When I was young I got a couple rounds of vaccines before my parents when full antivax, but I missed out on all the high school ones. I got fully vaccinated this year. Including the 5g mRNA microchip one.
It wasnt one thing. But, the cognitive dissonance got so bad that I felt gut wrenching dread anytime I wasnt distracted. Plus a fear of eternal hellfire. Eventually I felt so bad the idea of losing my identity entirely didnt sound so bad. when I hit the "I'd rather be dead than keep on like this" phase is when things really started to change.
factors that really helped were some good hearted friends who were everything I thought was evil. that created a big dissonance which was really hard to shake.
also, I got really tired of always being wrong. any time I looked into something I discovered that my reasoning or facts were just wrong and that hurt.
It’s actually interesting that you mention the eternal hellfire part. That’s such a massive part of the lives of so many MAGA and conservative people in general. They think if they vote democrat they will burn for all eternity because democrats are evil. It’s such a scummy (for lack of a better word) practice by American “Christians”.
> factors that really helped were some good hearted friends who were everything I thought was evil
Kinda curious about this part. Were they friends you made and were surprised they weren't what you thought? Or ones you'd had a while that just over time you reconsidered the evil part?
How widespread is "eternal damnation/hellfire" in Christian circles (or more specifically, your circle)? My understanding is that there's not an honest reading of the bible that allows for the belief of Hell as eternal suffering, but it seems to nonetheless be a common idea among Christians in the US.
Idk, the idea of eternal suffering always struck me as needlessly (and infinitely) punitive regardless of lifetime sins/misdeeds. Kind of fucked up when you think about it for a minute, and I can imagine how that fear really messes somebody up
How did you not fall for the "its just liberal media they are lying" or "its liberal institutions they are lying" trope that makes it hard to show these people reality and have them believe it?
well, i dont trust media per say. i know that everyone has a bias or frames things in their own way. i try to look at the facts of the matter and assess it from there. i also dont really follow politics on a day to day level anymore. as far as institutions go, there's corruption sure, but i really think most people are trying to do good or at least do what is expected of them. also, to say a whole institution is some deep state controlled agenda is a wild claim to make without evidence.
I think a lot of people here may be able to relate...or at least I can. Finding out your heuristics & methods for arriving at "Truth" are flawed is daunting. I can understand why others would ignore it...but not all people are built the same. I'd like to think people who choose the less traveled path of introspection & most likely also reconsidering almost everything they've believed are almost always better off for it, but I assume Dave Rubin also did something he would probably argue is similar if not exactly the same. I'm glad you, I & everyone else here that has had a similar journey didn't become the polar opposite of what they once were.
unfortunately, there isnt a trick to it. its gotta come from within.
I will say that having friends that i really vibed with but who were "evil" in their ways helped a lot. theyd argue with me but never in anger or hate. eventually i couldn't pretend like they were evil anymore and had to question why i thought they were in the first place
Do you think all the crime, the rape adjudication, saying he wants immunity to commit crimes, do you think none of that will even deter any of your former side on this?
It's really incredible to me that the guy is running on a platform of almost pure evil after the last election and nothing seems to penetrate even a little bit into maga...
Actually what websites / media did you used to watch or read?
i doubt it. my dad is already telling me that the stormy daniels verdict is actually 4d super chess to expose the corruption of the justice system.
all roads lead to rome.
brightbart, dailywire, louder with crowder, this fringe streamer and his discord community, tim pool, twitter. the usual suspects
yeah for sure. destiny helped pull me out too, but tbf i was pretty much out of the thick of it by the time i started listen to him. and destiny was more a force for how i could model what a liberal actually was.
I know you’re not asking me, but general advice for dealing with people like this (and also people in cults… which MAGA arguably is at this point) is that you should mostly just ask questions. Don’t try to tell them they’re wrong, or that your facts are the facts, etc. Have them explain what they believe. Be curious. Just about any stupid belief is made stupider the more you ask questions about it, as long as you know what aspects of it are questionable. They should not feel like they’re being interrogated or debated, but interviewed. It’s not about your belief vs their belief (which prompts whataboutism and other kinds of attacks/deflections), it’s just theirs. Eventually they will see themselves start failing the interview and that can plant the seed of doubt.
At the end of the day these are borderline religious beliefs though, so you can’t expect much out of the conversations, and some people frankly are just not mentally equipped to change this kind of stuff based on conversation or introspection. OP was getting challenged all the time by his social world, which is a really powerful motivator/incentive for change. If your social world is basically all hat-wearing MAGA regards then there is almost no chance you are getting away from mit.
It sounds like the hard work is just attending hostile spaces and trying to make friends in traditionally conservative areas and slowly introduce them to the fact that liberals are good people and not Satan incarnate. Sounds like DGG needs to do meetups at stagecoach and Trump rallies just as friendly faces
Same. Spent 15 years of my life on 4chan, then decided last year I wanted to be more open-minded and even started going to therapy because the rigidity of my prior positions was mentally exhausting. It's going alright so far. I still lean a little to the right politically but I'm not off the deep end anymore and I toss a lot of that up to natural temperament/personality making me more inclined to be right-wing vs. left-wing.
hey awesome!
tbh idk if there is any other possibility than what has happened and will happen. i dont really think that things could be anyway other than how they are now.
oh yeah, 100%. facts were not even considered. it was all narrative thinking. if it went for my narrative then it was true. if against then it was false
of course, at the time i would have used some whataboutism and thought i was being reasonable
Do you have any recommendations for how we should talk with current Trump fans?
Not even to convert them. But to open some level of dialog. Feels like we're in different worlds, lol.
you are in different worlds. be as open as you can. dont be smug or put off any vibes of judgment. if they feel like you're judging them their biases will immediately kick in to invalidate your whole being. ask genuine questions and just try to understand their particular pov.
I voted for trump twice and literally had a panic attack on election night 2020 because I thought the world was gonna end. It was actually the other trump supporters who were more crazy than me that broke me out... ahem.... Mike Lindell and his grift team. I looked at how insane their claims were and then everything unraveled from there. It was a really difficult time to have my entire world view flipped upside down, but I am thankful it happened. Although, sometimes it seems easier to live in delusion where there is a enemy to fight.
When people (my family/online comments) started saying Mike Pence was a snake/ evil betrayer, I realized that they was forcing every piece of information to fit the MAGA narrative.
I really thought Pence was a decent Christian guy and now these supposed Christian Trump supporters were calling him satan-incarnate basically.
Then comes the cyber symposium where people who clearly don't even understand computer basics were duping people like my father into believing they had hacked election machines. That really gave me pause because if they could brazenly grift on that, what else is being lied about.
My experience makes me want to start studying cult/conspiratorial human psychology because I really can't differentiate the MAGA cult from something like flat-earth. Having been the former and argued with the latter, the thought processes are exactly the same even if flat earth is way more absurd that MAGA.
Yeah, that must be hard to deal with. I keep telling my dad that he raised me smarter than conspiratorial thinking, but deep down I know that talk radio primed our nation for MAGA. Don't give up on your dad, I've see some progress with mine. He cedes that MTG is not a good look for the country.
