Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s ‘Unimaginable’ Presidency - “Imagine if I had done any of this,” the former two-term president said.

[u/Quirkie]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-breaks-silence-on-trumps-unimaginable-presidency/

[u/mockg]

Are you sure that is just not republicans and the right wing news being themselves. I swear the only times I hear about budget from them is if a democrat president is in charge.

[u/EE_Tim → u/mockg]

It's called the Two Santas Strategy and it's by design.

[u/RanaMisteria → u/[deleted]]

They don’t have to be stupid to fall for it. All the GOP has to do is flood the zone. If their politicians, and their economists, and their media, and their etc. are all saying the same thing over and over then it starts to look like they know what they’re talking about because surely if it was all nonsense then someone would say so? And that’s all they need because they’ve already laid such solid groundwork to ensure that their voters don’t trust any other source of information but those sanctioned by the party. People aren’t stupid for being brainwashed. The GOP has been at this for decades. They have slowly pushed their voters boundaries to get them to accept more and more extreme, illegal, immoral, authoritarian, and anti-constitutional crap. Some GOP voters are not smart it’s true, and some are bigots and would be fully on board with everything even if the party were honest, but most of them are mostly good people who genuinely buy the lies. They have been radicalised. They’re in a cult. Yes, their choices are still their own, but it’s a bit like being in an abusive relationship. You think you have no choice when really, you can always just walk away. But abusers and cults both like to boil the frog so to speak, and by the time people realise what’s happening the water is already boiling and you’re stuck. Or you feel stuck. Or you think “well, I’m already covered in 3rd degree burns and I’ve come this far and my whole family hates me I might as well stick it out to the bitter end.” Which is the sunk cost fallacy. Or you think things will get better or….

All I’m saying is that yeah, it’s dumb, and yeah, its wrong, and yeah, people who decide they’re okay with their party being full of and run by Nazis are, at the very least, Nazi sympathisers and so automatically wrong in all ways at all times period. But people who are in a cult need to feel like there’s a way back to reality, otherwise even if they realise they have been duped and controlled, they won’t feel like they have a choice but to stay in the cult. Because one day this will end, and we will have to figure out how to put ourselves back together.

By all means, fight fascism with everything you have, but don’t lose sight of each other’s humanity.

[u/PlushladyC → u/RanaMisteria]

Well said . Its been a huge campaign of manipulation .

Im not from USA - just a few monthes back I finally had the realisation that your country is as deeply brainwashed as China or any of the other nations that previously would have been denounced by your government .

And just calling everyone dumb is not going to help come back together as a Nation going forward

[u/RanaMisteria → u/PlushladyC]

I live in the UK now and we have the same problem here. It’s just subtler. And more class driven. But we have a current Labour government saying they’re going to be reducing how much money is given in PIP (personal independence payments) for disabled people and they’re going to make it harder to qualify for disability benefits and PIP in the future. PIP is already hard to get, and the process to apply is notoriously dehumanising. When I first moved here we had a Labour government and social services and the NHS and local government were all providing far more services and social safety net programmes than they do now. But almost 15 years of Tory “austerity” has stripped those services and programmes so much that many of them don’t exist anymore. They began to privatise the NHS bit by bit because they see how much money it makes people in the US and as they’re the ones who own the concerns that would benefit, well, they wanted what the US had. It’s a mess. They basically did the UK Two Santas. The Two Father Christmases Strategy. And now what’s happening? Labour is saying they’re going to have to cut back on more social safety net spending to fix the problem. It’s a mess everywhere.

[u/PlushladyC → u/RanaMisteria]

Well said . Its been a huge campaign of manipulation .

Im not from USA - just a few monthes back I finally had the realisation that your country is as deeply brainwashed as China or any of the other nations that previously would have been denounced by your government .

And just calling everyone dumb is not going to help come back together as a Nation going forward