To remarkable degree, Republican messaging uses the precepts set out by Goebbels. One is to give people the thrill of fear, basically something to be outraged about that isn't real. Kind of like the fun of being scared at a horror movie. For literally decades, Republican messaging has consisted of telling people to be afraid of not-real while also telling them that the real is fake. So "They are going to take your guns!!!!" and "There is no climate change." War on Christmas, trans kids, white people are going to be a minority!!!! ect. From the safety of their armchairs, life becomes an exciting experience of being scared/outraged over imaginary threats, which is a reinforcing experience. It's fun. Allows the participant to feel virtuous and vicariously heroic by voting for the party that will smite the evil enemy without ever being in any real danger. Meanwhile, I'm sure that those people worry about real problems, but election after election they vote to fight the imaginary ones.
I think leading Dems are sort of hoping that the economy will be the real problem that breaks through this bullshit and gets enough voters to vote D to give the Dems some power in Congress and at the state level. Hence "kitchen table issues" versus R culture war bullshit. It worked in Sioux City at a special election.
On the other hand, Missouri, which is a hell hole of bad government, just keeps electing Republicans over and over.
I keep thinking of the Depression, when enough voters were suffering enough to give a reform politicians real power. Once the suffering receded to being mostly minorities, that desire for reform and improvement, that desire for government as a service for the common good, started losing elections to "I got mine, screw you, and besides you are just a (fill in the hater crap du jour)."
It is a privilege to be outraged all the time about imaginary shit.
2025-09-18 00:08:35
I think my difficulty is... MAGA is a fascist movement--literally. People who like Prager U, Kirk, or other haters are the moral equivalent of good Germans. And most of the good Germans were, mostly, nice people.
As noted above, they only learn from being hurt themselves and even then the commitment to their groupthink often remains. The core of that groupthink is disrespect for the rest of us.
Actually disrespect isn't a strong enough word. That friend I had who claimed that Dems supported infanticide, for example. How the hell could he justify believing something that awful about other people? The Republican party message is a fairy tale about how the good Republican party will save the good people from the existential threat presented by the rest of us. How are we an existential threat? Because we (fill in the blank with current hater memes). What unites the MAGAs isn't a set of shared values or support for certain policies; it's hate for the rest of us.
Just as racists make exceptions for someone they know, MAGAs make exceptions for someone they know. But that nice person who is a good neighbor, a long time friend, goes home and chooses to indulge in hate messaging that makes the rest of us potential targets of violence because of the false claim that we are an existential threat to real true good American values.
Would my neighbor Anne object if I got shot at a protest rally? Probably. Would she object if someone else did? Not if Ingraham or Watters or someone told her that the protester had it coming.
It's weird to chat and be friendly with someone who would has no trouble seeing people get hauled off to prison in El Salvador or FL, can rationalize women dying of miscarriages, supports voter suppression and gerrymandering, voted for the guy who instigated a violent attack on Congress and who is in fact an existential threat to representative government and fundamental human rights.
I guess I have to remember the line about "Forgive them, they know not what they do." But I sure as hell am not forgiving to the ones who get elected or get on Faux.
2025-09-17 19:18:16
Thank you for your thoughtful in depth response. I think my neighbor was really shocked by an attack on a Christian church--that definitely rattled her world view. I don't know if there's any change in her attitude toward Kirk because she has gone silent.
I have another rightwing friend that I met through the community of dog rescuers. Her instinct is to be a racist. She calls herself a conservative and is very responsive to Republican messages that trigger her tendency to "Other" everyone else. The one exception is that she dislikes intensely religious conservatives. She is a racist, not of the N-word type, but of the type that very readily believes any negative generality applied to all immigrants who aren't white.
The Republican party has built a community around "othering". My theory is that they are appealing to an instinctive behavior hardwired into humans from clear back in caveman days when "our" little band of cave people were in competition for territory and resources with "yours", a competition that could be put aside sometimes for interbreeding or cooperation on a hunt, but still an embedded sense that people like me are a group and people unlike me are inherently scary.
I've talked my dog rescue friend down from anti-immigrant hysteria several times but it takes very little for her to revert. She consumes Republican hate propaganda all the time.
