Ask Lemmy

My example is not the most terrible, but it's still so strange to think about...

20 years ago, before the Iraq War began, there was a bunch of fake intelligence, aluminum tubes and the CIA, and Colin Powell got on TV saying the war was necessary, but it was all a bunch of lies, and any smart informed American would have known. I did my part and protested and spoke with dozens of people trying to convince them that they were getting played. Unsuccessfully. That's not the strange part.

The strange part is that after the war started, it was revealed that all of the stated reasons were wrong. The facts came out, and my position was vindicated. Obviously it wasn't just me, but I'm focusing on my personal experience. So you might expect that some people would be embarrassed or upset with the government or the media. After all, that war killed large numbers of people. But no one that I spoke with before the war started ever showed signs that they understood that they had gotten it wrong. Why not make an about face, why not blame the media or the president? It would be so easy to find some integrity, but apparently it's easier to pretend that the past didn't happen.

COVID, MAGA, Q Anon, support by poor people for defunding of schools and infrastructure even as bridges collapse and water systems are becoming poisonous while supporting building new tactical nuclear weapons that the country doesn't even have a use for unless the intend to start nuking Mexico which would mean more refugees, not fewer....etc.

There are six companies that control a very large percentage of the media consumed by Americans. They are all mega corporations. The media Americans consume is mostly corporate propaganda, and it's invisible to us. It's the water we swim in.

Whatever opinions the oligarchs want us to have are dictated to us.

It is not a coincidence that all our national political races come down to a wire, that we are divided almost 50/50. We are being intentionally divided so that we don't unite and challenge the oligarchy.

My step brother got turned into a redhatter. Trying to stick magnets on my arm where I got the covid shot, the crazy pizza shop basement q thing, it's so bad it's like he has an earpiece in his ear being told what to say by rightwing media

I'm not allowed to say.

The COVID denial was strong in so many people. I remember some stories where people would go to the hospital with extremely low oxygen saturation, be told that they have COVID, and for them to go into a blind panic about getting microchipped or tortured by experimental government treatment, and immediately discharge themselves - only to drop dead pretty much immediately after they left.

My brother got fucked up psychologically from murdering Iraqis and Afghans and then came home and started "self-medicating" with meth while spending all day sitting in his house alone while listening to far-right propaganda like OAN. He tried to check himself in for treatment at the VA but they committed malpractice which nearly killed him, and he responded violently, which put a flag on his record making it difficult for him to get help in the future, while at the same time giving him a deep distrust of doctors. He was incredibly paranoid and accused everyone of being part of some sort of conspiracy against him and would make violent threats, veiled just enough to not be actionable. Eventually, he went over to someone's house with a gun, but the cops had been watching his house and they showed up, he pulled a gun on them and got shot in the arm, which he lost the use of, but he eventually recovered somewhat on account of getting off the meth while in jail. He's still a fascist and still listens to all the same shit, but he's at regular fascist levels of paranoid-schizophrenia now.

I don't give a shit about him but the pain he put my family through, a memory is burned into my mind of tears in my mother's eyes as she gets another text and it's another crisis and she can't enjoy even a single night out at dinner because she has to act like a 911 operator 24/7 - and whenever I think about any of the people responsible for the stupid, pointless wars that caused all this, Bush, Obama, Biden, Trump, and all the rest, I remember that we got off incredibly easy, that our suffering was absolutely nothing compared to the actual victims of our country's wanton slaughter and pointless wars of aggression, and I multiply the pain I felt in that moment and the trauma throughout the whole experience by a thousand, a hundred thousand, by as much as my mind is even capable of comprehending which is still only a tiny fraction of the reality, and I focus it into pure hatred directed towards all the people responsible for the wars.

People who build their entire identity around X.

X = Ammosexuals, MAGA, Muskrats, Gamers™, Christo-Facists, Corporate Bootlickers, etc.

I've met a couple Mormons that were reaaaally deep into the shit and talked and acted like robots just parroting all the religious nonsense they'd been fed. But to be fair, I've also met some cool Mormons who were less into it and generally just good people.

Ginni Thomas.