The MAGA Telephone Game of Facts
I had a funeral to attend this past week out of state. That meant that I would be deep in the heart of rural MAGA-land once again. I stayed with my favorite sister and her husband as I have done for years. I have known them as a couple since I was about 15. My wife and I have spent more time with them than any other people in my family. I went off to college and they stayed pretty much in the same area their entire lives. One a high graduate and one a high school dropout (pregnant at 17).
The funeral was for my oldest siblings wife who died of COPD - God bless her soul. She was a good person and we wanted to be there to support my brother who I rarely get to see. I like him very much but he is a very private person. He distanced himself from the family many years ago. Good person though.
After spending about 48 hours with my sister and her husband, my wife and I asked to be dropped off at the airport several hours early ostensibly so that they would have the rest of their day free as they had been our main source of transportation. However, the real reason for the early drop off was because we realized at one point that we no longer knew who they were. It wasn't just their usual fighting and bickering and yelling at each other over absolutely nothing, it was something entirely manufactured by Fox News and their network of fellow MAGA adherents. I slowly realized that there was something different going on this time.
Knowing that we were no Trump supporters in any way, my brother-in-law would inevitably bring something up like Mike Lindell and how he had all the proof that the election was rigged and that Trump was going to be reinstated. When I would try to explain that Lindell's own IT "expert" said that his data was gibberish, he would get so angry and turn red and scream to the point that I thought his heart would give out. Knowing his heart problems, I would just say to him that he was 100% right and I was 100% wrong just to calm him down. Not worth killing him over this nonsense.
While talking to him and my sister I realized something. They are literally playing the telephone game with facts. One MAGA supporters hears a story on Fox or from a friend and passes it along to the next friend and so on until what you get in the end is nothing like the original lie but has grown into a Frankenstein lie that can't be debunked because it is so far from reality.
When he told me that Mike Lindell was offering a million dollars for proof of election fraud, I thought wait a minute, wasn't it 5 million dollars and wasn't it for anyone that could disprove his allegations of voter fraud and didn't Lindell already withdraw that offer? You can see how the telephone game works with these people. You have to correct their talking points before you can even dispute them with actual facts. That's way too many layers for these people. I doubt that I will ever visit these relative a gain. I will drift away and maybe attend their funeral in the near future. I really can't say at this point.
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