What's your level of anxiety about the election?

[pat_k]

60. At least 10% are brainwashed.

The brainwashing predates the rise of Rush Limbaugh in the mid-80's, but that marks a turning point that was accelerated with the rise of FOX News in the early 90's.

Sure, maybe 25% of the nation could always be counted out as hardcore racist xenophobes who think "government" is an evil that needs to be destroyed. But the fact that DT has a floor of 46% is the result of the vast, far-right extremist, multibillion-dollar decentralized network that has been blasting a firehose of falsehoods for more than 40 years. It's talk radio (and more recently podcasters), think tanks, and other "influencers," with FOX News as the behemoth at the center.

I lost my mother-in-law to FOX News in the early 2000's when she moved to Florida and started watching what "everyone" watched: FOX News. A formerly active Democrat, highly-intelligent woman (passed the bar at a time when women were unicorns in the profession) started spouting the hateful propaganda. She never recovered.

People across this country have lost friends and family to the brainwashing. Formerly loving, kind people brainwashed into a set of beliefs that leave them alienated from any sense of connection to their own government and eager to utterly destroy hard-won programs and policies that have improved their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens; beliefs that leave them hating those of us who believe our government and public institutions are ours to shape and can be wielded for our collective benefit.

We need more documentaries like the one below; more attention on the stories of people indoctrinated into the far-right cult and the pain of those they leave behind; more stories from “recovering” extremists.

If we don't take this on as a nation and figure out how to reach and deprogram people, we will keep losing them to a cult that is on track to becoming a majority force.