Invasion of the MAGA body snatchers: How many friends have you lost to madness?

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Invasion of the MAGA body snatchers: How many friends have you lost to madness?
What can we do when intelligent, well-meaning people we've known for years start to "do their own research"?

By Mike Lofgren
Contributing Writer
Published October 20, 2024 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) He was, looking back on it, a close friend, although we didn’t debate the state of our souls, something dorm room freshmen of all ages typically discuss. The subjects we chewed over were almost exclusively technical topics, or history, or the sprawling, self-serving institution that Dwight Eisenhower christened the military-industrial complex. He worked at the Pentagon and I was a military analyst on Capitol Hill, and we both took a skeptical stance towards government bureaucracies, having seen them from the inside.

....(snip)....

Then there were a couple of earnest government reformers. God knows, having worked a whole career in government, I understood their critique of its baroque and sclerotic routines. But after a while, meaning after the advent of Trump, their humorless, groping sincerity, which I indulged because of course they “meant well,” curdled into flat-out fascist goose-stepping. There were a handful of others, but all followed the same pattern of being erstwhile intelligent, well-read people, successful in their professional spheres, who went down the rabbit hole. It’s as if they were taken over by a simulacrum, as in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Do you know people like these? I’m not talking about crazy uncles who ruin your Thanksgiving dinner; they’ve been crude and witless since the time you were a little kid who avoided them. I’m referring to intelligent, well-read acquaintances who’ve strangely changed in the last decade; they might not say they’ve become Trump supporters or reactionaries in general, but the sole thrust of their argument is “something-something woke.” Or “Democrats are the real problem.” All too often, this mindset devolves into rants about weather modification or COVID vaccines as a mind-control project.

As I reach the twilight years of a halfway decent run, I have to wonder: Were that many Americans always as crazy as they appear to be now? It didn’t seem so, or perhaps I wasn’t paying attention. The internet might have had something to do with it; now everybody’s an expert. Changes in social conduct might have a role: Folks in years past might have harbored crazy thoughts, but were reluctant to let their freak flags fly. Or it could be the Trump effect: a demonstrably sociopathic leader braying like a demented jackass and beamed into every household might have given Americans permission to express their own previously hidden darkness. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/10/20/invasion-of-the-maga-body-snatchers-how-many-friends-have-you-lost-to-madness/