Thread by @JbkJbk1234

This paragraph. All of it.

https://twitter.com/AdrienneLaF/status/1344673023425732609

This paragraph, on the other hand, underscores the problem.

You're not going to be able to thread the needle here. The pundits the cray segment of the base are listening to have more credibility with them than you. Sometimes when people are talking crazy, the best prescription is to tell them, flatly, that's crazy talk.

It occurs to me that that the gentle approach is actually counterproductive with people who are that far gone. It cloaks their wish casting with a veneer of respectability and it gives license to the notion that they have a monopoly on anger.

Finally, while the 1st Amendment allows people to believe and regurgitate all kinds of insane nonsense, it doesn't follow that believing and communicating insane nonsense should, or will, be consequence free from a societal perspective.

I remember having a business lunch with someone who was meeting with me to try to get an in with a mutual friend after the 2012 election. Her Facebook account was a hot mess (upside down flag, America is over, etc.) I told her no one wants to alienate half their client base.

She was so far in her own bubble that she was stunned by the suggestion that she should tone it down. She wasn't going to censor herself!

It was clearly the first time anyone had raised the idea of possible consequence for acting cray online.

A specific in-law started in about what a great job Trump was doing on the border and how all the kids in cages were being trafficked anyway at a family event. Suffice to say, he wasn't reading the room at all. Everyone wanted him to shut up. I was the only one to say something

Anyway, the only way some of these folks are going to experience a reality-based reality is via personal interaction.