Have you ever felt surrounded, out-gunned, and overwhelmed by the loud insanity yelling over you constantly online, and think your head might explode? Have you ever wanted to just shut the world out, singing loudly, Lalalalalala with your fingers in your ears?
You are not alone, despite pandemic isolation making you wonder.
Life has not felt normal for about seven years now. Thank you, Trump, MAGA, QAnon, KKK, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, militiamen, white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, and just plain old GOP, the most dangerous organization in US, etc.
Our pandemic isolation, that has caused a lot of psychological and financial woes, could have been cut far shorter, with fewer deaths, and businesses and schools remaining open, if we hadn’t had such an influx of misinformation, disinformation, and crazy conspiracies. And thank you, anti-vaxxers, for bringing back polio, too, BTW. Gee. We missed it.
And now there is a new COVID variant for this winter, due to its mutating, also thanks to anti-vaxxers. We owe them so much. Dogs have to have all their shots before they can get together with other dogs. But, you can’t even explain that to that anti-information group.
I’ve read and heard a lot of the disinformation was Russian propaganda. Nothing Putin would rather see than US citizens dead from a virus, and/or at war with itself, to divide and conquer US. Putin has been spreading disinformation and fomenting division and violence in US, at least since the orange con man formally launched his campaign, June 16, 2015 on that escalator with his paid audience.
I want to blame the Trumpers for buying into the lies and conspiracies, and spreading them along with all their prejudices and hatred. Trump gave conspiracy cockroaches permission to come out of the woodwork and wreak their havoc.
It’s worse right now, of course, because it’s that voting time again. So much more propaganda and so many more lies are swirling about US in election season. So many loud and obnoxiously opinionated and ignorant folks are feeling their oats. And, too, again, there are probably a lot who are Russian bots.
The wrong-headed stuff I’ve been reading and hearing lately are staggering. They are projecting Trump’s worst attributes onto Biden. There is so much hatred of Biden online. None of the things that they accuse him of are true. But, they are true of Trump. Trump is the pedophile, sexual predator, con man criminal, and traitor the misinformed MAGA crowd says Biden is.
And you can’t make sense to any of the purveyors of this garbage. They yell over you. Republicans and Democrats used to be able to debate and argue in Congress, and go out for a beer after. The good old days. Now Dems need to wear Kevlar jackets to Congress.
And Republicans continue on the smear campaigns. The Neanderthal blonde with the voice of a Velociprator in Congress, told the orange con man’s mob at his last rally the other day that Democrats are killing Republicans. She lied and made up stories and they believed her. She was stirring up more violent insurrections. How is that legal? Free speech does not covering yelling fire in a theater. It should not cover trying to start a violent overthrow of the government.
Is MTG now just MT with the impending divorce? As Stephanie Miller said on her radio show when she heard about the divorce, “Her husband wants a Greene New Deal.” MT is a Q crazy and Q is eating her and all their brains.
They accuse Dems of drinking babies’ blood. I mean, really? Remember the pizza parlor in DC, with the basement where supposedly Hillary Clinton was sex trafficking children? Remember the man who took a gun into that pizza parlor to shoot them? The pizza parlor has no basement. Innocents out for pizza that night could have been killed due to these lunatics. How do deal with the gullible? Again, you can’t talk to them.
And sadly, I am related to some, not Q, but Evangelicals who think Biden is Satan and Trump is the second coming. I got tired of hitting a brick wall with them and being accused of only reading “fake news.” The more I reasoned and gave them facts and stats, the more I heard I was fake news.
So, I decided to read an article on deprogramming the brainwashed. Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong all along. I was creating an armed camp on the other side by disagreeing with them and trying to get them facts.
The article said we should pretend to understand and even be on their side. Get on their good side, so to speak. Contradicting and arguing with brainwashed subjects is spitting in the wind. One must get their trust, not get their hackles up. I’m not good at this.
But, after nearly losing family members and friends, (Well, I did lose a few along the way.), I decided to try the professionals’ advice. Get their confidence by agreeing with little things. And when you get them to let down some of their defenses, ask questions about stuff they believe. Using the Socratic method.
But, you need to ask questions in a way that does not sound like you are putting them down or belittling their beliefs. Not as easy as it sounds. Because when I hear or read the things they believe, I have to breathe deeply, and try to see things from their POV as to why they have accepted such outlandish ideas.
Sometimes they have some stuff right. Sometimes I have some stuff wrong. So, I figure I can start there and let them correct things I say and say, oh, I didn’t know that, or concede a point or two. Take them off guard and then ask them questions that may make them question what they have accepted as true. Then if you can get a little trust, gently throw in a few facts that they can check.
Maybe ask them questions that make them see why the other side is saying what they are saying, as in who is to gain from that? For instance, I have relatives who really believe Biden is corrupt and his family is a crime family. They think Trump is just misunderstood and has been attacked forever.
Where do you start with that? I used to give them titles and authors of books to read. They didn’t read them. They just said the authors were anti-Trump or they had Trump derangement syndrome. They tell me I have Trump derangement syndrome.
Gotta hand it to that con man. He’s good. They really believe his victimhood stories. They are the ones with Trump derangement syndrome, and it goes deep.
So, how does one get through that wall of brainwashing? Not easily. I’m a work in progress. I only read one article on deprogramming so far. And I’ve only begun work on one relative. But, I am hoping that I am learning that my tactics were not working at all, and I’m hoping that by adapting my tactics, language, behavior, etc., I can affect a change in their thinking.
I’ll keep you posted. This could take a century or two. The misinformation and disinformation is very ingrained. Between the pervasive Russian propaganda going around social media, and the grifter in chief having gotten so many people’s confidence, and still being allowed to hold rallies where he continues his big lies, and so many Republicans willing to repeat the lies to win elections with his ignorant base, it is a Sisyphean task.
I’ve never seen the nation so divided as it is now since the country was taken over by probably the best con man America has ever seen. There’s a new book out by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Divider, Trump in the White House 2017 - 2021. I haven’t read it, yet. I have lived it, though. Those years left me, and so many of us, with such angst and dismay about how far we have fallen, fearing for the future of democracy.
I should probably also read the book, Talking Across the Divide, How to Communicate with People You Disagree with and Maybe Change the World, by Justin Lee. Maybe that should be my next non-fiction book in my deprogramming education.
We saw the culmination of the divide and the lies on January 6, 2021, and the committee hearings are still going on. But, many of us fear that that insurrection was not the culmination, but rather a dress rehearsal for those who would overthrow our government and install a fascist dictator. Fingers crossed.
Jacosa Puella
October 3, 2022
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