Minnesota Nice

“Back when his reign of terror first began, Trump’s tactics were exacerbated by the rise of social media as a campaign tool. The one thing Trump’s been truly successful at doing is using Twitter as a literal bully pulpit to slow-boil his cult into believing that only the things he says are true, all while also poisoning them against the traditional media he’s now taking over. Trump’s lies were elevated and shared across multiple platforms by paid agitators bolstered by targeted algorithms; those self-proclaimed “influencers” care more about the extra digits in their bank accounts than anything else and have lost sight of what it means to be an American (if they’re not made in a Russian bot farm, that is). Without social media, Trump would’ve remained the joke candidate he was back in 2015 and would’ve been trounced in the primary, if he even lasted that long. Instead, here we are in a culture that now celebrates meanness instead of rising above it, with the MAGA cultists in Congress covering up multiple scandals to keep themselves on Trump’s good side. Self-proclaimed “patriots” have been so entrenched in this decade of deception that what started as leaning into lies and propaganda has become a campaign to fully disrupt our democracy and force us into fascism.”