Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
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.
And I'll bet that every one of them calls themself a Christian. Fucking joke religion that doesn't even follow its own tenets.
The big realisation, for me, was during Covid. I haven't recovered since. My view of people, in general, has changed forever.
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.
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.
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.
If you see pop-up shops selling Trump merch, they're often run by immigrants. Money is money.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
They had propagandists that used actual skilled artisans and people actually the "best" in their fields. Not drunk Uncle Jim and AI slop.
They were always here.
I escaped from the south to the coasts, but I always tried to warn people how vile the worst of us were.
Nobody coukd believe it, but remember, Hitler wrote about the south as the model for Germany in mein kampf, and the nazis copied the Nuremberg Laws from Jim crow almost verbatim.
They also took inspiration from the Catholic Church and the inquisition. The Church did ethnic cleansing long before the Nazis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Too weak to have any morals? I doubt it. They are just given permission to let their inner racism out.
That's too easy and excuses us from the work needed to rescue these people, content in our own moral superiority.
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.
Without a doubt this is the worst part. It was an immediate and irreversible swing from being an optimist who believes in the good of people to the complete opposite. I now believe humanity is fundamentally flawed and will destroy itself.
Watched too much Star Trek as a kid I guess.
I used to think similarly. The outright hatred, apathy, hostility... its sickening.
But I stand by Mr. Rogers' message. Look for the helpers.
Humanity has always grappled with its angels and demons. No fictional evil could ever compare to the cruelty and apathy of real humans being real shit. But despite all that, humans keep trying, and have always kept trying.
This isn't the worst it's ever been. This isn't even the worst it's been here. This isn't even the worst it's been, here, in living memory.
If you know someone over the age of 60, you know someone older than the civil rights act.
Even in a life where discrimination wasn't possible so much as it was fundamental in society, John Lewis and MLK Jr. still had faith in humanity. They still believed in its potential. They still had faith in the face of all of that hatred and ignorance. Faith that a better nation and a better future could be forged in their lifetimes.
And you know what? They were right.
Even today, with all of these threats to return to a time when America was "great"... even now, this is still a better nation than the America of 1963. That is undeniable truth, and it is in large part thanks to heroes like them.
If they could believe in the potential of humanity, I think it's arrogant of us to disagree.
I'll never recover, personally. The way my world-view was shattered by how many not just nameless strangers, but people I actually know and interact with, are the worst sort of hateful monsters.
My world is a different place now, and I don't think I'll ever feel the same.
It didn't take Trump to make this real for me.
I remember how our country treated Muslims after 9/11. I remember how we treated people with AIDS and HIV when I was little. Right now I'm watching Nazi salutes on national TV and no one's getting punched even though the room is packed with the supposed opposition, and the people who consider themselves progressive are unironically enjoying people's families inability to afford food staples.
You just know that guy on the left has a swastika tattoo somewhere on him.
It is escapable. It's propaganda. Show them different news and they are communists.
The worst part of the Trump era is the realization of just how few people don't fall for the divide and conquer manipulation.
"Basket of Deplorables" -- as I'm tired of repeating, Hilary was right.
