What? A bullet to the face? Are you fucking kidding me?!?! I’m well aware that MAGA has long ago agreed there are five lights (six, 17, none, whatever Trump wants), but have they really moved to the point where they think the rest of us are there too?
Actually, no, I know it doesn’t matter. I heard an interesting discussion on a community radio station out of Texas, of all places, yesterday. They were comparing MAGA messaging to improv theater. So much of it is sheer absurdism that often uses actual concerns to build a false narrative in order to panic their group (and gain some of those “moderates.”) Yes, they are saying things that are blatantly false to the people that care about such things!
For so many of those concerns, the group and even the general public, may not actually know much about the situations, but that just makes them easier to manipulate. We can expend a lot of energy trying to explain the lie, but the MAGA has already moved on to some other lie and frankly, the people that feel for it usually don’t care to hear about the truth because they’ve already been convinced that we’re the ones lying.
Immigrants are eating your pets! – Well, no, but some people, especially in small rural towns, are concerned or outright bigoted, and that kind of garbage has been urban legends for decades.
Schools are making your kids trans – Again, no, but your kids might be exposed to new ideas and concepts and may realize things about themselves that challenge their parents’ beliefs. (Similar to the idea that Covid numbers would have stopped going up if we’d stopped testing.)
So many examples …
