Long story. So bear with me but I think it's interesting.
I'm from Australia. So who the fuck cares about US politics right?
Well back in 2016 the media had me. I was a headline reader and would commonly say to people the likes of "Imagine if Trump wins! How fucked would the world be".
One day a guy from work sort of red pilled me in a weird way... He was a Pakistani and he told me "Who cares... We're not from the US. And they deserve it". It made me laugh (sorry pedes).
Now obviously he had an axe to grind from a Pakistani point of view but he sort of burst my bubble. Why the fuck would I care or stress being from Australia about Trump being president. I never cared before. That's when I realised the media had fucked me.
Anyway a couple of months later some barrister friend (had been having dinner once a week every week for several years) started ranting to me at dinner about Trump being president ending the world. I thought I could maybe help him and calm him down. Try and make him see that it doesn't matter that much. Long story short... We have never caught up socially since then. I've got lots of friends. And he was sort of a "single" friend and I'd just met my wife so while I was disappointed... It didn't stress me too much but it was an eye opener.
Anyway started becoming a Trump fan. Bet on him winning. He won but I learned for years to just shut up about it because people still really hate him here. And basically buy into the fact that anyone who likes him (or even doesn't hate him) is a racist degenerate.
Earlier this year lost another friend. Called her up during Covid to make sure she was alright because she is at high risk (cancer survivor). She started ranting about how fucking stupid Trump was. I backed off and was like "yeah he's got a hard job and who knows what the right decision is" and tried to be non chalant. She basically pushed me until she called me a "fucking idiot" and I told her that I'm not here to listen to her bullshit and to fuck off. She was a little bit of a "pity" friend of mine so was happy to fuck her off at this point.
Anyway feel I almost lost another friend lately. He's a good one who I don't want to lose.
Hes a smart guy. Professional, very educated and wealthy. He HATES Trump. But basically acts like he doesn't care.
So he'll send me "Trump is shit" articles or videos and then when I argue back he's like... "Ah I don't really care". But you know he does. At one point I basically confronted him about his attitude and said that his attitude was confrontational but it's not worth ruining our friendship. He backed down and apologised but I can tell he still HATES Trump and a part of that hates projects onto me.
It's crazy that the media machine is so powerful. That people in Australia lose friends over it.
Imagine being in the US and losing a friend over who the Prime Minister of Germany is.
See. That's what's frustrating with this guy. He hates Trump purely because the media tells him to.
But then sort of denies he even hates him and acts like he couldnt be bothered discussing it.
Tonight I sent him some articles about what a lying piece of shit biden is (saying a drink driver killed his wife and daughter when the driver wasn't drunk). Just something that genuinely shocked me.
He sent me a link to the Washington post saying trump had lied (or mislead) 20000 times.
Now I disputed a bunch of those fact checks. And said it's "mostly" just definitional bullshit (Trump's no Saint). But now he'll just be like .. ah yeah I don't care really.
Infuriatingly mislead by the media.
I get the same thing. It’s so weird.
I pilled only one person successfully. It was glorious but very difficult and after several big drunken arguments too. I thought I’d have to can that friendship but miraculously they became very balanced.
With others it’s just the same old grind. It feels like Trump is Emmanuel Goldstein from 1984, eliciting incandescent rage from the masses.
I don’t wear any politics on my sleeve, usually. And who knows - maybe this website has brainwashed me? But I’m convinced that Obama Co.’s administration was dicey and this is the @rse end of it trying for one more throw of the dice. Good to hear about the support for Trump
The "i don't really care " thing is a tactic people use when they don't want to be pressed or questioned on their position. Hes probably a low information hater in that he read headlines and buys into them without further researching them so when you take the time to dispute it, he can just say "I dont REALLY care" so he doesn't have to acknowledge he's wrong. Its easier than re-evaluating his biases.
Id just point out that if you can find and disprove a few of these things with little effort, imagine how much more hes been lied to about other things.
Couch it by saying you don't pretend the man is a saints, but obviously the media is not truthful and willing to lie to manipulate how people feel about him too. Wonder aloud what else they've lied about.
Once you get him thinking on that, honestly , you've won.
My husband was basically this way up until a few months ago. He wouldn't really say he didn't care, it's more that he would just say politics is so dumb and he was tired of hearing about it. But he would still on occasion say something that was very much like something the MSM would say about Trump or a certain political subject (even though he voted for Trump in 2016!). We would sometimes get into small fights over it, in large part because I would want to talk about what was really going on, and I just couldn't believe he would side with obvious lies even though he acted like he wanted nothing to do with any of it.
I don't know what happened honestly, but he changed his mind quite suddenly (from my perspective). Both of our jobs had us working from home since early spring, and the monotony of it all was starting to get pretty depressing. I wasn't keeping up with the news, would hardly talk about it. Then one day he started showing me red pilled type of things from instagram and talking about Ben Shapiro, the walkaway movement, and suddenly he knows who Candace Owens is. I was amazed. (He is mixed, half Asian half white, so I'm guessing the walkaway thing in particular speaks to him.)
He now says he hates that he felt forced to care and forced to pick a side, but I think all of this has just become too retarded to ignore. Politics have taken over every aspect of all of our lives. Possibly most importantly, once I stopped talking about it, he came to his own conclusions because he wanted to, and people definitely have to want to do something on their own and feel like it was their own decision. It can't be forced. I'm just happy to say he's on our side.
My favorite is ""fact check: Trump claimed there were hamburgers stacked to the ceiling. There were not."
I genuinely can't remember whether it was satire or not because the media actually is this petty.
Even our local news is off the charts orange man bad. I’ve tried discussing the President with friends and family who don’t follow politics closely and only listen to tv news. I’ve had some yell and say I’m not listening to you and walk away. Their ignorance will shape a socialist nightmare future for my children. I’ve stopped trying to communicate with the most irrational. More than ever we need a General Patton to fight back against the tyrants and despots foreign and domestic.
I’m not sure about Oz, but in the US we are taught from a very young age to have blind faith in “authoritative sources” of info. From kindergarten teachers to professors and then journalists / experts.
Every step of the way our ability to think critically and our sense of skepticism are reprogrammed.
The majority of people just don’t think outside of their instructors
You said that well. A lot of people think it's authority we're taught to respect, but it's not. It's, as you said, authoritative sources, which can easily undermine parents, elders, pastors, and other authority figures. Then when we get old enough, authoritative sources are whomever we pick or respect.
Problem in Aus is that most of the legacy media from our youth is now tainted