To remarkable degree, Republican messaging uses the precepts set out by Goebbels. One is to give people the thrill of fear, basically something to be outraged about that isn't real. Kind of like the fun of being scared at a horror movie. For literally decades, Republican messaging has consisted of telling people to be afraid of not-real while also telling them that the real is fake. So "They are going to take your guns!!!!" and "There is no climate change." War on Christmas, trans kids, white people are going to be a minority!!!! ect. From the safety of their armchairs, life becomes an exciting experience of being scared/outraged over imaginary threats, which is a reinforcing experience. It's fun. Allows the participant to feel virtuous and vicariously heroic by voting for the party that will smite the evil enemy without ever being in any real danger. Meanwhile, I'm sure that those people worry about real problems, but election after election they vote to fight the imaginary ones.
I think leading Dems are sort of hoping that the economy will be the real problem that breaks through this bullshit and gets enough voters to vote D to give the Dems some power in Congress and at the state level. Hence "kitchen table issues" versus R culture war bullshit. It worked in Sioux City at a special election.
On the other hand, Missouri, which is a hell hole of bad government, just keeps electing Republicans over and over.
I keep thinking of the Depression, when enough voters were suffering enough to give a reform politicians real power. Once the suffering receded to being mostly minorities, that desire for reform and improvement, that desire for government as a service for the common good, started losing elections to "I got mine, screw you, and besides you are just a (fill in the hater crap du jour)."
It is a privilege to be outraged all the time about imaginary shit.
I think my difficulty is... MAGA is a fascist movement--literally. People who like Prager U, Kirk, or other haters are the moral equivalent of good Germans. And most of the good Germans were, mostly, nice people.
As noted above, they only learn from being hurt themselves and even then the commitment to their groupthink often remains. The core of that groupthink is disrespect for the rest of us.
Actually disrespect isn't a strong enough word. That friend I had who claimed that Dems supported infanticide, for example. How the hell could he justify believing something that awful about other people? The Republican party message is a fairy tale about how the good Republican party will save the good people from the existential threat presented by the rest of us. How are we an existential threat? Because we (fill in the blank with current hater memes). What unites the MAGAs isn't a set of shared values or support for certain policies; it's hate for the rest of us.
Just as racists make exceptions for someone they know, MAGAs make exceptions for someone they know. But that nice person who is a good neighbor, a long time friend, goes home and chooses to indulge in hate messaging that makes the rest of us potential targets of violence because of the false claim that we are an existential threat to real true good American values.
Would my neighbor Anne object if I got shot at a protest rally? Probably. Would she object if someone else did? Not if Ingraham or Watters or someone told her that the protester had it coming.
It's weird to chat and be friendly with someone who would has no trouble seeing people get hauled off to prison in El Salvador or FL, can rationalize women dying of miscarriages, supports voter suppression and gerrymandering, voted for the guy who instigated a violent attack on Congress and who is in fact an existential threat to representative government and fundamental human rights.
I guess I have to remember the line about "Forgive them, they know not what they do." But I sure as hell am not forgiving to the ones who get elected or get on Faux.
Thank you for your thoughtful in depth response. I think my neighbor was really shocked by an attack on a Christian church--that definitely rattled her world view. I don't know if there's any change in her attitude toward Kirk because she has gone silent.
I have another rightwing friend that I met through the community of dog rescuers. Her instinct is to be a racist. She calls herself a conservative and is very responsive to Republican messages that trigger her tendency to "Other" everyone else. The one exception is that she dislikes intensely religious conservatives. She is a racist, not of the N-word type, but of the type that very readily believes any negative generality applied to all immigrants who aren't white.
The Republican party has built a community around "othering". My theory is that they are appealing to an instinctive behavior hardwired into humans from clear back in caveman days when "our" little band of cave people were in competition for territory and resources with "yours", a competition that could be put aside sometimes for interbreeding or cooperation on a hunt, but still an embedded sense that people like me are a group and people unlike me are inherently scary.
I've talked my dog rescue friend down from anti-immigrant hysteria several times but it takes very little for her to revert. She consumes Republican hate propaganda all the time.