History has also shown us that people develop political opinions based on whatever lies are repeated often enough in their media echo chamber.
Consider the truly bizarre origins of antisemitism, for one. (And I'm not talking about people who have opinions on geopolitics in the ME. Think about how the other kind of antisemite, who doesn't give a rat's ass about what's going on 10,000 miles away reaches their political opinions.)
Or, better yet, the gay satanic-panic currently gripping half the country, and the insane culture war being waged around it. You can't actually believe that all those people who have strong opinions about it have been somehow personally wronged by homosexuals.
But they do turn on the telly to listen to some lunatic screaming about how there's a mass conspiracy to turn their children gay.
> Or, better yet, the gay satanic-panic currently gripping half the country, and the insane culture war being waged around it. You can't actually believe that all those people who have strong opinions about it have been somehow personally wronged by homosexuals.
Or the satanic panic over Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s. One of the cops ("school resource officers") in the middle school I went to still believed in that nonsense and it was the early 2000s by that point.
I can tell you that my change in political leanings, from a pretty far left stance to a center-right is based on personal experience. What you see happen in reality far outweighs what people claim online.
So, your political views have shifted from that of a fringe left Democrat to that of a core-establishment Democrat?
That is believable.
What would be less believable is your lived experience sending you on the crazy train ride that the far right party is currently on. I really can't understand how that can happen without a media bubble, but if it did, I'm genuinely interested.
This cuts both ways. If you listen to leftie media you'd believe that trans people are going to be literally rounded up and killed in the streets after Trump takes power. Saying that "people" develop political opinions based on media lies but then excluding yourself and those that agree with you from these "people" is awfully convenient rhetorically.
We are currently in a world where you can be banned from certain rights wing echo chambers for, verbatim, quoting the more deranged and unhinged things a major right wing political figure has said.
It's not really alarmist or hyperbolic when some of the newer deranged things include not needing to vote anymore, or annexing Canada and Greenland.
You have to, like, take this seriously. Its not just some reddit troll running his mouth, and it's borderline gaslighting to suggest some both-sides-equivelancy between the two.
