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I live in a red county and am surrounded by conservative neighbors. It's pretty exhausting hanging out with them, because they're constantly mad/afraid of something that literally is not happening. A few weeks ago, I had a few too many drinks and told one of them that they need to quit letting things dictate their lives that weren't real. He didn't take it very well.
Yeah, people generally don’t like questioning the version of reality they based their lives on. Too much thinky-work. At least you tried.
Especially since "our" reality is just "given" to us by lying MSM, but their reality given to them by Faux News is somehow different...
Logic, not even once.
Not all news sources are created equal and you should always keep in mind what the motivations of sources are when deciding which news to trust. But treating it as if Fox News is the same as reputable sources like AP or Reuters is a pretty bad argument.
Fox News was literally created with a Republican strategist as the CEO with the goal of reporting news with a conservative bias. They have argued in court that no reasonable person would take their commentators have said on-air as facts. There have been polls showing that Fox News viewers are less informed than people that consume no news sources at all. They recently settled a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for nearly a billion dollars for knowingly spreading falsehoods on-air about the 2020 election.
At the end of the day, Fox News is a terrible source of information. The response I often hear to this is "well what about CNN?!" To which I'd say, sure don't watch that either. Try to find a reputable, neutral source like AP or Reuters and you'll be much happier and well informed since they're not trying to sell you fake news stories that make you angry and engaged.
They also can't shut the fuck up about it
And if you try to tell them it doesn't happen they insist their father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate saw it with their own two eyes.
I've found the best way to talk to people like this is to come more from a place of caring than from rebuke of the content itself.
"Dude, you seem really bothered by this stuff. What's it like living in fear everyday? Assuming all this stuff is true, what can you do about it? If you can't do anything about it, then why worry all the time? You sure there's not something else going on that's causing this upset?"
A lot of these people who subscribe to extreme views are hurting in ways that are completely unrelated to the extreme content they consume. Most likely some type of trauma or experience or relationship that is resonating with the consumption of this content.
Despite their love of fearmongering, Fox News also flat out tries to cover up things that are actually happening if it is done by them, like Roger Ailes' sexual harassment of Fox News' woman employees.
It seems like they're trying to map out utopia by building a fence around it to keep it out.
"news"
"Americans circa 2011" --> "Qaddafi doing genocide"
A new report by the British Parliament shows that the 2011 NATO war in Libya was based on an array of lies.
Less than a decade after "Iraq has WMDs." Now there are open-air slave markets in Libya and two of their dams just broke and killed thousands of people.