Possibly? I was in the process of typing a post that basically said "no ◊◊◊◊ them they chose this", but now that we increasingly look at them as a cult, I don't know, what do sect members do when their cult turns on them? Do they get disillusioned or do they double down to regain the good favour of their Leader? Maybe reaching out to them with a gentle 'see, they don't really care about you, come to the light side' works better than ridicule and Schadenfreude? That requires a level of patience and compassion I don't have with them right now, but maybe further down the road.
I'd still love for Twitter to change their username, though.
Some sect members get disillusioned, some double down. It very much depends on the
kind of disillusion, which depends on the facts and explanations they've heard. This is where the Democrats went wrong. Instead of showing that immigrants aren't the enemies of ordinary people, that the billionaires are taking advantage of both the immigrants
and born-and-bred Americans, they agreed with the racists that immigration is the problem that needs to be solved, not the exploitation of workers - of all races.
It's the reason why it seems to be easier for Bernie Sanders' message to get through to (some of) them than calling them retarded does. It isn't easy for people to come to terms with the fact that they have been misled, but the 'MAGA granny' in the BBC article managed to do so. And it's probably easier if people have been introduced to the facts instead of merely being told that they are selfish morons.
We have to make the same distinction when we are dealing with these people as we should be making when we are dealing with other cults, i.e. with superstition. There's a big difference between the Sylvia Brownes and their customers. There's a big difference between the Jim Joneses and their followers.
We can make fun of the poor uneducated QAnon believers 'doing their own research' and 'connecting the dots'. In many ways, they
are childish and immature. It is no wonder that Trump loves the uneducated. But in this respect, they are victims rather than perpetrators - unlike Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, RFK Jr., and all the other opportunists who notice that Trump is good at getting followers and join his crusade for this reason.
In December, we saw that followers of Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro lost many followers after the CEO shooting. It is not as if they have no awareness whatsoever of the fact that they are being taken advantage of by the owners of insurance companies and other billionaires or multi-millionaires, but the Democrats (in particular the DNC establishment) would never point that out to them. Luigi Mangione did. Bernie Sanders does.
Instead, the Democrats sided with the Republicans and MAGA and presented themselves as better at handling the immigrants (the perfect scapegoat) than the Republicans. Why didn't Harris point this out? Why didn't Biden (until the very end - too little, too late)? Why didn't Clinton in 2016?
Immigrants (
"They're eating the dogs!"), transsexuals (
“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation?"), i.e. false and in most respects
imaginary scapegoats from the master of misdirection are presented to people who have noticed that they themselves don't benefit from the American Dream and are looking for people to blame.
It's not at all difficult to see who the actual culprits are, but ordinary people are so eager to find somebody to blame for their misery that they jump on the bandwagon when guys like Trump present them with scapegoats that have nothing whatsoever to do with why their lives suck.
The 'MAGA granny', Pamela Hemphill, is beginning to understand this. We should help the others 'connect the dots' the same way she did.
how and why I moved to Denmark in 2017
