patrick.net

When I interviewed with Glenn Beck back in 2022, he asked me if I liked Donald Trump. I told him you can’t watch Trump’s rallies and come away not liking him. So why had I spent the previous five years hating Trump with a white-hot passion?

It was a combination of tribalism gone wrong and a media/social media feedback loop that kept fanning the flames of hate and rage. Most of us were helpless against it.

Like so many others who have emerged from the mass delusion sold to us by the media and the government, I have wanted to explain to those still trapped inside that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself. That’s easier said than done when the voices they trust and the media they read keep pumping them full of it.

The ideology is so baked in, the certainty that Trump is the Greatest Evil the World Has Ever Known, or as my mom likes to call him, “That Monster,” it is impossible to explain to her that Trump isn’t who she thinks he is.

There is panic in her voice, as if I am telling her something she can’t accept or hear coming out of my mouth. I am now what she has been conditioned to hate. But I’m also her daughter.

Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸
@Bubblebathgirl
Oct 26
Kamala Harris now has supporters screaming at little children in strollers.

Will @KamalaHarris or her campaign @KamalaHQ condemn this atrocious behavior?

They can’t pretend they don’t believe Trump supporters are “garbage.” Most of them do. I know, I come from that world. Very few offer any kind of compassion, empathy, or the benefit of the doubt - nothing. If they could put them all in gulags and get rid of them, they would not hesitate.

Does that make them bad people? I don’t think so. I wrestle with it. I think they are victims of a closed system, a feedback loop one might get if they were in a closed community, like the Amish or Scientology. The internet allowed them to build that kind of inside/outside world.

They’ve paid a price for shunning and exiling half the country. No one watches the movies, reads their news, has any investment in anything going in the culture because it’s become a mono-culture and that makes it BORING. That is probably the thing that will eventually end the madness. A Trump win will speed it up.

I feel bad for them more than I hate them. Their worldview has become so small. I always tell them to turn off MSNBC, stop reading the New York Times, unplug, and get to know their fellow Americans. It’s so much better outside of the fear bunker.