining about the superficials of receiving threats that she was all to happy to stoke the flames of herself (Parkland school shooting survivors, for example) and I have not heard anything more honest than that from her. Even so, the enemy of my enemy and all that . . . I guess time will tell how legit her U-turn is.