• HalfSalesman@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    Not just one of the worst but arguably the worst.

    One day Trump wont be president but his supporters will continue to be around after him. They’ll continue to make up 31% of the voter eligible population.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Living in a southern state that is solid red - it’s just difficult to exist. Much more than half of the people I interact with would not view me as a human being if I weren’t stealth about my transness - if I didn’t pass. These people voted against my rights and safety. I’m surrounded by people who think people like me are subhuman.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      And I’ll bet that every one of them calls themself a Christian. Fucking joke religion that doesn’t even follow its own tenets.

  • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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    23 hours ago

    The big realisation, for me, was during Covid. I haven’t recovered since. My view of people, in general, has changed forever.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    The best advice I can give to anyone regarding MAGAts is to take advantage of them.

    They’re letting us know how stupid they are. They’re marking themselves.

    So take advantage of them. Run some scams on them. They’ll fall for it. Don’t let Daddy Trump be the only one robbing them blind.

    • vividkitten@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      I thought about running a far-right merch store selling shirts and stickers with all of their shitty little half-brained slogans on them and donating all the profits to left-leaning organizations. Make them indirectly fund the people they’re trying to harm.

      • modus@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        If you see pop-up shops selling Trump merch, they’re often run by immigrants. Money is money.

      • GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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        5 hours ago

        My baby insanity wolf self already does a variation of this.

        When my conservative family and acquaintances give me gifts, I donate the gifts to charities or political groups that I know those folks would hate to support. Uncle Ben gives me a debit gift card? That’s going to Bernie Sanders and the ACLU. Cousin Jen gave me a digital photo frame? That’s getting sold and the money’s going to Planned Parenthood.

        The fact that I repeatedly tell these people not to give me any gifts and yet they still do is the icing on the cake.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Yup, and the pandemic showed us how stupid and ignorant they are, too.

    Leftists were hesitant with good reason and could be educated. These folks had no chance out of their own volition.

  • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    I already knew that there were plenty of awful people in the US since I studied the civil rights movement in school. Watching white people use fire hoses against Black people and white people being ok with that was a clue. For me the worst part has been watching my friends and family be brainwashed by the MAGA movement. People who I know to be otherwise wonderful people.

    For me it’s the answer to the zombie question. Do zombies have some part of their former personality still inside? The answer is definitely yes, and not some part, but 100% of their former selves.

    I’ll be talking to my Mom and she’ll be her old self again for a whole conversation. Like the last decade never happened. Then something political will come up and she’ll be gone again. And I’m stuck arguing with this zombie.

    Fox News has taken multiple family members and I’m sure many more friends. Unlike zombies there was no attack or infection. The brainwashing happened through radio, television, and social media. And unlike zombies there is hope, because people do get out of cults.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      18 hours ago

      My neighbour is a totally pleasant lady, but she believes the craziest shit. Like that Joe Biden was replaced by an actor, or that the autodoc (like from the movie Elysium) is real. Also just goes on about how beautiful the weather in Russia must be.

      We’re not even American ffs. She’s getting got by second hand, like, collateral propaganda.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        4 hours ago

        Honestly there could be really simple autodocs like the ones from the OG The Fallouts but if they do exist they are extremely simple prototypes that can probably stitch up a wound real good at best. Something I’ve noticed about conspiracy types be them creationists, Alien nuts, or maybe big foot enthusiasts is that they will take the plausible and make it implausible.

        Though some of them do accidentally break the programing because they either gain the requisite knowledge that starts to disprove the conspiracy element or because they are shown enough evidence to the contrary. A good example is Lore Lodge who used to be all in on bigfoot years ago but now think that it’s just wildmen, hermits, or crackheads.

        • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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          2 hours ago

          A good example is Lore Lodge who used to be all in on bigfoot years ago but now think that it’s just wildmen, hermits, or crackheads.

          I guess that’s bound to happen if you’re genuinely seeking knowledge.

  • peekingduck@lemm.ee
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    16 hours ago

    Honestly it’s not a bad thing to be able to see all these humans who are about as useful as smegma. See them, single them out, and when the time comes, well, you know lol……

  • improve7elephants@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    I like to look at it this way: There are not many bad people but weak people who fall for propaganda. The real bad people are just a few but those are the ones manipulating the weak.

    • wowwoweowza@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Glad you started this conversation. Allow me to just add: if we are to repair our republic and restore our constitution, we are going to have to find a common ground where these feeble minded followers can see that the world they reject is one that benefits them more than the dystopia they embrace.

      This is going to require restraint and tolerance on our part.

      • fantoozie@midwest.social
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        18 hours ago

        You don’t have to be stupid to follow an authoritarian. In fact, your characterization is a huge driving force in their radicalization. People with legitimate grievances watched globalization leave them in the dust in pursuit of a multicultural, pluralistic society. This left them vulnerable to narratives that espoused their “historical” superiority amongst other groups and their subsequent entitlement to world primacy. It’s more a function of a lack of diverse perspectives as a result of continued divestment from public services and goods, as well as geographical concentration of wealth and resources and other confounding variables.

