- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
Yet such fantasies are now the common currency of politics on the American right. Remember the days when pundits solemnly declared that Trumpism was caused by economic anxiety? Well, despite a booming economy, there’s still plenty of justified anxiety out there, reflecting many people’s real struggles: America is still a nation riddled with inequality, insecurity and injustice. But the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality. It is, instead, driven by dystopian visions unrelated to real experience.
That is, at this point, Republican political strategy depends largely on frightening voters who are personally doing relatively well not just according to official statistics but also by their own accounts, by telling them that terrible things are happening to other people.
I’ve seen that with a very conservative former friend. They would send me reel after reel on Instagram of right wing talking heads discussing the “proof” they had that the coivd vaccine was deadly, “proof” that the human soul is placed in the egg at conception, and the LGBTQ+ people were really pedophiles.
There seemed to be no sense that a 30 second, highly edited reel on instagram could be false. It was telling them what they wanted to hear. The part that annoyed me was that they thought they were debating there position in good faith with these reels. That if they sent enough of them to me I would just say “Wow! you’re right, that reel from Andrew Tate really opened my eyes!”
We don’t talk any more and I hate that because we were really good friends until about 9 months ago.