It is also as if Donald Trump is selling the idea to Americans that we need to get by with only 2 toys, "belt tightening", for who? So Billionaires can have even more money than everyday people?

We have such a massive set of literacy, comprehension, understanding problems in USA society that people don't even get that the whole reason people voted for Donald Trump's magical thinking is because the wealthiest 1% of the population has been getting a bigger and bigger part of the economy while everyday people who are not landlords, brand owners, corporation owners, asset holders - are getting mentally manipulated with "wealth televangelism" from above. The wealthiest people in the nation are hiring Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk to use media systems to educate everyday people to admire people like Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, Donald Trump as wealth-lords! The wealthy are punching down with their army of lawmakers, psychologists and psychiatrists to manipulate everyday people into handing over power and wealth!

Maybe leave the room while the adults are talking

I see how you go around on Lemmy saying Twitter-length insult comments on political discussions. An agent of mockery for Putin lovers.

Russia-watcher Catherine Fitzpatrick, who documents Kremlin disinformation for InterpreterMag .com, says just as Moscow uses vague Internet laws to encourage self-censorship, trolls inhibit informed debate by using crude dialogue to change "the climate of discussion." "If you show up at The Washington Post or New Republic sites, where there's an article that's critical of Russia, and you see that there are 200 comments that sound like they were written by 12-year-olds, then you just don't bother to comment," she says. "You don't participate. It's a way of just driving discussion away completely," she adds. "Those kinds of tactics are meant to stop democratic debate, and they work."

Play stupid games and win stupid prices.

He is playing Vlad Putin 8D Chess, not Donald Trump 1D Checkers. https://lemmy.world/post/27627662/16165977 This was all planned in 2013.

Introduction to the Kremlin media techniques of year 2014

1. Peter Pomerantsev September 9, 2014: Russia and the Menace of Unreality. How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare

2. Adam Curtis, BBC, December 31, 2014: On The "Contradictory Vaudeville" Of Post-Modern Politics - "What this film is going to suggest is that that defeatist response has become a central part of a new system of political control. And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time. Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years, but he has done it in a very new way."

3. Book reading from December 5, 2014 on the subject by Peter Pomerantsev

He has zero sense of humour: an inherent inability to recognize or invoke it.

There is a humor-like mocking of watching human beings suffer at the hands of government and business systems, "human tears", "liberal tears", "Ukraine tears", values of winning and defeating humanism with systems of power. Donald Trump is very motivated and works many hours to socially arrange this domination and damage over human persons that don't please his ego.

How do these Fox News hosts even sleep at night spouting this nonsense?

They LOL LOL amuse themselves to sleep at how awesome it is to bamboozle others ("liberal tears") and the egomania they feel.

1. Printed more than a decade ago: “In the twenty-first century the techniques of the political technologists have become centralized and systematized, coordinated out of the office of the presidential administration, where Surkov would sit behind a desk on which were phones bearing the names of all the “independent” party leaders, calling and directing them at any moment, day or night. The brilliance of this new type of authoritarianism is that instead of simply oppressing opposition, as had been the case with twentieth-century strains, it climbs inside all ideologies and movements, exploiting and rendering them absurd. One moment Surkov would fund civic forums and human rights NGOs, the next he would quietly support nationalist movements that accuse the NGOs of being tools of the West. With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern art exhibitions. The Kremlin’s idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime.” ― Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, year 2014

2. Theory four decades ago: “Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, year 1985

Mocking, mockery, absurd humor, surreal antics, wild press conferences, nonsensical mannerisms, amusement in the face of serious topics, banal governing, comedic leadership, entertaining Reality media stars.

Trump administration using Fox News

"If we have to burn down a few bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, we’re big boys. We dropped A-bombs on Japan, and now they’re our top ally in the Pacific."

“The first tool of authoritarian regimes is always informational control—both in the gathering of information on the public through surveillance and the filtration of information to the public through owned media. In its early days, the Internet seemed to pose a challenge to authoritarian regimes, but with the advent of social media, we are watching the construction of architectures that fulfill the needs of every authoritarian regime: surveillance and information control. Authoritarian movements are possible only when the general public becomes habituated to—and numbed by—a new normal.” ― Christopher Wylie, Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, year 2019

Republicans want people to be uneducated and stupid, because those are the type people who vote against their own best interests.

Exactly. And it isn't just USA Republicans. All the billionaires: It's the Russian Kremlin, and Elon Musk X is trying to conquer Canada, Panama, Greenland, Germany, get control of Ukraine, lord knows what else they are scheming. The entire group organized in December 2013 to come together to keep everyday people uneducated and stupid, which was only a month after November 2013 gender domination show

who vote against their own best interests

Yep. They want everyone like Elon Musk X media platform audience. Who ReTweet every hour of every day against their own interest because billionaires give them trickle-down memes and messages. Just like Rupert Murdoch's ($22.7 billion USD net worth, Murdoch family) HDTV addled audience. Poor uneducated ignorant population cheering on the wealth televangelism networks.

I think the USA has taken a deep dive in international standing since January 2025, and Reddit is a USA-flavored USA-centered content publisher in terms of front page community. Things were pretty anti-USA with all the support of Israel in 2024, but now in 2025 with Elon Musk being the center of all USA society attention every minute of every day, sites like Reddit are being turned away from (or people only reading to mock the USA) - where the HiveMind is extremely USA technology consumerism / technology lifestyle worship.

For example, I never witness anyone on Reddit criticize Apple Computers for funding Twitter / X in 2025. It's tech addiction as the primary religion on Reddit. And I think those outside the USA are sick of that machine lust / machine mind behavior of Elon Musk, Zuck, Amazon, etc.

“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992

But democratized tech doesn’t guarantee democratic outcomes.

Far from it. We really need a major confrontation of the audience, information warfare needs to be educated to every single person of every age. Continuing education about science and mythology needs to continue, as people continue to flock to fiction and abandon non-fiction in every area of life.

People just can't be serious about democracy and LOL and meme away their nation, the USA (where I live), it's been absolute crisis since 2014.

“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985

Conspiracy theorists: crickets

Agreed, FACTUAL EVIDENCE of a conspiracy theory is collected by reputable Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University and crickets. People flock to conspiracies with no evidence, but once one appears with authentic validation... nothing.

Troll accounts that had attempted to influence the US election had also been tweeting about vaccines, a study says. Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create "false equivalency", the study found. It examined thousands of tweets sent between 2014 and 2017. Vaccination was being used by trolls and sophisticated bots as a "wedge issue", said Mark Dredze from Johns Hopkins University. "A significant portion of the online discourse about vaccines may be generated by malicious actors with a range of hidden agendas," said David Broniatowski from George Washington University. The researchers reviewed more than 250 tweets about vaccination from accounts linked to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). In February the agency was named in a US indictment over alleged election meddling.

source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192

June 2023

This might help people ? Not sure if directly related.

I really ponder how anyone over age 21 can interpret it any other way. There are no supernatural books or stories. All kinds of people claim they hear the voice of god, it's the popularity of these specific stories that defines them as religions.

Science shows religion stories fit the pattern of schizophrenia: https://www.wnyc.org/story/dr-joseph-campbell-inward-journey-schizophrenia-and-mythology/