Hillary Clinton Suggests ‘Formal Deprogramming’ For ‘MAGA Extremists’

dzheremi said:

"Formal deprogramming" sounds sinister, but I do think something needs to be done about the fact that roughly half of the country lives in an alternate reality where the legitimately-elected president is not the president, there's a 'deep state' operating in places like pizza parlors that is responsible for everything bad in the world, that Donald Trump of all people will save us from (when in reality he can't even save himself from being convicted of being a sex pest and a fraudster), and all the other MAGA, Qanon and other harmful conspiracy nonsense that has gripped the right-wing in this country. Even some Republicans like Mitt Romney have recognized that this is a unique problem affecting members of their party. This is not healthy or sustainable for the country long-term. To sort of quote Voltaire, those who believe in absurdities can be made to commit atrocities. We saw that with our own eyes on January 6th, when members of Trump's MAGA movement stormed the capitol looking to kill government officials who would not do Trump's bidding, and instead killed other people and were themselves killed in the process. That's serious stuff, and just because they were stopped before getting to the government officials they wanted that time does nothing to deter diffuse members with the same political ideology and worldview from trying something similar again, and maybe succeeding. We could very quickly be in a Colombian Palace of Justice Seige-type situation in the USA if nothing is done about the cancer of extremist political ideology in the American right-wing (the far-left has their own problems, but they haven't tried to bring down the federal government because they didn't like the results of an election recently, so I think they can safely be dealt with at a city or state level in well-known trouble spots like Portland Oregon, if the political will ever shows up to do so). The Republican party is essentially unrecognizable from what it was pre-Trump. How does this not bother more conservatives? It's really baffling, shocking, and depressing. I hate where this country is politically, and it is very obvious that the extremist-but-increasingly-not-fringe wing of the Trumpian Party (since, again, it's not really the Republican Party as anyone would've recognized it before Trump) is the problem. This really isn't a "both sides" issue, even though both the left and right have political extremists. "Both sides" aren't trying to snuff out democracy so that their political hero/Jesus figure can rule as dictator despite the majority of the country and the Electoral College clearly saying "no" to having him in power again.

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dzheremi said:

Oh, okay then. That settles it.

Tell me again: Was it followers of Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer who busted into the capitol building carrying a noose and yelling "Hang Mike Pence"? I remember that being MAGA people, but maybe reality has somehow changed in the past three years or so.

I don't understand how you (not "you", poster, but MAGA people) can be such hardcore Republicans that you want to kill other Republicans over it. I'm obviously not on the right, but even though I think Joe Biden is unimpressive-to-bad (depending on what we're talking about and his performance in that area, not on the man himself, since the Democratic Party is not currently a personality cult), I've ,never wanted to kill him or any other Democratic politician over it. I want them to stop being in positions of power, sure, but I'm not about to get shot by capitol police just so I can underline that point in the most threatening, violent manner possible short of actually killing them.

If you don't see that as a problem, then frankly you are lending more credence to Hilary Clinton's idea than anyone on the opposite side of the political isle from you ever could. When people say that MAGA is a cult and its members are dangerous, they're saying that not because they just hate Republicans so much (you'll note how nobody says this sort of thing about, I don't know...Mitt Romney). I don't care who votes Republican; I do very much care about who is willing to kill other people over their political ideology, no matter what it is. Right now, such people are found way more commonly on the MAGA side of the Republican Party than anywhere on the American left. We haven't had large scale "let's blow up the government"-style leftist/anarchist terrorism in this country since the early part of the last century (see, e.g., the Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco in 1916, though that one is actually officially unsolved; anarchists like Alexander Berkman are heavily suspected, however). This is at least partially explainable by the fact that the Democratic Party does not send anarchist or other far-leftist candidates to the White House (since people that far left wouldn't be caught dead in the Democratic Party in the first place). By contrast, the GOP amplifies and enables people who are willing to destroy American democracy itself to get their way, like Donald Trump. Again, this is not a "both sides" issue, and it certainly isn't a "Democrats are uniquely responsible for how bad things are" situation. You can choose to live in unreality, but I will not be joining you there.

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Wings like Eagles said:

I think as already posted above, Trump will add on even more supporters/voters.

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dzheremi said:

I don't watch CNN, and I'm not a Democrat. I just live in reality where I know who the current president is, and I don't believe in baseless conspiratorial nonsense about the 2020 election, or Pizzagate, or Qanon, or any of this nonsense that the right-wing in the USA has been occupied with since Trump took office. If that makes my position some kind of 'media narrative', then I guess that's fine, because this would be one time in which that media narrative actually aligns with reality, which is more than we can say for the people who still don't recognize the current president or the results of the 2020 election.

So, yes, it is an alternate reality that MAGA people live in. Pointing to other people who have not drunk the Trump-Aid and saying "Nuh uh! You're in denial!" is absolutely something that people in cults do (see, e.g., Scientology's "only we can save the world, because no one else knows what's going on" leaked internal messaging). I can only say again what I said to the other person who tried to blame the Democratic Party for every evil in the world: You are giving Hilary Clinton's idea more support the longer you remain in the MAGA-verse. Not all Republicans are there in the first place (though it is indisputable that he has captured the bulk of the party, and the minds of the right-wing in the USA in general), so you wouldn't have to give up your political allegiances or opinions to get out of the Trumpian cult, but if you actually want to make America great again as a goal rather than a tired political slogan, you should start by withdrawing from the cult within the GOP that seeks to just burn everything down so that nobody else gets to do anything. What else was the recent ousting of former-speaker McCarthy about, if not a reprisal for his unwillingness to bend the knee to the MAGA faction of the GOP in discussions with Democrats? That stuff's gotta go. Remember: Even if your Fox News/OAN messaging tells you that MAGA people are the only real Americans who matter or really know what's going on or whatever, you still have to contend with the fact that half of the country disagrees with you. Or does everyone who isn't MAGA just magically not exist, like how Joe Biden isn't the president because Trump said so? Talk about a narrative...except this one wouldn't make a good movie, just like it didn't make for anything good in real life, either.

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