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I recently came across this video from the NYT. It is titled: "We're experts in Fascism. We're Leaving the U.S."
Not to boo my outgroup too much here (and that's not the point of this), but holy shit this video is bonkers. The logical jumps these people are making, their inability to understand or recognize that they are explicitly not living in a fascist dictatorship when they work for the largest newspaper in the country publishing content about how the leader of the country is a giant fascist. This video is frightening to me for the following reason:
What does the deprogramming effort for all of this eventually look like? Or does it happen?
These people (not necessarily the ones in the video, but the ones who might watch this type of video earnestly) seem convinced that we are living in a society which is comparable in some way to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.
I guess I have to stop myself here to check my biases: are we? Just to look at the most obvious thing here, the press, the answer is unequivocally: no, or perhaps even "fuck no, lol".
Or the military? It seems like we have the most powerful military on earth, and are essentially not using it at all.
As far as ICE: ice killed two people in situations which were arguably (though not definitely) self defense, and the response was that the Federal Government largely pulled out of the area (Minnesota) where they were deployed. This is while local residents are doing things like stalking federal law enforcement, setting up various checkpoints, and delaying "rapid response forces" to track their movements.
Would Hitler have tolerated this? Was there an equivalent in Nazi Germany of non-Nazis setting up checkpoints for the Nazis and driving them out of town?
Okay I'm talking to myself here: no we are not even remotely close to anything even remotely like a fascist dictatorship. By almost every definition we are likely the farthest we have ever been from living in a fascist dictatorship.
So deprogramming: has there been any serious discussion about what this will look like? It's been on my mind for a little over a year now. Here was the positive realization I had about it: it's not necessary. The people being dispatched by this sort of propaganda don't hold coherent beliefs. This is not part of a larger system of beliefs that all build on top of one another. These ideas are mostly just sitting on their own. They are a collection, not a system.
So this means that deprogramming isn't so much a process of unwinding everything, it's just a matter of installing a new set of ideas. Deprogramming could happen in a few days, for some people it could probably happen in a single episode of John Oliver or Rachel Maddow.
Realistically this was a happy realization to me. Am I wrong to think this?
Regarding deprogramming, I think it happens across generations as opposed to one group of people actually getting deprogrammed.
My Dad, mostly due to dating my Mom, dabbled in Hippy-ism in the early 70s. Long hair, Grateful dead concerts. That sort of thing.
By the time they had their first child, Dad had a typical corporate haircut, wore suits to work everyday, and smashed that like button for Reagan in the next election. He didn't deprogram so much as reverted to what he was. The dabbling was just that, dabbling.
But they still send christmas cards to at least two hardcore hippies. One still does the "ride your bike naked" around either Portland or Seattle (I forget which one) each spring. I don't know if his "employment" history is either of a) existant or b) not mostly illegal. That dude is never going to deprogram. Trump isn't on his radar because he still hasn't gotten over Nixon.
And his son is an aerospace engineer. With a crew cut. I've never met him, but Dad says that he and his father are estranged (my Dad and the hippy still catch up over zoom a few times per year).
It doesn't take much of a logical leap to think that the son grew up in a kind of fucked household because his Dad was so down with the cause. His, the son's, reaction was to, I'd bet, follow that straight and narrow path, work hard, and find a way to make some money. I'd wager he's probably half MAGA and half techno-futurist.
You see this more broadly with Gen-Z. While some of them are indeed "dinergoths" (See other top level post from this week's thread), you also have Gen-Z gym bro's who openly say "retard" and "faggot" to one another and don't care if they get tut-tutted by their post-woke classmates.
That's how deprogramming happens. I think the hard problem across generations, however, still has to do with male-female social and political relationships. That's a true capital-C Culture War which is upstream of politics and political LARPing.
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