how did the older posters here avoid being radicalized by Faux and AM hate radio?

[karynnj]

158. I was already knowledgeable on government, economics and history and I was NOT disaffected

I think this might well be true for most of the older people here.

I think the main attraction for many people to Rush Limbaugh etc was that he validated their ideas, which was something people in real life around them didn't. I listened - almost like watching a car wreck - and quickly saw that after he spewed his preprogrammed lies - that were then echoed on Fox and by other talk radio, he opened the lines and people proposed really stupid solutions. His response was always something validating the idea and praising the caller for his (occasionally her) unusual perceptions.

The people he seemed to elevate were non college educated, angry, white men. Even if my education had not made me see his views as intentionally misleading propaganda, I would have had a hard time becoming a follower as I was a college educated, STEM woman in a job that a generation earlier would have gone to a white guy - one of the stereotypes he attacked.

A quick summary - I was validated for who I was in real life and implicitly attacked by RL - thus, even if he were not totally obnoxious, I would not feel "part of that bubble". (My bubbles were places like my friends and family, my work group at ATT or Bell Labs, my synagogue, and later the John Kerry group at DU. )

Many of the RL listeners were not successful in real life as good paying jobs available for non college educated men were less available. (Oddly RL attacked unions which had created and were preserving some of those jobs that had a middle class or at least lower middle class salary.) They were, however, RL validated blaming others - women, blacks, immigrants, Democrats etc - as the cause for their lack of success.