Thread by @FluteMagician

1) People like Charlie Kirk don’t just happen. Causes and conditions leads up to them. They’re not born this way. They come into contact with and accept a toxic ideology that then creates in them a worldview based on mistaken perceptions about the world around them. And also⬇️

2) For decades now, this toxic ideology has been spread by the GOP due to their anger, resentments, jealousies, greed, selfishness, hatred, but most of all: their thirst for ultimate power. They divide and conquer by stoking hatred and division amongst the population. And⬇️

3) Know this: It is not Charlie Kirk or people like him that are the problem here. The problem is the poisonous ideology that has infected the political system and creates people who say things like they do. They are merely repeating what the ideology has been saying for years.⬇️

4) This ideology has, over the decades, created an “us versus them” siege mentality that has been destroying social cohesion. It has long been doing this, and that is why Russian disinformation has been so successful in exploiting it. It already existed for them to use. And⬇️

5) When the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended, social cohesion wasn’t so critically essential to the national survival of the US. Therefore, you saw in the 1990s the rise of a radicalized GOP that could now do things they didn’t dare attempt during the Cold War. And⬇️

6) With communism as a rival economic system gone, Wall Street saw the opportunity for immense power. They hitched their wagon to this nascent radicalized GOP movement in order to benefit from things like deregulation and so forth. That’s the money aspect of it. And⬇️

7) This toxic ideology grew worse with infusions from right wing countercultures that had blossomed in the 1970s and 1980s. Survivalists, far right white supremacists, and disaffected red state rural communities who blamed “the liberals” for the nation’s problems. And⬇️

8) In fact, the “nation’s problems” were created by GOP policies and the policies of Democrats who “moved right” on critical issues and, thus, gave the GOP a pretext to move even further to the right to blame “the Democrats” for what were actually right wing policies. And⬇️

9) This toxic ideology grew more and more extreme as Democrats were pulled further to the right and the GOP then did what it wanted to do all along: move even further to the right as a result. The US has been moving away from democracy since the end of the Cold War. And⬇️

10) Now we have this toxic ideology that is hostile to democracy, very authoritarian, and has poisoned entire generations since the end of the Cold War with its destructive and nihilistic vision of “American greatness”. Make no mistake, it has brainwashed millions of Americans.