        I agree that the world before Trump was marginally better for these voters than the alternative they’ve elected, but your heirarchical paradigm is condescending, reductive, simplistif, obnoxious, short-sighted, and exemplifies why so many people swung that way to begin with.

        Also, I can’t underestimate how incredibly dumb and dense you have to be to consider that the previous paradigm was good for anyone outside of the West who was not already someone of considerable financial means.

        • wowwoweowza@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Looks like one of us already has that common ground I was talking about in abundance. Thanks for leading the way.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I know a lot of people who are pissed off and struggling yet don’t blame minorities for their troubles while actively voting against their best interests at every possible turn. I also know people who, even if it took some time, realized that conservatism is actually fucking awful. I even know some conservatives who are just really stupid or bad at economic policy but who are genuinely good people(so long as he can see you or even just hear that you’re a friend of someone he knows my dad will give you his shirt, and he doesn’t have ill-intentions towards minorities, for example).

      Trump people are just fucking terrible. Their entire “ideology” is so rooted in being terrible that even if they were just weak morons sweat away by the propaganda I still cannot fathom how they weren’t tipped off by any of the thousands of moments which gave them the opportunity to reflect.

      • AlexLost@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        You nailed it though. They lack the ability for introspection and self reflection

      • cabillaud@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        All this is not new. It started with Reagan and I’m confident you will soon have it worst than Trump, given that your country managed to fall lower 3 times already.

        • Soup@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          I want to respond to this but it sounds so disconnected from what I said I think the best way to do so is to ask: Did you reply to the wrong person?

    • drcabbage@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      Too weak to have any morals? I doubt it. They are just given permission to let their inner racism out.

      • rivan@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        That’s too easy and excuses us from the work needed to rescue these people, content in our own moral superiority.

      • Fluke@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Tetraethyl Lead has a lot to answer for, but yes, a lot of people are just selfish arseholes.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    It’s also amazing just how incredibly tacky the MAGA movement is.

    The Nazis were evil, but at least they wore clothing designed by Hugo Boss. At least they borrowed from impressive looking Roman-style banners and eagles. They understood how to use colour, light and so-on to project strength. Even if you acknowledge that the Nazis were evil, at least you can sort of understand why the German people were drawn in.

    But the MAGA movement is so weak, so tacky. Even if I were somehow 100% aligned with their beliefs, I wouldn’t want to associate with them in public because their whole aesthetic is so embarrassing. I can’t understand how anybody can look at Trump and see competence, intelligence and strength. I also can’t understand how anybody can look at a typical MAGA rally and see anything other than a design scheme that would make even Wal*Mart cringe.

    • AlexLost@lemm.ee
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      20 hours ago

      They had propagandists that used actual skilled artisans and people actually the “best” in their fields. Not drunk Uncle Jim and AI slop.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        In modern day America, it seems like 99% of artists are anti-Trump. That isn’t really surprising because fascism is about conformity and falling in line, whereas art tends to be about self-expression and challenging norms. So, it seems like in the modern world, very few artists or other creative people are willing to work with the Trump admin. I wonder if back in Hitler and Mussolini’s time that wasn’t the case.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Oh, I’m so glad you pointed it out. I thought I was going nuts thinking they were gaudy and in poor taste and I wasn’t reading anyone saying it. 😂

      The Mar-a-Lago face alone, and the gaudy golden shoes, statues, chandeliers and shit. Yuck lol

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        I wouldn’t know how to look it up, but I really wonder what the average German or Italian who didn’t support the fascist governments thought about them. Did they see the governments as strong, organized and competent, but didn’t support them because they trampled on people’s rights, etc? Or were Mussolini and Hitler seen as clowns and their supporters as tacky idiots?

        As someone who wasn’t alive back then, and who doesn’t know anybody who was (at least not in those countries), it seems like they were probably seen as competent, powerful and organized. But, I really hope everyone knows that outside of the MAGA movement, they’re seen as tacky, incompetent, weak, stupid and embarrassing. I would hate for a historian in 2100 (assuming humanity survives long enough for that) to be writing about MAGA saying that their aesthetic was powerful and intimidating, when it’s much more reminiscent of a circus.

        • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          In the UK a fascist movement took off at the same time as Nazism. It failed because their bullying tactics didn’t wash with Brits, especially with what was going on in Germany. They were seen as the thugs they were, basically. Antifascists halted an attempted parade through the largely Jewish east end of London, “the Battle of Cable Street”. After that the govt banned paramilitary uniforms etc. Once the war started of course that was it - the party was proscribed and most fascists were interned for the duration.

          Meanwhile… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund