I have to ask what is wrong with these people that are attacking our democracy. I have to believe their minds are poisoned by all the rhetoric they are feeding on but what draws them into this? I DO remember when Rush started. He did make sense to me at the time on a lot of what he said but other stuff was cooky even in the early days. Then I started to see what was happening. Personally, I question things and unfortunately most don't. Their questioning is fed to them via the feedback loop.

Then there are the people that just hate people different from them and the freedom they have. There are a lot of them. So they will automatically fall for this kind of stuff and the fascist ideals.

#1 | Posted by censored

That was some great stuff in all honesty. I wasn't aware of the movement as such but it sure sounds like today's America Firsters as I read about it. The difference is the power of the propaganda drawing people into the movement is much greater today.

#5 | Posted by earthmuse

I agree with you.

Interestingly, I wonder how AI is going to play into this. I say that because I just had a so irritating "discussion" with an old friend turned MAGAt/AI guy via text over the weekend Friday-Sunday. I never thought of him as a particularly critical thinker and since he went MAGA he really isn't BUT he does bring up good points from time to time.

I was hashing out AI realities with him and how his perception was wrong and in fact dangerously so in some ways. I was explaining to him why I think what we are seeing from AIs is frighteningly bad after he sang the praises of it. I had sent him a couple articles on major security issues around AI to review after our initial discussion. After a day he started posting obvious AI responses to me in text. I got irritated and said something and he said it was because he said it was being more articulate than he could manage. I called BS and told him it wasn't articulate it was just spitting outright wrong information and I asked if he even bothered to read what the AI spit out before he posted. He insisted it was just making his words more articulate. So I made a comparison to what he was proposing and the dystopia of the future in The Time Machine, I frankly knew he wouldn't understand it as he has never read the book or anything about it as far as I know (he's like Bush - not a reader) and had never had to analyze the messages of the story. His AI response was crazily bad and I pointed out every way it was wrong. That kind of ended the conversation.