You know that thing called "Locked-in Syndrome"?

[intrepidity]

That's the best comparison I can come up with for how it feels to be so well-informed within DU (eg, wrt 2016, McGonigal, etc) yet watching helplessly as the world burns down around us (metaphorically as well as literally).

Even when I am speaking irl (eg, with a magat) it still feels, functionally, like I'm frantically waving my hands in front of their face, trying to get their attention, but nothing works.

Intellectually, I recognize that this, too, could be a result of "active measures" whose goal is to instill such feelings of helplessness.

Know what I mean?

[apnu]

1. I do, but remember the MAGA is a small population

There aren't many of them. But the Internet gives them a volume that is louder than they actually are. Social Media has become the microphone, it has evolved into the perfect megaphone for fringe anything.

They hold power in the Republican party because the party is too weak to stand up to the crazy. Recall the Obama years and the Tea Party, they buckled to that astro-turf. Then it got soaked in Russian Oligarch money, example: remember they compared how manly Putin is to Obama. Now Trump seized the attention of that same lot. This cowardice has been going on for a long time.

IMO, there are only a few options to thwart this, all of which are out of my control.

a) Democrats get aligned and give a good, consistent, message to the American people as a counter proposal to MAGA. This has to appeal, strongly, with Independents. Between the Democratic bases and a good showing form indys, the whole Republican party is sidelined.

b) Democrats form alliances with non-MAGA Republicans. In short, help the coward Republicans with their courage problem.

c) Some combination of a and b.

[secondwind]

2. Makes sense to me....

[jaxexpat]

17. a) is a winner!

A consistent and straightforward recitation of problems, their solutions and what you, the listener, can do to help, VOTE.

It was Bill Clinton's method an it worked. It worked so well it took the "conservatives" a long soul-searching walk in the wilderness to accept Naziism as their path to salvation.
They discovered:
they had no soul
lies are great at countering truth
investing in Rupert Murdock can save their sorry asses

[Hortensis]

31. Right. And get a better, comprehensive perspective on the situation.

The phrase "the world's burning down" could be a huge clue that one is overdue.

[mucifer]

3. Yes I stopped watching Rachel Maddow because

It was for so long making me feel there would be Justice and the general public would soon know what we did.

Now it seems the general public believes everyone steals classified documents so no big deal. And the insurrection was a while ago and so it’s just time to move on.

☹️

[intrepidity]

4. I mean, the McGonigal stuff happened in 2016-18

And while we didn't know his specific identity, we at DU were painfully aware of all that stuff--Manafort, Deripaska, etc--yet DOJ is *finally* (apparently) done with the i's and t's on that *one* case. Sigh.

[mucifer]

13. Every day so much proof of corruption and

I just kept thinking republicans would pay for their evil ways. Actually under bush too I thought starting a war with lies was you know a bad thing and once dems were in charge those responsible would pay. Oy vey nothing. Nada.

I mean isn’t bush starting a war with lies kinda Similar to what putin is doing now in Ukraine??

[Lonestarblue]

18. Also under Bush, emails relating to the run-up to the Iraq War were stored on a private RNC server.

Karl Rove had them deleted when Congress demanded they be turned over. News articles said there were many thousands that were illegally deleted. Nothing happened to Rove or Republicans. In contrast, Hillary was found to have three emails on her server, none with top-secret classification, and she was excoriated by the FBI and the media. Trump administration officials also used private servers. Nothing was done about it. The FBI and the DOJ has long favored Republicans. I’m not sure that has changed.

[FoxNewsSucks]

19. IOKIYAR

And nothing has changed. What media covers/ignores, and how, proves that.

[gab13by13]

24. It wasn't DOJ who discovered McGonigal

McGonigal's ex-wife turned him in.

[intrepidity]

25. Gah! So much worse.

We are broken.

[FakeNoose]

32. Ahem ... it was the ex-girlfriend - he dumped her, then she found out he's already married

Daily Beast link: https://www.thedailybeast.com/jilted-ex-says-she-tipped-off-fbi-to-charles-mcgonigal-top-official-accused-of-helping-russia

"Enraged Ex-Lover Tipped Off FBI to Top Official Accused of Helping Russia"

She gave a tip on McGonigle's sneaking around, taking money from the Russians etc., to the FBI in 2018 and they ignored it for 3 years.

