I stand by my conviction that the massive far-right propaganda machine that dominates social-media and television viewership is outright mind-control. It works less well on those who are educated, but it works well enough.
And then there’s people like my dad, a literal rocket scientist (retired now) who is a FOX News grandpa and a devoted MAGA loyalist. He should know better, but his media diet of fear, rage and culture bullshit is so sweet and tasty!
Consider the vectors in which the rot took hold and spoke to him. Usually it’s loneliness and lack of empathy for others, triggered by a tragic event in which he couldn’t understand. A lot of the maga sway resonates with anger and frustration. Like, I hate to say it, but it’s basically just the south park “dey tuk er jerbs” reaction, but on a global scale. In other words… He may have been a rocket scientist, but he’s… Apparently not well rounded in his intelligence. No worries, though, this is normal when you’re obsessive in a career. Unfortunately, this also indicates a low likely chance of remaining cognitive placidity for getting away from the magaism. The best thing you can do is to appeal to his humanity and get him away from the constant rhetoric and to start relying on his own personal judgement again. It’s unlikely you’ll recover him more than just grouchy old man with a conservative lean, but it’s heaps better than active maga. And all that assuming you still have that influence over him or will to even try. Going off your instance, though, I’m gonna guess not.
he probably grew up watching mostly fox, or had been since retiring. ive been reading on some posts on subs how thier children restrict thier parents fox, newsmax consumption because they are paying for cable. conservatives watch things that confirms thier biases and fears.
He was a contingency engineer during the Apollo missions. FOX News wasn’t around yet, but he was definitely a Reagan/Bush Republican and believed the welfare queen / DEA rhetoric.
Once FOX News pivoted from fair and balanced conservative news-casting to outright false propaganda, he absolutely got worse.
The weird thing is as a kid he taught me about news literacy, that you have to distill the facts of a story from multiple sources in order to see the bias of the news agency, and this was during a time that news media all came from big agencies that were motivated by profit. We didn’t yet have the independent news revolution that came with the internet.
I suspect now, FOX News is all he watches, since he sometimes leaks their talking points to me in conversations when they’re not appropriate. (Cult identity signalling. It’s a thing.)
It is useless to any sane person who doesn’t want people to fight each other.
I stand by my conviction that the massive far-right propaganda machine that dominates social-media and television viewership is outright mind-control. It works less well on those who are educated, but it works well enough.
And then there’s people like my dad, a literal rocket scientist (retired now) who is a FOX News grandpa and a devoted MAGA loyalist. He should know better, but his media diet of fear, rage and culture bullshit is so sweet and tasty!
Consider the vectors in which the rot took hold and spoke to him. Usually it’s loneliness and lack of empathy for others, triggered by a tragic event in which he couldn’t understand. A lot of the maga sway resonates with anger and frustration. Like, I hate to say it, but it’s basically just the south park “dey tuk er jerbs” reaction, but on a global scale. In other words… He may have been a rocket scientist, but he’s… Apparently not well rounded in his intelligence. No worries, though, this is normal when you’re obsessive in a career. Unfortunately, this also indicates a low likely chance of remaining cognitive placidity for getting away from the magaism. The best thing you can do is to appeal to his humanity and get him away from the constant rhetoric and to start relying on his own personal judgement again. It’s unlikely you’ll recover him more than just grouchy old man with a conservative lean, but it’s heaps better than active maga. And all that assuming you still have that influence over him or will to even try. Going off your instance, though, I’m gonna guess not.
Explains the right wing effort to undermine the humanity requirements for degrees.
he probably grew up watching mostly fox, or had been since retiring. ive been reading on some posts on subs how thier children restrict thier parents fox, newsmax consumption because they are paying for cable. conservatives watch things that confirms thier biases and fears.
He was a contingency engineer during the Apollo missions. FOX News wasn’t around yet, but he was definitely a Reagan/Bush Republican and believed the welfare queen / DEA rhetoric.
Once FOX News pivoted from fair and balanced conservative news-casting to outright false propaganda, he absolutely got worse.
The weird thing is as a kid he taught me about news literacy, that you have to distill the facts of a story from multiple sources in order to see the bias of the news agency, and this was during a time that news media all came from big agencies that were motivated by profit. We didn’t yet have the independent news revolution that came with the internet.
I suspect now, FOX News is all he watches, since he sometimes leaks their talking points to me in conversations when they’re not appropriate. (Cult identity signalling. It’s a thing.)