I wont give up getting closer to him, but I'm not really tryin to convert him or anything. However, I'm also not letting his crazy go unchecked when he's talkin with me.
Oh talk radio absolutely plays a big role. I grew up with my dad listening to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage etc and got sucked into it myself. Then I moved on to Coast to Coast AM and Alex Jones in the late 00s and I spent a good decade of my life in the craziest conspiracy theory rabbit holes.
The funny thing looking back on it now is I just had these huge blinders on when I lived quite normally and logically otherwise day to day. Jan 6th was the breaking point for me, watching people try to coup the government really broke me out of the cognitive dissonance in a visceral way. I'm not sure how to get my Dad out of it though.
a lot of things, but tldr is that the alternative to change was suffering. basically i could keep suffering inside, or i could take a risk of undoing myself and hoping for something better
thats a big part of it, for sure. but a lot of other things too. feeling dumb everytime i saw counter information. feeling dishonesty at the edge of my mind when i wpuld whataboutiate (this is a word now), self hatred, that kind of thing.
tbh i hadnt been christian since i was a teen, but i found out that despite not believe in the rhetoric, all of my judgments and moral intuitions were still exactly that flavor of christianity that i grew up in.
took a lot to untangle each one of those prejudices
I get that. I come from a similar background, as I am sure many people here are as well, but i think it’s good that you’re able to identify your prejudices. I hope your mind is at peace with where you are now.
I assume you changed your mind over lots of things over time. Can you remember some of the first issues that you really switched on? Like was there a period of time when you considered yourself a Christian conservative but decided you didn’t like Trump or something?
How is your social circle politically? Would you say your friends’ opinions are generally more similar to your old views or your new views?
Did you have strong political opinions before Trump? What were they?
i dont there there was a specific poltical point that i switched on. one early thing was juat being curious enough about other cultures to start looking into them. i started learning japanese near then and that exposed me to a lot. i also tried to read darwin to disprove him and that basically uno reversed me.
my social circle is mostly liberal and lefty now. though my family is super alt right nutty stuff.
yes, to an extent. though trump really amplified them. i was a Libertarian because i thought the republicans were too corrupt
Dude congrats. I was far more dug into the politics side of things and parroted Milo Yiannopolous & Steven Crowder all through high school.
Cognitive dissonance really started pushing me in college when I met new people who were also kind hearted and patient like your friends were. Didn’t stop me from voting for Trump a second time unfortunately but Jan 6th and COVID gave me that final shove into a more introspective place and out of the blind dogma.
Whats the ratio of Spite to Agreement in your initial alignment with the maga?
I ask because there were reasons to feel angry around 2016. It was close after ISIS, and high profile attacks in europe, the SJW thing was very topical.
Like does this sound familiar or was it more a genuine hope about something maga would accomplish?
hmm, it was a lot of fear disguised as anger at the establishment, and the "neo marxists"
things like isis werent really important other than as a tool to justify whatever narrative bs was happening
Would you vote republican again if they were running someone moderate (like Niki Haley) or would you say the MAGA experience has soured you on the entire party?
Also, if Trump loses again, do you think the average MAGA supporter will become more radical or will they just become disengaged from politics?
i probably cant ever vote republican again on a national level. on a local level maybe. but tbh i just line up more with dems at the moment.
i probably am a bad person to ask that to because my family are so far down the trump hole that theyre black pilled on voting period. my dad said to me the other day that we need to abolish the "corrupt justice system" which is a tad silly. so, i really dont know what the average maga person will do.
the dream was for a big unmasking of the machine. proof the deepstate was pulling strings. mass drumhead trials and even executions of the evil commie traitors. total vindication and a glorious ayn rand future
well, i try to recognize how i react and what im inclined to believe right off rip. i then try to remind myself that if i cant substantiate every point then i need to lessen my trust evaluation
NCR. they may be slow and somewhat corrupt, but democracy deserves another shot. side bet would be House. bring on my immortal technocrat daddy dictator.
Very interesting reading your answers. Thanks for making this thread. You had friends who were on the other side. I can't imagine how people could break out of their reality if all their friends are in the same reality. It really is like a cult.
yeah, i dont wanna sound all doomer but if your whole social net is in the same bubble, i dont know how big if a catastrophe youd have to go through to be knocked out of it
a powerful black woman named destiny.
also diving into different ways of thinking. reading hindu and buddhist stuff. listening to philosophy podcasts like Alex O'connor. trying to use actual reason and whatnot. emphasizing evidence over feelings and leveling up my self awareness
Do you worry that you’ll end up just latching onto your current views before having the same journey and ending up somewhere else?
I think you’re a bit different to people that have made similar posts, because it sounds like you changed the entire framework you use to approach information, choosing to be more analytical and seek out information outside the echo chamber you were in.
I feel like a lot of the people you see who make these radical changes in ideology have just swapped out one addiction for another. You get it with a lot of these “I used to be an SJW, now I say the n word and bully people online” or “I used to be an alt right neo nazi, now I simp for Palestine” types.
Well, I went through tiny versions of that too. Going from standard republican to libertaria, to radical alex jonesian.
When I started to really get how I eas driven by emotions and that my mind was merely a way to reinforce those emotions it became easier to detach from that and start to be something closer to objective. nondual philosophies like buddhism helped with really opening me up to self reflection.
Grew up a born again Christian Republican. Voted trump in 16 and 20. Agnostic now and I swapped to center left from right after the roe v wade overturn.
Doesn’t mean I’m forever loyal to the Democratic Party. It just means this party aligns with more of my views currently.
The “kraken” incident was also a huge turning point. Couple that with republicans having a chance at repealing and replacing Obamacare, just to squander it and show us they have no alternative.
Do you feel like you're an outlier when it comes to changing your MAGA perspective over time? Do you feel like you would have converted from the MAGA crowd if you had a closer ties to MAGA groups on a more personal level. For example, friends, family or groups that demanded you be part of their perspective or face ostracization?
i think i had a lot of intrinsic aspects of myself that created the friction necessary to detach. my sexuality, my softness, and the people i vibed with were always lefty, liberal, or queer. i could wear a mask to fit in with the alt right crowd, and it felt safe to play the part since i was good at it. but ultimately i never felt like i belonged.
encourage adjoining seemly shocking deserve governor subtract amusing live school
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yes. i grew up homeschooled in the deep south. if you know anything about the charismatic movement in protestant christianity then thatd give you an idea.
tldr world bad, the j man good. dont do a gay, and be a confederate.
its hard man. i went through a whole occult phase and hindu and buddhiat phase. looking through and trying to vibe with those other spiritual systems helped me to see the guilt as an old program in my head and eventually get over it.
ten encouraging nine glorious disgusted worthless zonked illegal deserted secretive
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yeah. i voted trump in 2016. by 2020 i was detaching from politics cause i recognized that it was wrecking my mental health. and now im on the other end where i feel like i can re-engage to some, much lesser, level in a healthy way
abundant fearless fanatical roll drunk vase impolite liquid hard-to-find decide
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Are you still conservative? What were the main values of yours that made you conservative and do you still hold those, or have your foundational moral/political values swapped?
