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Elizabeth Olbert's avatar

Alright, Ohio Barbarian - you're smart; answer me this: why do "Liberals" over the age of, say, 40, fall for this shit? When did they forget everything they ever knew? How come they're so incredibly stupid?

Thanks!

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Ohio Barbarian's avatar

They've been successfully propagandized. It started with all of the brazen hypocrisy and fraud surrounding the Clintons and Obamas, but really went off the rails with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Liberals really fell hard for the line that Trump was Hitler installed by Russia and his followers were all Nazis. It's only a small step from that to believing ANYONE who is opposed to the Democrats is a Nazi or other such loathsome creature.

There's a lot more to it, of course, but I think this is a big part of it.

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Elizabeth Olbert's avatar

Yeah, but . . . I dunno. The whole phony scenario just seems less and less believable, so I'm not sure that propaganda - relentless as it is! - really explains it completely.

I sometimes wonder if rank and file Democrats secretly know it's all bullshit, but can't admit it because they just don't know what they'd do without The Narrative. They remind me of kids in one of those horribly dysfunctional families, who pretend they don't see how fucked up everything is because they honestly can't imagine an alternative.

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Babel-17's avatar

You didn't solicit other opinions, but I hope you don't mind my offering one. My snark is that many of them, like me, don't have any sports teams that they are loyal too, and, unlike me, they had a desire to be part of a fan base. They remind me of the Jerry Seinfeld joke that had the punchline of "You're rooting for the clothes, when get right down to it".

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Elizabeth Olbert's avatar

Yep. There's truth in that too.

Do they have any idea how dangerous their team leaders are, though? It's hard to see how they could miss it, but apparently they do.

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Ohio Barbarian's avatar

My wife has noticed that. She says that it's ironic that people who say they hate watching sports treat politics exactly how sports fans treat their sports and don't even know they do it.

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Jonathan P's avatar

Trump is probably guilty of that and more but he isn’t arrested. I have always favored high end investigations going after those at the top like Trump rather than low level offenses targeting the poor.

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sadoldgirl's avatar

Amusing that one of Trump's lawyers seems to fall into the same category as Hoover. It would not

surprise me if Trump in his stubborn vengeance bungled this one too. And if people accused him of

creating divisiveness, then they should look at what all of his attackers are trying to achieve.Then again this was/is the purpose of TPTB. FBI/CIA serve those purposes too.This fear that he might win

a second term may just have backfired though. For many people the appeal of the underdog is very

strong, and the process chosen smells of a political cabale.

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MrMickeysMom's avatar

Hey, OB... This is one big question and it's more than ugly J Edgar's Hooters influence. As far as I'm concerned, he was a symptom of the widening problem of a post WWII "middle" class. My theory is that persons at a level I'll never see decided that we should develop a two-party (and two party ONLY) system that guarantees its followers how much better they are than the other (true "school spirit" high school mentality). We've been really dumbing down at lightening speed since the 1970's to erase critical thinking and pit Americans, one against the other.

Shout out to more from the JPR tribe that I love seeing again, as I just spotted sadoldgirl!

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Ohio Barbarian's avatar

Hoover wasn't shaped by World War II. He was shaped by the reaction to the Russian Revolution. His biggest fear was always Communist revolution and, as my mom said, "saw a Communist behind every bush."

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MizzGrizz's avatar

I have another view of why so many damn fool baby boomers fall for it all.Because they have always been susceptible to whatever the TV told them was right and good and true.They were taught to be crowd followers as children,and since they were,it was easy to fall in line behind a news media that had almost become substitute parents for them,telling them who to love and who to hate.The media carefully paced them along,until they were swearing allegiance to the opposite of what they swore allegiance to the day before and they didn’t even notice.It can happen to anyone.We all have to be careful.

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The Passionate Progressive's avatar

For those interested....my former (from DC) co-hort Garland Nixon has an excellent presentation on this from 11 August. Subject is THE TRUMP RAID - THE FBI'S CROSSFIRE HURRICANE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES....Garland, besides being from DC, a former law enforcement officer as well as ACLU member, connects the dots between this the FBI at large (Comey, Strzok, Mueller, etc.) Russiagate and Ukraine gate....Highly recommended....Good to see so many JPR folks here....tbc

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