[underpants]

5. John Carpenters 1988 "They Live" was about this. The Reagan years really.

It started Roddie Piper - a pro wrestler at the height of his popularity.


Here’s a good summary I found.

Nada (Roddy Piper), a wanderer without meaning in his life, discovers a pair of sunglasses capable of showing the world the way it truly is. As he walks the streets of Los Angeles, Nada notices that both the media and the government are comprised of subliminal messages meant to keep the population subdued, and that most of the social elite are skull-faced aliens bent on world domination. With this shocking discovery, Nada fights to free humanity from the mind-controlling aliens.

[lambchopp59]

6. That dystopian vision wasn't supposed to be prophetic.

But if we manage to knock out Fox Noise's grip on the zombie population they've bamboozled, allow them to realize what monsters they've been supporting, I won't complain.

[underpants]

10. It was supposed to be observational

and considering that every wrestling fan that I know saw it...it didn’t take hold. It was a 94 minute film (remember those?) drown out by the media’s adoration for all things Reagan.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. Not just Faux

There was a breaking news banner on my iPad this morning that says this -

NBC News Poll
Americans say they were equally concerned about Biden's and Trump's handling of classified documents

I guarantee that the vast majority of "Americans" don't give a shit about "classified documents". They are just not into "politics".

As long as all of the M$M participate in the propaganda noise machine, they will have an iron grip on what they project is "reality" through the "fiction" that they manufacture. Of course the NBC "poll" conclusion for the 2022 election was a complete fuck-up trying to attempt to correct their horse race nonsense, so there's is that.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

35. 6 giant conglomerates own most media; they approve of an oligarchy.

[Pluvious]

23. Neither was the farcical movie Idiocracy - and yet here we are nt.

[apnu]

7. "They Live" is art imitating life

And yes, it was a Reagan metaphor. Just like Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta" comic from the same era, but was about Margret Thatcher's UK.

We've been around long enough where we are seeing the repetition of history.

That "They Live" is relevant in the MAGA era shows that. But to add to my point, "V for Vendetta" was made into a movie during the Bush years, which was also a repetition of what we saw with Reagan and what we see now.

Art always imitates life. It exists to say something about us in the moment. Sucks that we keep reliving the "They Live" moment. And we all wish V would show up and save us from "the Finger"

[underpants]

9. Powerful forces

I see V masks at rightwing activities including Jan 6th and just shake my head. I realize the power of their never ending propaganda. People go from Fox n Friends to talk radio back to Fox in the evening and then culminate the day with Tucker.

“Better safe than sorry”. All the anti COVID crap is to show support for Trump but also shows how powerful their message is with an almost dependent audience. Better safe than sorry is a factor in thousands of decisions a person makes on a daily basis but they got their people to not just ignore it but actively counter it. That just amazes me even though it shouldn’t anymore.

[apnu]

14. Right-wingers in V masks... typical.

The Right-wing seems to never understand when something is aimed at them. I knew trade brokers who thought "Glengarry Glen Ross" (the film) was a sales metaphor and not the black-comedy that is is. They quoted Alec Baldwin's "Blake" like a gospel song. "winners drive home in the dark" and all that rot. It was surreal to witness.

MAGAs wearing Guy Fawkes masks is the same thing, you can see the point flying over their heads and they're grinning like idiots about it.

[FoxNewsSucks]

20. Not just Glengarry,

They believe that.

Even when they're the ones getting screwed over.

[apnu]

28. Yeah that one too.

They also missed the point of Wall St.

[intrepidity]

11. And AI is poised to reinforce this iterative nightmare

If only Hollywood et al could come up with some utopian future scenarios instead of the endless stream of dystopia, we might have a fighting chance.

"Teach your children well" should apply exponentially to AI.

[plimsoll]

12. It's not repeating if it never stopped.

It's a continual theme in the human psyche. Everyone is susceptible to suggestion to some degree, some people are easily deceived others take more effort. Social media allows people to share and magnify their misconceptions broadly. So the only real difference between now and then is that the threshold of infections is much lower because we're swimming in a sea of misconception.

And truth be told both siderism is a symptom of this. We think it media bias. It's the response the press has to horrendous stories, they look for comparisons and try to be "even handed." One side has figured out how to weaponize this wetware bug in the press.

[apnu]

16. This is a good point.

Informative, all should see this. Thank you.