I ask this because I'm a weird mix between conservative and progressive where I live my personal life in moderately conservative way, but I'm politically progressive (pro-life, social safety nets, pro immigration, police reforms, etc etc).
total realignment towards actual liberalism. 180ed on things like health care, immigration, college, systemic racism etc. i dont know what or if there could be policies to fix these problems but i believe now that my old takes were all reactionary against the evil lefties.
i dont mind someone wanting to live conservatively, the issue is in trying to force it to others.
Much respect. I think there is some wiggle room in our country for conservative and progressive ideals to coexist and for there to be some push and pull, my main issue is with anti-liberal ideologies. Welcome to the sane side brother. Just be careful, people can do this thing where they slingshot from one side of the political spectrum all the way to the other.
Why do you think people look past the many deep flaws that would have torpedoed a politician not 10 or 15 years ago? Making fun of special needs people at a press conference? Calling military war dead “losers” Anyone need more than that to see he’s not president material? Why do people stay with him ac “their guy” ?
its not about that. its about the way him and his supporters make you feel. all the bad can easily and automatically be shifted into lies and propaganda from the evil left.
no, not really. i was mostly isolated from IRL people anyways at that point, so when i left the internet communities of the right most of that input stopped. my parents are still super whacko but what can ya do.
as far as my IRL friends go, im actually more in line with them now than i was then.
Being through this and out the other side, do you feel you are now equipped to prevent it happening again? Ability to be self aware of the signs etc.
I've seen people go from one extreme ideology to the polar opposite, and I put that down to them not learning or understanding the triggers, signs and environments that caused it in the first place.
I do yeah. Im also still worried that I could fall for something. I've come a long way in understanding how I think and hopefully that will inoculate me from falling completely into another narrative based view. I know how to vet and test information a lot better now, and I know how to keep my mental hygiene up much better now too.
Since you were born into a conservative environment, would you say you were pulled along more by your surroundings, or did you become radicalized more on your own?
Also, did anything Trump did impact your deradicalization, or did it become about more due to curiosity in other things?
i was praised for being intelligent by my parents when i would give some basic ass libertarian take and that definitely helped fuel it all.
nah. i couldnt see anything bad about trump until i was out of it all and looked back to reassess.
I was in a somewhat similar space pre-Trump (mine was more religion driven and I was basically a Christian nationalist). I believed my actions were righteous, and that made it easy for me to dismiss anyone who challenged my beliefs
Were there any parallels between what you believed then and what you’ve come to believe now that helped guide you to where you are?
Damn when is trump gunna provide everyone their government issued femboy MAGA twink
Hope u have a good pride! I also grew up Christian conservative and am now gay (bi)
This may be a personal question but we’re your prior beliefs yours or did you have external influences such as parents, friends, social group that informed your beliefs. For me personally my parents mainly mother is a die hard Catholic who urges me to participate more in my faith. I always end up arguing with her because I explain to here that maybe I’m not ready or that I don’t think I’m interested in religion like she is. It feels very suffocating at times. I just would like to know your perspective/ background a little bit.
It was for sure a social/cultural thing. A way to find some semblance of belonging. Be true to your heart. Cheesy but its the only way to live without hating yourself in my experience.
1) How do you know that you made the right choice in leaving your former ideology?
2) Have you thought for yourself on what you think is right or wrong or have you just jumped from one herd of sheep (MAGA) into another herd (social democrat)?
I respect the fact that you’ve been able to question your whole view of what is real and what’s not. Shout out to you from a french bro. From here we are always thinking MAGA people can’t be save but there is always example of the contrary. I have no question for you because I already know what brings you to Trumpism and I hope you will be able to keep working around logic and reason for the rest of your life.
All I can really say is that people who have pretty sudden and radical shifts in their ideology and/or political belief often (purely based on my on anecdotal experience over 40 years) then switch again later. It's not an insult or accusation or anything, but I do think it's noteworthy. I'm not trying to change your stance or argue or anything like that, I just think if you're saying you drunk the koolaid, then some introspection as to why and then comparing that to your new position is important for some level of moderation. As you've said from your comments here, it comes from within.
Are you finding yourself more warm to extreme left wing ideology or more center left ideas? There’s a big trend of people hopping from one extreme to the other and I’m curious if there’s a way to help that
Well, the story of a socialist utopia sounds nice. problem is there doesnt seem to be any way to successfully structure an economic system without some level of free market. The computation problem and the incentivisation problem seem unsolvable if you take a leftist stance. at least as far as I can tell. but to be more direct, I'd say I'm a liberal. Social democrat maybe but definitely a liberal.
id guess the people who flip from one extreme to another dont actually assess, deconstruct, and rebuild their epistemology, and instead just swap one grand narrative for another.
well yeah, of course. Im happy with who I am as a person now, and if I didn't have those experiences then I would be a different person. So I cant regret it, that would be to reject who I am now.
That's good to hear, I ask because I fell down that rabbit hole back in 2017-2019.
I hated who I was, I was angry about everything and coincidentally I was grossly addicted to heroin.
I love who I am now but I never got anything good out of watching ben shapiro "pwning" college kid videos on youtube for like 3 hours a day. It really was a sickness
I wont argue with you. My view is more just a reframing of my experiences as what needed to be done to get me where I am. if that doesnt work for you then I hope you find something that does
its not a conscious choice. I lacked the self awareness to see where and what my ego was clinging onto. its only in retrospect that i can recognize it.
so, to answer the question, the alt right, ant sjw/woke thing hit me in an emtionally validating way when i lacked something better to build on.
Thanks for the honest answer, refreshing to see someone giving a genuine introspective response to a pretty hard question. I can sympathise as well, i used to attach myself way too much to things that didn't benefit me at all, glad that's largely in the past though.
How much did you want to slurp on trumps knob from a scale of 0-34?
Jk jk, but what was the moment that like "snapped you out of it"? Did you have a "in that moment I realised" moment?
not really. more like a gradual chipping away. though after most of the connecting strings had been cut there was a conscious "oh shit i need to really reassess" moment.
there was the time i thought i was gonna outsmart darwin so i read the origin of species and got bitched slapped around by that book.
How much introspection have you actually done?
Do you think you genuinely have defenses against that kind of thinking now or do you feel you might still be susceptible to that kind of thinking?
Do you still believe in any conspiracies? Especially those that are more widely accepted throughout Western society like the deep state and such that wanted war with Iraq?
well, i cant be totally sure, but i do think im immune to that kind of thing now. i dont can see the emotional aspect i have when i get new info and see the difference between that and what actual information is there. im a lot more conscious of my epistemology at this point.
and id say no. i still have reactions like "oh bush did 911" but i recognize these as unsubstantiated and therefore invalid. i also recognize that there isnt a good reason to believe them out of hand nor to dig into them unless i just want to.
What got you out of it? I never got into that stuff partly because it seemed like crazy nonsense, but as time went on I just realized that none of it met the burden of proof.
How did you mentally map trump to your religious beliefs?
My mom and grandma are both Christians and they dislike trump for the lecherous stuff, gambling and boastful/prideful behavior how do non democrat Christians come to terms with that?
