News

Oh my God we're so fucked

Noun

terrorism (usually uncountable, plural terrorisms)

1. The use of unlawful violence against people or property to achieve political objectives.

That one-third of the population who gets to choose who rules the entire country.

1/3 of the country don't really pay attention to anything if it doesn't affect them directly.

The biggest drama in my family is how my uncle failed to pay child support and now has to go to court. They only recently learned about ICE like a week ago, even though they've been in the news in my city for the past year.

At my night classes, someone brought up Epstein and a student my age said that she thought it was released a few years ago. I don't think she's stupid. She has like 5 kids and was attending night school for more job experience.

I won't be surprised if the Superbowl will be the first time a large percentage of Americans even learn about ICE.

It's real funny how that just about lines up with the "27% of voters are stupid" metric.

It's not gullibility; the reactionary right want to oppress the people they hate. It's White Christian Supremacy.

It's similar to the KKK: they weren't tricked into being hateful pieces of shit, they just are. Sure, a but big part of that is that their culture is rotten with fundamentalism and anti-intelectualism, but those are cultivated and flourish because they're helpful to the cause of being hateful pieces of shit.

Yes, they are literal Nazis but don't like being called that publicly

Behind closed doors who knows

Think of it less as bad people, than individuals drawn into self-reinforcing belief systems through algorithmically amplified echo chambers. Modern technology—primarily smartphones and platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but also cable news (Fox/NewsNation) and podcasts—systematically exploits cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and correlation neglect to isolate users from dissenting viewpoints. This creates environments where belief and exclusivity override rational discourse, mirroring historical patterns where economic distress fueled extremism.

Just as post-WWI Germany’s hyperinflation and reparations under the Treaty of Versailles bred widespread anger and desperation—enabling extremist movements like the Nazis to gain traction by scapegoating minorities—today’s algorithmic ecosystems channel similar frustrations into polarized identity politics. Users aren’t merely "gullible"; they’re trapped in feedback loops where platforms prioritize engagement over truth, reinforcing preexisting narratives while filtering out complexity. This isn’t unique to the U.S.: Brazil’s Bolsonaro movement, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s Brothers of Italy all leverage these dynamics to mobilize bases through emotional appeals to victimhood and exclusion.

The core issue isn’t malice but structural amplification. Social media’s profit-driven algorithms curate content that deepens ideological divides, making users perceive opposing views as existential threats. Fixing this requires confronting how technology reshapes human cognition—not blaming individuals for succumbing to systems designed to exploit their biases. As one study notes, these echo chambers don’t just reflect polarization; they manufacture it through recursive reinforcement of extreme content.

In 2002-03, I told anyone who would listen that the Iraq war was a stupid idea, and that went so well (/s) that GWB actually won the 2004 election (unlike 2000)

By the end of 2006, almost everyone said they opposed the war and had always opposed the war, that they were outraged by Abu Ghraib and soldiers being killed by IEDs and etc.

In my experience, Americans aren't bloodthirsty monsters, but they have crappy imaginations and memories, so they have to actually see an obviously terrible idea get played out and be completely terrible before they will recognize that it is terrible, and then they'll tell you they knew it was terrible all along. I don't think we're much different than people anywhere else in the world in those regards, though.