when young adult children won't speak to you because someone closer to them doesn't approve of your views ... when someone you've known since the Nixon administration is about to breathe their last and they won't take a phone call ...
These are things I have personally seen. I periodically look at the QanonCasualties subreddit, which now has 280,000 members, and every day there are people getting divorced, adult children going NC (no contact) with insane parents and aunts/uncles, and similar rhetoric to what was heard on the radio in Rwanda in 1994?
This is frightful. And it's going to get much worse before we even have a chance of it starting to get better.
There are plenty to blame but one thing is of absolute certainty, the US National Security community has been and remains impotent in protecting our citizens from malign influence. DHS and the FBI are mostly to blame for domestic failures but overall, the entire community has been an abject failure for nearly forty years.
Ouch, it's such a tough loss when your friends and family are still so alive, so tangible, yet so unrecognizable from the loved one you remember.
Not only are they different-minded, now they have violence and retribution on their minds, revenge for their "suffering" at the hands of imaginary enemies. Suffering that they didn't know they were experiencing until someone nefarious convinced them that their lifestyle was under attack. Sadly, the wrong groups were labeled as the perpetrators, and now these Maga people would vote themselves off the island if it meant hanging on to their warped reality.
I can only hope that the children of magats aren't so locked in to this propaganda, and they can see the moderate and liberal light.
Your reminiscing about growing up in small-town Ohio mirrors many of my own memories growing up in small-town Illinois. Midwest commonsense still prevails for both of us. Painful though this may have been for you to write I do have to ask this question: If something as fleeting as differences of opinion over politics can sunder friendships then were these friendships that substantive in the first place?
On another topic, given your reservations about Facebook in this thread, I would be curious as to your thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg's mea culpa letter to the US Congress.
Zuckerberg smearing Biden and by association Harris, fueling right wing conspiracy theories. Social media is a misnomer, it's anti-social media, that's the behavior it brings, and it needs to be regulated like gambling and pornography are. There's no substance involved beyond one's own brain chemistry, but it's addictive and detrimental all the same.
when young adult children won't speak to you because someone closer to them doesn't approve of your views ... when someone you've known since the Nixon administration is about to breathe their last and they won't take a phone call ...
These are things I have personally seen. I periodically look at the QanonCasualties subreddit, which now has 280,000 members, and every day there are people getting divorced, adult children going NC (no contact) with insane parents and aunts/uncles, and similar rhetoric to what was heard on the radio in Rwanda in 1994?
This is frightful. And it's going to get much worse before we even have a chance of it starting to get better.
There are plenty to blame but one thing is of absolute certainty, the US National Security community has been and remains impotent in protecting our citizens from malign influence. DHS and the FBI are mostly to blame for domestic failures but overall, the entire community has been an abject failure for nearly forty years.
Ouch, it's such a tough loss when your friends and family are still so alive, so tangible, yet so unrecognizable from the loved one you remember.
Not only are they different-minded, now they have violence and retribution on their minds, revenge for their "suffering" at the hands of imaginary enemies. Suffering that they didn't know they were experiencing until someone nefarious convinced them that their lifestyle was under attack. Sadly, the wrong groups were labeled as the perpetrators, and now these Maga people would vote themselves off the island if it meant hanging on to their warped reality.
I can only hope that the children of magats aren't so locked in to this propaganda, and they can see the moderate and liberal light.
Hi Paul,
Your reminiscing about growing up in small-town Ohio mirrors many of my own memories growing up in small-town Illinois. Midwest commonsense still prevails for both of us. Painful though this may have been for you to write I do have to ask this question: If something as fleeting as differences of opinion over politics can sunder friendships then were these friendships that substantive in the first place?
On another topic, given your reservations about Facebook in this thread, I would be curious as to your thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg's mea culpa letter to the US Congress.
https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1828201780544504064
https://www.reuters.com/technology/zuckerberg-says-biden-administration-pressured-meta-censor-covid-19-content-2024-08-27/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-zuckerberg-says-meta-was-pressured-by-biden-to-censor-covid-content
Zuckerberg smearing Biden and by association Harris, fueling right wing conspiracy theories. Social media is a misnomer, it's anti-social media, that's the behavior it brings, and it needs to be regulated like gambling and pornography are. There's no substance involved beyond one's own brain chemistry, but it's addictive and detrimental all the same.