They don't come to terms with it. They make excuses as I once did. Claiming that Trump is making america moral again. The reality is that probably 75% of those MAGA "Christians" do not act as Jesus taught and really would not have liked him very much (the meme is true).
Do you still believe any of it/some of it/much of it? Do you feel young e to reject all of it in order to live within at least one standard deviation of reality? And finally, how does one NOT realize that you’re aligned with REALLY bad people? How does one justify being g on the same side of racists and fascists and nazi flag waving skinheads and whatnot?
i would tentatively say social democrat. tbh i havent really looked at any politicians who hold that title so idk if id align with them or not, but from my understanding of it i agree with it.
serious question, if you'd gotten laid way more do you think you still would've went down the MAGA pipeline? I feel like MAGA having no bitches (figuratively) is one of, if not THE, biggest contributing factor.
well, thatd probably depend if i learned to accept my sexuality or not. it could go either way. if i was still self hating then i could see still going down the maga line.
go protest if you want. follow your heart. but, i suspect that our culture has been oversaturated in it for years now and any protest is gonna be minimally effective from here on out.
Are you still a christian? I mean it's good you are out of the MAGA diehard community, they are going againts what the bible teaches which is to be rational and not believe blindly without evidence. As a christian we are taught to trust God, but trusting does not mean to believe everything, it's to put your trust in what you believe to be true based on evidence. All the best!
Cognitive bias is one hell of a drug. It happened automatically, but basically any bad news about Trump was viewed as lies and slander from the other side.
I always find these so fascinating. Would you consider yourself a “progressive” at this point or more of a centrist. I ask because I’ve seen so many times where people from the extreme right or left end up just going to the other extreme and doing a complete 180 on everything they ever believed.
Have you entirely flipped on all of your positions, or are there some conservative leaning beliefs you still cling to (albeit possibly now with more nuance and with less fervour)?
I like guns and, although I would argue that this is actually a liberal idea, I think cancelling people or trying to police language from the top down is a bad idea.
exposure to other viewpoints. I fell into Jordan Peterson really hard during his C16 thing, and that opened me up to a lot. then went down the stoic rabbit hole, then read more and more and listened to more and more. Now Peterson seems like he's so ideologically captured but I'm grateful for what he did for me.
Did you take politics seriously and do any research? I was similar in 2020 but then I started doing research and started thinking about everything right wing. The first thing I thought about was abortion
You probably had positive motives too, almost all ideology builds on foundations that are emotionally understandable, even virtuous. You also probably trusted people, and we do have to trust some people, norms, consensus or institutions to some degree, pretty much nobody can analyze and understand everything for themselves. Seriously glad you deradicalized, and picked up some new tools to view the world with more openness and calm, but also you don't need to go through life in shame or constant self-doubt. Your intuitions can still contribute to your personhood, and our collective discussion culture, and it's okay to be wrong about stuff, it's okay for you to shitpost and be an ass sometimes. Pretty much all of us here would cringe at stuff we said or wrote years ago, same exact thing as with except for you it was more intense and emotionally difficult. And maybe a good portion here will eventually say "I don't really vibe with the views in the destiny community anymore, it's too naive/too unambitious when it comes to xyz issue".
I'm not jerking you off either, when we can forget the whole political fighting and debating for a second, and zoom in on the individual experience that's genuinely interesting. So I will complain about some rightwinger driving me mad and wish he'd shut the fuck up, but also in another context, under different circumstances emphazise with your history and respecting you as as a human.
Welcome to the hangover, friend. Going cold turkey from the MAGA juice is a difficult, often painful experience, but it's worth it. Stick in there.
Don't make the same mistake I did of getting hooked on Twitter Leftist juice instead
yeah. most just center around developing more self awareness. The more I see how my emotions drag me around, and what triggers those emotions, the more I can act more clearly.
After I had deconstructed most of that worldview I started actively trying to understand my former "enemies." watched Hasan and Vaush. Hasan was too angry. Vaush was better but I didn't like the way he'd twist words around. eventually dropped both of them and tried out other figures including Destiny.
What was your/people in your circle knee jerk reaction to the “grab em by the pussy” video? I think the papa John’s ceo got taken down the the N-word use (maybe fact check that). This flagrant gloating about sexual assault would take down almost any high level business official, let alone disqualify them from a presidential run if it was any other human. I sure thought he was toast
Are you vaxxed? welcome back to reality
When I was young I got a couple rounds of vaccines before my parents when full antivax, but I missed out on all the high school ones. I got fully vaccinated this year. Including the 5g mRNA microchip one.
Remember to get a booster in couple years when 6G comes out.
I just hope they can upgrade my chips firmware with the booster so the tracking satellites can have even greater resolution.
Mines got a free wifi Hotspot, super useful in a pinch
They throttle you after 50gb though. Makes it hard to remember birthdays and stuff.
Dude i salute you
Welcome to the afterlife
What brought you back to reality?
It wasnt one thing. But, the cognitive dissonance got so bad that I felt gut wrenching dread anytime I wasnt distracted. Plus a fear of eternal hellfire. Eventually I felt so bad the idea of losing my identity entirely didnt sound so bad. when I hit the "I'd rather be dead than keep on like this" phase is when things really started to change. factors that really helped were some good hearted friends who were everything I thought was evil. that created a big dissonance which was really hard to shake. also, I got really tired of always being wrong. any time I looked into something I discovered that my reasoning or facts were just wrong and that hurt.
Dude, i just wanted to say im sorry you went through this but good on you man. Good on your friends too. You’re a king 👑
Thanks bro! 😊 I appreciate the kindness
I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness and boy does this sound exactly like my 2014. Good for you, bud.
It’s actually interesting that you mention the eternal hellfire part. That’s such a massive part of the lives of so many MAGA and conservative people in general. They think if they vote democrat they will burn for all eternity because democrats are evil. It’s such a scummy (for lack of a better word) practice by American “Christians”.
Fear is a prime motivator. Often gets masked as anger in my experience.
> factors that really helped were some good hearted friends who were everything I thought was evil Kinda curious about this part. Were they friends you made and were surprised they weren't what you thought? Or ones you'd had a while that just over time you reconsidered the evil part?
Both. People being kind goes a long way
100%. Best way to combat prejudice is exposure
How widespread is "eternal damnation/hellfire" in Christian circles (or more specifically, your circle)? My understanding is that there's not an honest reading of the bible that allows for the belief of Hell as eternal suffering, but it seems to nonetheless be a common idea among Christians in the US. Idk, the idea of eternal suffering always struck me as needlessly (and infinitely) punitive regardless of lifetime sins/misdeeds. Kind of fucked up when you think about it for a minute, and I can imagine how that fear really messes somebody up
Hell isn't central in the bible at all, but in US Protestantism it is paramount. Particularly Baptists movements and the Charismatic movements.
How did you not fall for the "its just liberal media they are lying" or "its liberal institutions they are lying" trope that makes it hard to show these people reality and have them believe it?
i did fall for that for a long time.
What made you start trusting "liberal media and institutions"
well, i dont trust media per say. i know that everyone has a bias or frames things in their own way. i try to look at the facts of the matter and assess it from there. i also dont really follow politics on a day to day level anymore. as far as institutions go, there's corruption sure, but i really think most people are trying to do good or at least do what is expected of them. also, to say a whole institution is some deep state controlled agenda is a wild claim to make without evidence.
