“You know that’s what Charlie was all about, is bringing people together, no matter if they disagreed or agreed."

I'm hearing this perspective a lot from middle ground people, and I'm inclined to think a lot of them are just missing a huge gap of information. (Ignoring the fact this guy quoted is from the "Young Republican Party". Blegh)

I think a lot of them are shown a different side of certain figures.

I'm not talking about hardcore cultists, if their beliefs line up, they just get reinforced and they're easy to "maintain". I think the real targets are the "useful normies" that don't really get it and usually "aren't into politics."

If you don't protect your privacy, give out your information everywhere, clearnet log in to google / Facebook / insta / reddit / tiktok / twitter / etc, accept all the cookies, etc... algorithms are largely responsible for pushing your perspective of the world.

Let's make the relatively safe assumption this is most people of any leaning who've had a smartphone just shoved into their hand before critical thinking skills were instilled, and were network pressured into blindly joining all these things to talk to their friends.

I genuinely think a lot of these folks saw only clips that made this guy look like a thoughtful and clever debater who gave people time to challenge him. If these normies follow the guy and go deeper, they'll get pulled into what I like to call "the fashy funnel", but a lot of them won't. Most people don't care.

They'll just be exposed to little "reasonable logic" clips at a time that will slowly nudge them towards the opinion of "Huh maybe the righties aren't so bad. I'm glad he's willing to talk." Well meaning, and of course, used against them and exploited.

The funnel system doesn't want to drive these "moderates" away so it doesn't show them the extreme stuff that would trigger their bullshit alarms. That's saved for further down the rabbit hole. The goal is to appeal to their well-meaning centrism.

The guy said a lot of his WORST stuff on his podcast or Fox, because that's where that funnel-segment of his audience would be accepting of it.

Meanwhile, if the algo thinks you're a lefty, you probably get treated to the most awful stuff he said right out the gate, because it (often correctly) thinks that'll piss you off and keep your attention longer.

And that's how you sow working-class division, where one side sees the killing of a monster, and the other sees the death of reasonable bipartisan discourse.

They've both seen what they were told to see, and both sides then turn to each other and are outraged at how blind and foolish their fellow human beings can be.

Those arguments drive engagement, though. So the owning class wins again.

TL;DR: Stop accepting cookies, block ads, touch grass, be excellent to each other, social media was a trap the whole time.