My best friend for 50 years has caught the virus: he's gone full MAGAT.

[lagomorph777]

We have talked once or twice a year in recent decades. He called yesterday, and I discovered he's suddenly gone full MAGAT. I gave him a piece of my mind. I'm afraid I'll have to unfriend him (in real life - because I don't do antisocial media like Falsebook and Twit).

I'm really bummed about this. I sure hope he's an outlier. Seems to be the opposite of the trend nationally.

[idziak4ever1234]

1. I'm sorry for you.

[CrispyQ]

2. So sorry to hear that, but I've seen it in my life, too.

I have seen one conservative relative and two non-political relatives go full rwnj. The non-political ones were really surprising. They read far right wing hate sites, listen to Fox news, and believe the most outrageous shit, it's embarrassing how stupid and gullible they've become. This is going to be the ugliest, most chaotic, and divisive election ever.

As a species, we landed the trifecta in the 21st century shit-show competition: global warming, COVID, and massive stupidity.

[Hortensis]

6. This mass social pathology has been FOSTERED.

A half century ago RW millionaires set out to move the nation farther right using new techniques developed by advertisers,which have become far more sophisticated and powerful since. The internet, supposed to free us, has been an enormous tool for subverting and corrupting people's beliefs and weaponizing whole populations.

And that's only one technique of corrupting our nation. They've also infiltrated hard-right, and eventually extremist, ideology into colleges and universities through donations, and then placed those grads into positions of influence in virtually every field, media, government service, law, media, business, law, media, etc.

Bottom line, conservative weaknesses have been manipulated to turn them into the worst political versions of themselves, and these days they're given only bad candidates to elect to be bad leaders who'll lead them further over the cliff.

They're naturally our most dependable followers, though, and under good conservative leadership they could be better, more normal versions of themselves. Good conservative leaders have been purged from their national party, though, and those of many red states.

[Midnight Writer]

9. Exactly. People are being exploited by modern techniques to play to their personality traits.

And now, with data from Facebook and other sources, they have built profiles of citizens by mapping over 2000 parameters.

They know all about us. They have our likes, dislikes, purchasing patterns. They have lists of our connections, our beliefs, our Hot Buttons.

The Power Elite, the American Oligarchs who have looted our nation, have no qualms against using this information to their own benefit.

And they do so very efficiently.

[Hortensis]

10. Those "hot buttons" all right. Wired to the gut, not the brain.

We're all vulnerable to various degrees. Interestingly, though, scientists have discovered that liberal- and conservative-wired brains process information in different order/directions.

Unlike liberal brains, conservatives send new input first for emotional and potential fight or fright response, before continuing on for cognitive evaluation. That may have been a higher functioning when our position in the food chain wasn't so secure, but these days a disastrous weakness exploited by those preying on our minds.

[Bluesaph]

3. I'm afraid it's a trend

Several previously democratic friends drank the koolaide.

They watch these videos like The Fall of the Cabal. They spot little bits of truth in them and then go full boar MAGAT!

I’m afraid it’s spreading.

[uponit7771]

4. There's a lot of this going around

[mahina]

5. Certainly more going the other way

People are waking the f up at speed, in my life anyway.

[hunter]

7. I'm an asshole so I'd tell him to get his head examined.

This virus is known to cause strokes that may have damaged his reasoning ability.

When COVID-19 patients began flooding emergency departments at New York hospitals in March, doctors saw some unusual cases of stroke.

"We had a young woman in her early 30s who came in with a profound stroke, the kind of stroke that leaves someone permanently paralyzed and possibly unable to survive," says Dr. J. Mocco, a professor of neurosurgery and director of the cerebrovascular center at Mount Sinai Health System in New York.

Her stroke was caused by a blood clot that was restricting blood flow to the right side of her brain. The young woman had none of the usual risk factors for stroke. But she tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID -19.

--more--

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/29/847917017/doctors-link-covid-19-to-potentially-deadly-blood-clots-and-strokes

[lagomorph777]

8. I meant "virus" figuratively but I wonder whether he's "asymptomatic" ...

except for the RWNJ insanity...?

[Hortensis]

11. He's almost certainly been hiding it, Lago. This is a period

of high threat to their beliefs, self images, goals, and conservatives are doubling down on their commitment. It sounds like that didn't lead him to attack you, though. So many of them are that. if not, perhaps he really doesn't want to lose you as a friend.

I hope eventually you can go on.

[lagomorph777]

12. He sounded quite uncomfortable when I laid into him.

If he ever calls and apologizes for his break with reality, I'll talk to him. But not before.

In the mean time, I'll be fine.

[Hortensis]

15. Good. :)

[Brainfodder]

13. I'd just tell them to call ya when they realize they were wrong, and not before then and...

you expect an apology for them being a complete political dumb ass and trying to spread it! *click*

[lagomorph777]

14. Exactly right.

That's my plan.