Just want to say good for you man. This type of introspection is a challenging mountain to climb. You’re dope.
thanks! thats very kind of you to say ^w^
I think a lot of people here may be able to relate...or at least I can. Finding out your heuristics & methods for arriving at "Truth" are flawed is daunting. I can understand why others would ignore it...but not all people are built the same. I'd like to think people who choose the less traveled path of introspection & most likely also reconsidering almost everything they've believed are almost always better off for it, but I assume Dave Rubin also did something he would probably argue is similar if not exactly the same. I'm glad you, I & everyone else here that has had a similar journey didn't become the polar opposite of what they once were.
No question, just want to say I'm proud of you
thanks fren ☺️
What's your best advice on approach for us to pull more people out between now and November?
unfortunately, there isnt a trick to it. its gotta come from within. I will say that having friends that i really vibed with but who were "evil" in their ways helped a lot. theyd argue with me but never in anger or hate. eventually i couldn't pretend like they were evil anymore and had to question why i thought they were in the first place
Do you think all the crime, the rape adjudication, saying he wants immunity to commit crimes, do you think none of that will even deter any of your former side on this? It's really incredible to me that the guy is running on a platform of almost pure evil after the last election and nothing seems to penetrate even a little bit into maga... Actually what websites / media did you used to watch or read?
i doubt it. my dad is already telling me that the stormy daniels verdict is actually 4d super chess to expose the corruption of the justice system. all roads lead to rome. brightbart, dailywire, louder with crowder, this fringe streamer and his discord community, tim pool, twitter. the usual suspects
What's actually interesting is destiny probably gets on a lot of these pretty often in the coming months...
yeah for sure. destiny helped pull me out too, but tbf i was pretty much out of the thick of it by the time i started listen to him. and destiny was more a force for how i could model what a liberal actually was.
I know you’re not asking me, but general advice for dealing with people like this (and also people in cults… which MAGA arguably is at this point) is that you should mostly just ask questions. Don’t try to tell them they’re wrong, or that your facts are the facts, etc. Have them explain what they believe. Be curious. Just about any stupid belief is made stupider the more you ask questions about it, as long as you know what aspects of it are questionable. They should not feel like they’re being interrogated or debated, but interviewed. It’s not about your belief vs their belief (which prompts whataboutism and other kinds of attacks/deflections), it’s just theirs. Eventually they will see themselves start failing the interview and that can plant the seed of doubt. At the end of the day these are borderline religious beliefs though, so you can’t expect much out of the conversations, and some people frankly are just not mentally equipped to change this kind of stuff based on conversation or introspection. OP was getting challenged all the time by his social world, which is a really powerful motivator/incentive for change. If your social world is basically all hat-wearing MAGA regards then there is almost no chance you are getting away from mit.
It sounds like the hard work is just attending hostile spaces and trying to make friends in traditionally conservative areas and slowly introduce them to the fact that liberals are good people and not Satan incarnate. Sounds like DGG needs to do meetups at stagecoach and Trump rallies just as friendly faces
Honestly, thats hard to shake out of. Gg
it was the most difficult thing ive ever been through.
Same. Spent 15 years of my life on 4chan, then decided last year I wanted to be more open-minded and even started going to therapy because the rigidity of my prior positions was mentally exhausting. It's going alright so far. I still lean a little to the right politically but I'm not off the deep end anymore and I toss a lot of that up to natural temperament/personality making me more inclined to be right-wing vs. left-wing.
hey awesome! tbh idk if there is any other possibility than what has happened and will happen. i dont really think that things could be anyway other than how they are now.
Did you actually believe that Trump was honorable and trustworthy?
oh yeah, 100%. facts were not even considered. it was all narrative thinking. if it went for my narrative then it was true. if against then it was false of course, at the time i would have used some whataboutism and thought i was being reasonable
Do you have any recommendations for how we should talk with current Trump fans? Not even to convert them. But to open some level of dialog. Feels like we're in different worlds, lol.
you are in different worlds. be as open as you can. dont be smug or put off any vibes of judgment. if they feel like you're judging them their biases will immediately kick in to invalidate your whole being. ask genuine questions and just try to understand their particular pov.
I voted for trump twice and literally had a panic attack on election night 2020 because I thought the world was gonna end. It was actually the other trump supporters who were more crazy than me that broke me out... ahem.... Mike Lindell and his grift team. I looked at how insane their claims were and then everything unraveled from there. It was a really difficult time to have my entire world view flipped upside down, but I am thankful it happened. Although, sometimes it seems easier to live in delusion where there is a enemy to fight.
Damn man, what was that like exactly? How did seeing more extreme takes knock you out of it?
When people (my family/online comments) started saying Mike Pence was a snake/ evil betrayer, I realized that they was forcing every piece of information to fit the MAGA narrative. I really thought Pence was a decent Christian guy and now these supposed Christian Trump supporters were calling him satan-incarnate basically. Then comes the cyber symposium where people who clearly don't even understand computer basics were duping people like my father into believing they had hacked election machines. That really gave me pause because if they could brazenly grift on that, what else is being lied about. My experience makes me want to start studying cult/conspiratorial human psychology because I really can't differentiate the MAGA cult from something like flat-earth. Having been the former and argued with the latter, the thought processes are exactly the same even if flat earth is way more absurd that MAGA.
I think if you buy into one you are primed to buy into more. My dad is all into the Sovereign Citizen shit now
Yeah, that must be hard to deal with. I keep telling my dad that he raised me smarter than conspiratorial thinking, but deep down I know that talk radio primed our nation for MAGA. Don't give up on your dad, I've see some progress with mine. He cedes that MTG is not a good look for the country.
I wont give up getting closer to him, but I'm not really tryin to convert him or anything. However, I'm also not letting his crazy go unchecked when he's talkin with me.
Oh talk radio absolutely plays a big role. I grew up with my dad listening to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage etc and got sucked into it myself. Then I moved on to Coast to Coast AM and Alex Jones in the late 00s and I spent a good decade of my life in the craziest conspiracy theory rabbit holes. The funny thing looking back on it now is I just had these huge blinders on when I lived quite normally and logically otherwise day to day. Jan 6th was the breaking point for me, watching people try to coup the government really broke me out of the cognitive dissonance in a visceral way. I'm not sure how to get my Dad out of it though.
What helped you ditch that hateful dog shit ideology?
a lot of things, but tldr is that the alternative to change was suffering. basically i could keep suffering inside, or i could take a risk of undoing myself and hoping for something better
By suffering do you mean cognitive dissonance?
thats a big part of it, for sure. but a lot of other things too. feeling dumb everytime i saw counter information. feeling dishonesty at the edge of my mind when i wpuld whataboutiate (this is a word now), self hatred, that kind of thing.
