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In reply to the discussion: I can't believe how much my family has changed after being brainwashed by the GOP. [View all]eilen
(4,950 posts)but there was a period of time in which I considered myself conservative and right wing. I believe it was PTSD after 9/11. After 9/11 I lost my cousin. I was in physical pain. Right after that happened I started listening to the radio during the day to hear news about it. It was local radio and mostly talk radio. I believe I brainwashed myself by listening to it and then also watching Fox News. My poor mother.... This lasted a few years, I love my family for not giving up on me.
How I stopped being a zombie: I stopped listening to talk radio (I never listened to Limbaugh if I could help it but there were others that I think are just as bad). I had initially thought it was more humor I was listening to but no, the jokes are mean spirited and they dumbify/simplify things down. Some things... Ann Coulter came out with a biography of McCarthy that charged him as being an American Hero and a book about Mother Theresa charging her as a villain. Katrina. Wars not ending. Social Security. I work in healthcare and while others did, I could never resent anyone that had medicaid. I went to another state to work and met people who had been denied cancer treatment because their state ran out of indigent care funds and was horrified. I never bought into the Tea Party shit --that came after I deprogrammed myself but who knows-- if I had not, maybe I would be there. After all this, I find I am always turning the radio tune knob to a different station if I feel the familiar feeling of the hate parade whether it is right or left.
I never had a big issue with immigration when I was brainwashed. I live in the NE so don't really have personal issues w/it. Except for my brother complaining of other contractors using migrant labor to cut costs and underbidding him down in TN but I saw that more as a labor issue, not immigration.
If you think your relatives and friends have integrity at their core, challenge them to turn off the talk radio for an entire week and no Fox News, no RW reading/internet. Just listen to actual music, read literature in books, listen to BBC News or NPR news but not the talk/analysis or just read the local newspaper. If they can do that, take a month. Take a break from politics and religion (other than some daily prayer and bible reading if they are actually religious--God really doesn't ask for much more than that). They will feel happier and lighter. They might still laugh at fat people who wear stretchy clothing that is too small for them at Walmart though-- I'm finding that to be pretty universal. Understand too that being mean to poor people is not a Tea Party phenomena. That has been around for a very long time.