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We have what appears to be an insurmountable problem in this country in that something like 30-40% of voters, of their own accord, seem to be locked into an epistemic bubble that feeds on hate and fear. They are beyond listening to reason, and is has become clear that they are willing to use violence against us in an attempt to eliminate anyone who doesn’t agree with their bigotry. For decades now, Fox “News” and other information sources that serve the right wing have fed white supremacists a rotating smorgasbord of ever more extreme fantasy horrors of “woke-ism.” As Rich Logis wrote in Salon (linked by Chitown Kev in his Tuesday Abbreviated Pundit Roundup) white supremacists are addicted to the paranoia induced by the long series of fake crises provided to them by right-wing media. And these people are not going anywhere.
Some, probably most, white supremacists are irredeemable, but if it is possible to bring at least some of them back to the real world, I think we ought to at least try. And then just last week, the BBC published an account of a white supremacist who was a subject in a drug trial for MDMA, more commonly known as Ecstasy. The subject had been become a high-level operative in the racist organization called Identity Evropa, but anti-fascists made his identity public, resulting in his being fired and losing friendships and family ties. Then he signed up for this drug trial.
When Brendan saw a Facebook ad in early 2020 for some sort of drug trial at the University of Chicago, he decided to apply just to have something to do and to earn a little money. At one of the visits, he was given a pill. He didn't know it, but he'd just taken 110mg of MDMA. At the time, Brendan was "still in the denial stage" following his identity becoming public, he said. He was racked with regret – not over his bigoted views, which he still held, but over the missteps that had landed him in this predicament.
About 30 minutes after taking the pill, he started to feel peculiar. "Wait a second – why am I doing this? Why am I thinking this way?" he began to wonder. "Why did I ever think it was okay to jeopardise relationships with just about everyone in my life?"
...
It suddenly seemed so obvious: connections with other people were all that mattered. "This is stuff you can't really put into words, but it was so profound," Brendan said. "I conceived of my relationships with other people not as distinct boundaries with distinct entities, but more as we-are-all-one. I realised I'd been fixated on stuff that doesn't really matter, and is just so messed up, and that I'd been totally missing the point. I hadn't been soaking up the joy that life has to offer."
With the help of MDMA, Brendan was able to wrench himself away from the white supremacists and embrace the whole of the human race. White supremacists are voluntarily cutting themselves off from the joy of life in pursuit of phantoms. It’s interesting to think that, perhaps, at least some of them could be “cured” by taking a psychoactive drug. Obviously, it’s not possible to force people into treatment, and there is more than one path out of the epistemic bubble, but it’s nonetheless interesting how this one individual found his way out with the help of MDMA.
Comments are below the fold.
Top Comments (June 22, 2023):
From cohenzee:
Gay CA Democrat comments on something that pervades the internet: looking for external validation when posting stuff online. It is its own pandemic. Until people internalize completing and posting their hard work is all the validation they need, this problem will continue. It took me a long time to realize this myself. From KLWhite's diary on posting more diaries on Dkos.
From sfinx
Noting a comment by Kono in KLWhite's diary Please write your diaries. I am sure Kono speaks for many, certainly including me.
Top Mojo (June 21, 2023):
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Top Photos (June 21, 2023):
Thanks to jotter (RIP) for creating it and elfling for restoring it.