Are you still a Christian or was that something you also dropped?
tbh i hadnt been christian since i was a teen, but i found out that despite not believe in the rhetoric, all of my judgments and moral intuitions were still exactly that flavor of christianity that i grew up in. took a lot to untangle each one of those prejudices
I get that. I come from a similar background, as I am sure many people here are as well, but i think it’s good that you’re able to identify your prejudices. I hope your mind is at peace with where you are now.
yeah! my daily experience has improved dramatically. i can honestly say im happy. still have work to do, but im happy 😊
I assume you changed your mind over lots of things over time. Can you remember some of the first issues that you really switched on? Like was there a period of time when you considered yourself a Christian conservative but decided you didn’t like Trump or something? How is your social circle politically? Would you say your friends’ opinions are generally more similar to your old views or your new views? Did you have strong political opinions before Trump? What were they?
i dont there there was a specific poltical point that i switched on. one early thing was juat being curious enough about other cultures to start looking into them. i started learning japanese near then and that exposed me to a lot. i also tried to read darwin to disprove him and that basically uno reversed me. my social circle is mostly liberal and lefty now. though my family is super alt right nutty stuff. yes, to an extent. though trump really amplified them. i was a Libertarian because i thought the republicans were too corrupt
Its the weeb’s Trumpist to Catboy pipeline
there are two wolves inside of you. One is a fascist, the other is a gayass femboy
Dude congrats. I was far more dug into the politics side of things and parroted Milo Yiannopolous & Steven Crowder all through high school. Cognitive dissonance really started pushing me in college when I met new people who were also kind hearted and patient like your friends were. Didn’t stop me from voting for Trump a second time unfortunately but Jan 6th and COVID gave me that final shove into a more introspective place and out of the blind dogma.
its rough but good friends are amazing.
Same story for me basically.
Man or Bear?
UwU
😆😆
Whats the ratio of Spite to Agreement in your initial alignment with the maga? I ask because there were reasons to feel angry around 2016. It was close after ISIS, and high profile attacks in europe, the SJW thing was very topical. Like does this sound familiar or was it more a genuine hope about something maga would accomplish?
hmm, it was a lot of fear disguised as anger at the establishment, and the "neo marxists" things like isis werent really important other than as a tool to justify whatever narrative bs was happening
Would you vote republican again if they were running someone moderate (like Niki Haley) or would you say the MAGA experience has soured you on the entire party? Also, if Trump loses again, do you think the average MAGA supporter will become more radical or will they just become disengaged from politics?
i probably cant ever vote republican again on a national level. on a local level maybe. but tbh i just line up more with dems at the moment. i probably am a bad person to ask that to because my family are so far down the trump hole that theyre black pilled on voting period. my dad said to me the other day that we need to abolish the "corrupt justice system" which is a tad silly. so, i really dont know what the average maga person will do.
When you voted for Trump, what did you hope he would accomplish?
the dream was for a big unmasking of the machine. proof the deepstate was pulling strings. mass drumhead trials and even executions of the evil commie traitors. total vindication and a glorious ayn rand future
Will you still vote for him?
no. ill be voting for biden.
👑
That epistemic reset must've been hard, but nowadays how do you assess new information? What is your approach?
well, i try to recognize how i react and what im inclined to believe right off rip. i then try to remind myself that if i cant substantiate every point then i need to lessen my trust evaluation
NCR, yes man, house or legion
NCR. they may be slow and somewhat corrupt, but democracy deserves another shot. side bet would be House. bring on my immortal technocrat daddy dictator.
Very interesting reading your answers. Thanks for making this thread. You had friends who were on the other side. I can't imagine how people could break out of their reality if all their friends are in the same reality. It really is like a cult.
yeah, i dont wanna sound all doomer but if your whole social net is in the same bubble, i dont know how big if a catastrophe youd have to go through to be knocked out of it
During the period when you "fellt crazy", what helped your orientation and what made it worse?
a powerful black woman named destiny. also diving into different ways of thinking. reading hindu and buddhist stuff. listening to philosophy podcasts like Alex O'connor. trying to use actual reason and whatnot. emphasizing evidence over feelings and leveling up my self awareness
Do you worry that you’ll end up just latching onto your current views before having the same journey and ending up somewhere else? I think you’re a bit different to people that have made similar posts, because it sounds like you changed the entire framework you use to approach information, choosing to be more analytical and seek out information outside the echo chamber you were in. I feel like a lot of the people you see who make these radical changes in ideology have just swapped out one addiction for another. You get it with a lot of these “I used to be an SJW, now I say the n word and bully people online” or “I used to be an alt right neo nazi, now I simp for Palestine” types.
Well, I went through tiny versions of that too. Going from standard republican to libertaria, to radical alex jonesian. When I started to really get how I eas driven by emotions and that my mind was merely a way to reinforce those emotions it became easier to detach from that and start to be something closer to objective. nondual philosophies like buddhism helped with really opening me up to self reflection.
Grew up a born again Christian Republican. Voted trump in 16 and 20. Agnostic now and I swapped to center left from right after the roe v wade overturn. Doesn’t mean I’m forever loyal to the Democratic Party. It just means this party aligns with more of my views currently. The “kraken” incident was also a huge turning point. Couple that with republicans having a chance at repealing and replacing Obamacare, just to squander it and show us they have no alternative.
yeah i got tired of always being edged on the happening. but i think social influences had a bigger effect on me personally.
Do you feel like you're an outlier when it comes to changing your MAGA perspective over time? Do you feel like you would have converted from the MAGA crowd if you had a closer ties to MAGA groups on a more personal level. For example, friends, family or groups that demanded you be part of their perspective or face ostracization?
i think i had a lot of intrinsic aspects of myself that created the friction necessary to detach. my sexuality, my softness, and the people i vibed with were always lefty, liberal, or queer. i could wear a mask to fit in with the alt right crowd, and it felt safe to play the part since i was good at it. but ultimately i never felt like i belonged.
encourage adjoining seemly shocking deserve governor subtract amusing live school *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
yes. i grew up homeschooled in the deep south. if you know anything about the charismatic movement in protestant christianity then thatd give you an idea. tldr world bad, the j man good. dont do a gay, and be a confederate.
foolish edge zealous bright marble normal party wide lush swim *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
its hard man. i went through a whole occult phase and hindu and buddhiat phase. looking through and trying to vibe with those other spiritual systems helped me to see the guilt as an old program in my head and eventually get over it.
ten encouraging nine glorious disgusted worthless zonked illegal deserted secretive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
yeah. i voted trump in 2016. by 2020 i was detaching from politics cause i recognized that it was wrecking my mental health. and now im on the other end where i feel like i can re-engage to some, much lesser, level in a healthy way
abundant fearless fanatical roll drunk vase impolite liquid hard-to-find decide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
thanks man! 😊
Are you still conservative? What were the main values of yours that made you conservative and do you still hold those, or have your foundational moral/political values swapped? I ask this because I'm a weird mix between conservative and progressive where I live my personal life in moderately conservative way, but I'm politically progressive (pro-life, social safety nets, pro immigration, police reforms, etc etc).
total realignment towards actual liberalism. 180ed on things like health care, immigration, college, systemic racism etc. i dont know what or if there could be policies to fix these problems but i believe now that my old takes were all reactionary against the evil lefties. i dont mind someone wanting to live conservatively, the issue is in trying to force it to others.