[intrepidity]

8. Hah, yep, seen it. nt

[Baitball Blogger]

21. Are we being subjected to the Cassandra dilemma?

[lambchopp59]

22. Here's a knowledge nugget to help:

Outside of the moral/social spectrum that is so often utilized to smokescreen out real issues:
I get sick to death of the pseudo-science crap MAGA's try and hammer their star shapes through the rectangular holes with.

Next time one of then is claiming bullshit about electric cars:

Figures per EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalency statistics:

3,735,944.2 annual metric tons CO2 per coal fired power plant is reduced by 3,679 metric tons CO2/year/ wind turbine installed.

Take that, Robert Murray asslickers. It's math, vs. his corporate confabulations.
I keep the above on my notepad to plaster where some MAGAt starts up this "climate hoax" whining. Makes their argument sound like a tantrum. Young folks are reading this stuff: countering their crap with the "adult in the room" prose is important to their future!

[Sympthsical]

26. How both sides discuss McGonigal is incredibly interesting

I've read some of the articles here, some I found on my own, some that are being shared around on the Right.

Our side and the Right are not having even remotely the same conversation about the man. The sources and articles find different things to emphasize depending on which part of the story you're most interested in. The ones shared here are the ones that follow how we'd like to think of the situation. The ones shared on the other side are those more tailored to associating it all to the Russian collusion investigation that they think was fraudulent.

It is completely fascinating how you can take one person and have two radically different versions of events and the significance of each.

I haven't had the time to synthesize it all and form an opinion - that's why I haven't discussed it at all.

But you said that thing that kind of causes a twitch. "So well-informed within DU." This place is a band of information. The articles that make it here have to be from a certain perspective, have a narrative people will generally like, and will often leave out salient information that would lend itself to a more complete, objective view of what a situation is. Just in what gets emphasized and what gets mumbled over can make a big difference in understanding events.

So, you know. Always good to make sure one does have information. And always good to ask, "Ok, so what is being left out or unsaid here?" which I've found a useful approach.

On the plus side, both sides really, really seem to hate this guy. Just for very different narrative reasons.

[intrepidity]

29. I listen to scores of podcasts

Some that I would never even mention here (for various reasons), so while your point about info bubbles is certainly well taken, I feel mostly confident that it doesn't apply to me--at least in the DU-centric sense.

If anyrhing, I tend to err too far on the get-all-viewpoints spectrum, which likely stems from insatiable curiosity and a deep contrarian streak.

[Sympthsical]

30. That's awesome

I like how you mentioned "would never mention here."

Just the other day there was this Reason article I was reading that I thought was really, really, really interesting.

I wanted to discuss it here, then thought, "But probably not." There are a lot of topics I would love to see discussed where it's like, "Newp. Would not go down well." Some things are just not allowable. It would be instantly stricken.

But I'm like you. I read around so much. Not because I necessarily believe in the takes, but Justice William Brennan once talked about how he dealt with criticism of his ideas and how he took them to heart and read through them to see if, (super paraphrased) "In all that anger and conflict if there was not a small kernel of truth worth understanding."

I love that idea. Just dig and see what's going on there.

[gab13by13]

27. Too bad we didn't have a cable news network

that would put people like Thom Hartmann on at prime time.

[BannonsLiver]

33. No, I don't, frankly.

[Hortensis]

34. Sure do know what you mean. Mention of DU also brings to mind

a problem you may not have but I see in many posts and because the NYT just did yet another article on an ongoing problem, this one titled "The Left is Eating Itself: How Purity Politics Leave Progressive Power on the Table." Other aspects of a rather perfect storm of developments that's been crippling activist left organizations are in other articles. The Covid lockdown was apparently especially damaging to the functioning of activists.

In any case, what was I remembering seeing so often here is that hope from winning elections leads some to very unrealistic expectations, fueled in this era by encouragement to believe that anything short of shooting for the stars is throwing away great opportunity. Then when what we do achieve seems paltry to them compared to what they thought "could" have done, so that instead of a realistic degree of pride and satisfaction -- reinforcing commitment and belief in what they're doing, inappropriate anxiety and despair follow.

Not that these soar-and-crash swings whole LW movements are prone to are anything new, but a bigger, better understanding of what may genuinely be possible, or not, at a particular time saves people from getting caught up by them.