This is what Trump thinks when others look at him

I hate the fucker, but he is looking thinner, but definitely not in a healthy way. He’s looking way worse more recently and all the orange cream and candy floss in the world isn’t helping.

They don’t “want” anything, as pertains to this issue. It’s just random nonsense that’s been engineered by extremely capable and well-funded people, and then found its way into their brain like it did millions of others.

On the one hand, there were a bunch of random made-up reasons why Trump should win the election. The idea that he was anti-war and so we should vote for him because he’ll pull American troops back home and put a stop to the forever war was one. Also, the idea that he’ll finally bring some strength to American foreign policy and put a stop to America being weak and a laughingstock on the world stage was one. They don’t even really notice the contradiction, if one person happens to get exposed to both sides, because they both feel right, and it’s mostly about creating feelings, not a coherent logical structure that can then get analyzed critically.

Then, on the other hand, there are some extremely explicitly pro-Russian propaganda campaigns that suggest that support for Ukraine is costing us billions of dollars, that there’s no reason for us to be there, that Zelensky is corrupt, and, coincidentally, that bringing American dollars back home and stopping the forever war is the most sensible and sane thing to do for anyone who values human life more than imperialism. See how right it sounds? It’s a bunch of shit, and honestly we should be ashamed of ourselves that we’re letting sitting politicians get away with quoting Russian propaganda talking points without it being a crisis that gets talked about on the news every night until they go down to a calamitous defeat and have to withdraw from public life completely.

They’re not coming up with this stuff themselves. The smoothness with which it’s ingratiated itself into what they talk about day-to-day with each other, and how important they now think it is in terms of voting and choosing leaders and how to look at issues of the day, should be a crisis on par with Covid or the 2008 financial crash. But, it’s like drug addiction or an autoimmune disease: The very nature of the problem is that it’s hijacking the machinery that would enable us to come to grips with the problem and fight against it effectively.