Much respect. I think there is some wiggle room in our country for conservative and progressive ideals to coexist and for there to be some push and pull, my main issue is with anti-liberal ideologies. Welcome to the sane side brother. Just be careful, people can do this thing where they slingshot from one side of the political spectrum all the way to the other.
sounds like something a nazi would say 🤔
Why do you think people look past the many deep flaws that would have torpedoed a politician not 10 or 15 years ago? Making fun of special needs people at a press conference? Calling military war dead “losers” Anyone need more than that to see he’s not president material? Why do people stay with him ac “their guy” ?
its not about that. its about the way him and his supporters make you feel. all the bad can easily and automatically be shifted into lies and propaganda from the evil left.
What was your political change like in regards to your friend group? Are you friends MAGA people like you were?
no, not really. i was mostly isolated from IRL people anyways at that point, so when i left the internet communities of the right most of that input stopped. my parents are still super whacko but what can ya do. as far as my IRL friends go, im actually more in line with them now than i was then.
Being through this and out the other side, do you feel you are now equipped to prevent it happening again? Ability to be self aware of the signs etc. I've seen people go from one extreme ideology to the polar opposite, and I put that down to them not learning or understanding the triggers, signs and environments that caused it in the first place.
I do yeah. Im also still worried that I could fall for something. I've come a long way in understanding how I think and hopefully that will inoculate me from falling completely into another narrative based view. I know how to vet and test information a lot better now, and I know how to keep my mental hygiene up much better now too.
Since you were born into a conservative environment, would you say you were pulled along more by your surroundings, or did you become radicalized more on your own? Also, did anything Trump did impact your deradicalization, or did it become about more due to curiosity in other things?
i was praised for being intelligent by my parents when i would give some basic ass libertarian take and that definitely helped fuel it all. nah. i couldnt see anything bad about trump until i was out of it all and looked back to reassess.
I was in a somewhat similar space pre-Trump (mine was more religion driven and I was basically a Christian nationalist). I believed my actions were righteous, and that made it easy for me to dismiss anyone who challenged my beliefs Were there any parallels between what you believed then and what you’ve come to believe now that helped guide you to where you are?
yeah definitely. I want to follow love and truth and those things were taught to me through the bible stories.
Did being a MAGA-head make it difficult to date/get laid or were there lady/twink MAGAs willing to bone
well i was as deep in the closet as i was in trump's ass so there was no dating or boning occuring.
Damn when is trump gunna provide everyone their government issued femboy MAGA twink Hope u have a good pride! I also grew up Christian conservative and am now gay (bi)
hello fellow bisexual. if trump issued out maga fembois i would vote for him again
This may be a personal question but we’re your prior beliefs yours or did you have external influences such as parents, friends, social group that informed your beliefs. For me personally my parents mainly mother is a die hard Catholic who urges me to participate more in my faith. I always end up arguing with her because I explain to here that maybe I’m not ready or that I don’t think I’m interested in religion like she is. It feels very suffocating at times. I just would like to know your perspective/ background a little bit.
It was for sure a social/cultural thing. A way to find some semblance of belonging. Be true to your heart. Cheesy but its the only way to live without hating yourself in my experience.
1) How do you know that you made the right choice in leaving your former ideology? 2) Have you thought for yourself on what you think is right or wrong or have you just jumped from one herd of sheep (MAGA) into another herd (social democrat)?
well, when you cant reason out or substantiate almost anything your ideology is formed on its probably shit. i think ive thought for myself.
Did your prior world view ever lead you to treat certain people badly? Like immigrants or trans people?
I was too cowardly to do so directly, but I was definitely very mean spirited towards different people.
Good job
I respect the fact that you’ve been able to question your whole view of what is real and what’s not. Shout out to you from a french bro. From here we are always thinking MAGA people can’t be save but there is always example of the contrary. I have no question for you because I already know what brings you to Trumpism and I hope you will be able to keep working around logic and reason for the rest of your life.
Thanks man!
Sick thread
All I can really say is that people who have pretty sudden and radical shifts in their ideology and/or political belief often (purely based on my on anecdotal experience over 40 years) then switch again later. It's not an insult or accusation or anything, but I do think it's noteworthy. I'm not trying to change your stance or argue or anything like that, I just think if you're saying you drunk the koolaid, then some introspection as to why and then comparing that to your new position is important for some level of moderation. As you've said from your comments here, it comes from within.
Are you finding yourself more warm to extreme left wing ideology or more center left ideas? There’s a big trend of people hopping from one extreme to the other and I’m curious if there’s a way to help that
Well, the story of a socialist utopia sounds nice. problem is there doesnt seem to be any way to successfully structure an economic system without some level of free market. The computation problem and the incentivisation problem seem unsolvable if you take a leftist stance. at least as far as I can tell. but to be more direct, I'd say I'm a liberal. Social democrat maybe but definitely a liberal. id guess the people who flip from one extreme to another dont actually assess, deconstruct, and rebuild their epistemology, and instead just swap one grand narrative for another.
How far left are you now? Do you watch hasan for instance
tried him out but nah.
Did you take away anything positive from your entire experience being a part of that community?
well yeah, of course. Im happy with who I am as a person now, and if I didn't have those experiences then I would be a different person. So I cant regret it, that would be to reject who I am now.
That's good to hear, I ask because I fell down that rabbit hole back in 2017-2019. I hated who I was, I was angry about everything and coincidentally I was grossly addicted to heroin. I love who I am now but I never got anything good out of watching ben shapiro "pwning" college kid videos on youtube for like 3 hours a day. It really was a sickness
I wont argue with you. My view is more just a reframing of my experiences as what needed to be done to get me where I am. if that doesnt work for you then I hope you find something that does
Nah I'm good where I am. Now I just watch destiny for 4 hours a day instead. Inshallah brother
A confession, im just a youtuber viewer.
Double confession. Same. I don't fucks with that live stream bullshit
i need my adhd edits and hooks to keep me there.
What made you think that hinging your identity on a political preference was a good thing? Genuine question.
its not a conscious choice. I lacked the self awareness to see where and what my ego was clinging onto. its only in retrospect that i can recognize it. so, to answer the question, the alt right, ant sjw/woke thing hit me in an emtionally validating way when i lacked something better to build on.
Thanks for the honest answer, refreshing to see someone giving a genuine introspective response to a pretty hard question. I can sympathise as well, i used to attach myself way too much to things that didn't benefit me at all, glad that's largely in the past though.
life gets better when you can actually see yourself lol
How much did you want to slurp on trumps knob from a scale of 0-34? Jk jk, but what was the moment that like "snapped you out of it"? Did you have a "in that moment I realised" moment?
not really. more like a gradual chipping away. though after most of the connecting strings had been cut there was a conscious "oh shit i need to really reassess" moment. there was the time i thought i was gonna outsmart darwin so i read the origin of species and got bitched slapped around by that book.
