Same thing happened with Biden: "oh I've been friends with so-and-so for 40 years, I know him and he'll do the right thing!"

Cue the football being ripped away at the last second, again and again, forever.

Same type of thing they did contrasting weak lib American they/them soldiers with epic badass alpha Russian soldiers...who immediately got turned into minced meat by Ukrainian drones on the front lines.

If you're interested, check out some of the work by Tanya Luhrmann. The Gold brothers also have some work on how Americans started developing a particular brand of persecutory delusions only after the advent of reality TV and The Truman Show.

There's actually a whole field of transcultural psychiatry that looks at this. Schizophrenia and other forms are pathoplastic - the content, valence, and form that delusions and hallucinations take are influenced by the culture of the individual.

Like there's obviously a point to be made about how ideology is overriding materialist interests here but you'd figure some of the dumb oafs would be wise enough to realize "huh yeah maybe voting for the guy who wants to deport 90% of my seasonal workers isn't a savvy business decision" but nope

People posting clips of Charlie dissing LeBron supercut into a montage clearly have more negative impacts than, say, many MANY sitting members of Congress unequivocally braying for blood and vengeance.

Imagine being the guy bringing elephants to battle and going "yeah no fuck it, throw some swords on this thing."

All of these pundit eulogies re: Kirk read more like them having some idealized form of a Charlie Kirk rather than the one that lived and died. Like they're trying to delude themselves, as much as the reader, into thinking that Kirk was principled, somehow above personal attacks and gotchas? Like???

20 minutes after Trump inevitably croaks, you ghouls are gonna have weepy memoriams describing him as a "loving family man full of boisterousness and love of country." Fuck off.