This society has been taken down a very dark path for decades and it started with conservative media - first talk radio and then cable "news" and now internet podcasts and the like.
When I've had people my own age come to me and start on about hidden cities at the center of the earth and all of the sudden go off about it as if! they didn't get the exact same Earth Science lessons in the SAME schools at the same time as I did..
I really have to ask:
-
"Did you hit your head recently and suffer brain damage?"
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"Why did you become so gullible?"
And finally,
- "When did you decide to opt in to superstition, ignorance and New Age, New Earth woo woo shit - the SAME shit that you and I BOTH made fun of when we were kids?"
(When did you decide to get old, boring and stupid, basically..)
It's the Karl Rove effect in action, I guess. The conservatives just spew so much shit that the rubes that can't shut them off for the terror of losing their made up "identity" just go soft in the head and believe lies that 30 years ago, they would not have.
Repeated lies.. decades of them. Warping reality and making fearful people cling to the lies.