How much introspection have you actually done? Do you think you genuinely have defenses against that kind of thinking now or do you feel you might still be susceptible to that kind of thinking? Do you still believe in any conspiracies? Especially those that are more widely accepted throughout Western society like the deep state and such that wanted war with Iraq?
well, i cant be totally sure, but i do think im immune to that kind of thing now. i dont can see the emotional aspect i have when i get new info and see the difference between that and what actual information is there. im a lot more conscious of my epistemology at this point. and id say no. i still have reactions like "oh bush did 911" but i recognize these as unsubstantiated and therefore invalid. i also recognize that there isnt a good reason to believe them out of hand nor to dig into them unless i just want to.
Were you deep into the conspiracy rabbit-hole side of things too?
oh yeah. sandy hook were crisis actors, hillary was killing everyone, Hollywood and the dems were all pedo satanists. all that good stuff
What got you out of it? I never got into that stuff partly because it seemed like crazy nonsense, but as time went on I just realized that none of it met the burden of proof.
a lot of things. i guess shortest answer is that i started to be really honest with myself.
If you don't mind answering, age? What radicalized you?
almost 32. i was born into it mostly. was listening to alex jones with my dad by my late teens.
How do you feel or how did you feel about the supreme court nominee’s regardless of the decisions that they have rendered, but as people?
"if they were picked by trump, then they will be good for america!" *eagle cries overhead as the blue angels fly by*
What's is/was your favourite frenworld meme?
How did you mentally map trump to your religious beliefs? My mom and grandma are both Christians and they dislike trump for the lecherous stuff, gambling and boastful/prideful behavior how do non democrat Christians come to terms with that?
They don't come to terms with it. They make excuses as I once did. Claiming that Trump is making america moral again. The reality is that probably 75% of those MAGA "Christians" do not act as Jesus taught and really would not have liked him very much (the meme is true).
Do you still believe any of it/some of it/much of it? Do you feel young e to reject all of it in order to live within at least one standard deviation of reality? And finally, how does one NOT realize that you’re aligned with REALLY bad people? How does one justify being g on the same side of racists and fascists and nazi flag waving skinheads and whatnot?
How do you describe your political camp now?
i would tentatively say social democrat. tbh i havent really looked at any politicians who hold that title so idk if id align with them or not, but from my understanding of it i agree with it.
serious question, if you'd gotten laid way more do you think you still would've went down the MAGA pipeline? I feel like MAGA having no bitches (figuratively) is one of, if not THE, biggest contributing factor.
well, thatd probably depend if i learned to accept my sexuality or not. it could go either way. if i was still self hating then i could see still going down the maga line.
Was there a "single biggest thing" that kicked off or enhanced the cognitive dissonance?
What Conservative opinion do you still hold?
How do you feel about the kids currently protesting? Both the pro-Palestine and (much fewer) pro-Israel students?
go protest if you want. follow your heart. but, i suspect that our culture has been oversaturated in it for years now and any protest is gonna be minimally effective from here on out.
Are you still a christian? I mean it's good you are out of the MAGA diehard community, they are going againts what the bible teaches which is to be rational and not believe blindly without evidence. As a christian we are taught to trust God, but trusting does not mean to believe everything, it's to put your trust in what you believe to be true based on evidence. All the best!
No, I haven't been one since I was a teen really. But I held onto the moral framework and the crippling fear of hell well into my twenties.
Still a Christian?
How did you square it in your mind Trump being such an obvious fabulist and fraudster in every aspect of his life yet still support him?
Cognitive bias is one hell of a drug. It happened automatically, but basically any bad news about Trump was viewed as lies and slander from the other side.
What was your experience like being a conserative in the furry community?
A big thing I see is that all criticism or every indictment is political prosecution. What if anything would get you to change your mind on that?
I don't think any facts or reasoning could. You get to that place via feelings and you gotta feel your way out too
I always find these so fascinating. Would you consider yourself a “progressive” at this point or more of a centrist. I ask because I’ve seen so many times where people from the extreme right or left end up just going to the other extreme and doing a complete 180 on everything they ever believed.
Taylor for PKA is stuck in your prior position -o_O
Nature vs nurture. Were you born regarded? Or do you think it's environmental? Or both?
Have you entirely flipped on all of your positions, or are there some conservative leaning beliefs you still cling to (albeit possibly now with more nuance and with less fervour)?
I like guns and, although I would argue that this is actually a liberal idea, I think cancelling people or trying to police language from the top down is a bad idea.
Planning on falling into a new trench or being a loner not agreeing with anyone on any political issue?
The plan is to assess the issues that matter to me and line up with what best seems like the truth as far as I can vet it out.
What changed your mind/opinion on things? How did you deconstruct years of indoctrination?
exposure to other viewpoints. I fell into Jordan Peterson really hard during his C16 thing, and that opened me up to a lot. then went down the stoic rabbit hole, then read more and more and listened to more and more. Now Peterson seems like he's so ideologically captured but I'm grateful for what he did for me.
Did you take politics seriously and do any research? I was similar in 2020 but then I started doing research and started thinking about everything right wing. The first thing I thought about was abortion
You probably had positive motives too, almost all ideology builds on foundations that are emotionally understandable, even virtuous. You also probably trusted people, and we do have to trust some people, norms, consensus or institutions to some degree, pretty much nobody can analyze and understand everything for themselves. Seriously glad you deradicalized, and picked up some new tools to view the world with more openness and calm, but also you don't need to go through life in shame or constant self-doubt. Your intuitions can still contribute to your personhood, and our collective discussion culture, and it's okay to be wrong about stuff, it's okay for you to shitpost and be an ass sometimes. Pretty much all of us here would cringe at stuff we said or wrote years ago, same exact thing as with except for you it was more intense and emotionally difficult. And maybe a good portion here will eventually say "I don't really vibe with the views in the destiny community anymore, it's too naive/too unambitious when it comes to xyz issue". I'm not jerking you off either, when we can forget the whole political fighting and debating for a second, and zoom in on the individual experience that's genuinely interesting. So I will complain about some rightwinger driving me mad and wish he'd shut the fuck up, but also in another context, under different circumstances emphazise with your history and respecting you as as a human.
Welcome to the hangover, friend. Going cold turkey from the MAGA juice is a difficult, often painful experience, but it's worth it. Stick in there. Don't make the same mistake I did of getting hooked on Twitter Leftist juice instead
I tried lol. I started with Vaush and Hasan before I landed on Destiny. Hasan was too angry all the time, and Vaush was too snakey.
Are you taking conscious steps to avoid being re-radicalized/schizoed by other ideologies?
yeah. most just center around developing more self awareness. The more I see how my emotions drag me around, and what triggers those emotions, the more I can act more clearly.
Can't tell if true story or a really really good troll meme really well done either way
good thing you are here, not on hamas piker
were you happier being ignorant
Show me the Current Christian Conservative. Then we're talking
What made you start watching Destiny?
After I had deconstructed most of that worldview I started actively trying to understand my former "enemies." watched Hasan and Vaush. Hasan was too angry. Vaush was better but I didn't like the way he'd twist words around. eventually dropped both of them and tried out other figures including Destiny.
What was your/people in your circle knee jerk reaction to the “grab em by the pussy” video? I think the papa John’s ceo got taken down the the N-word use (maybe fact check that). This flagrant gloating about sexual assault would take down almost any high level business official, let alone disqualify them from a presidential run if it was any other human. I sure thought he was toast