If they live in swing states they are.

Ideally third party candidates could get concessions from either Republicans or democrats in exchange for an endorsement. Kennedy got some completely insane concessions from trump for example.

But Stein hasn’t been reported to have asked the dems for anything. Which means the green party is trying to get trump elected. My guess is that Stein got concessions from trump to stay in the race.

Lots of people probably aren’t aware that Trump’s crew has published a manifesto saying they will eliminate the FDA.

That is a very interesting observation. The anthropologists Davids Graeber and Wengrow studied how human groups had been controlled by charismatic leadership going back into prehistory. These groups could become authoritarian dictatorships which wage wars against their neighbors, engage in slavery, and human sacrifice. Alternatively when they were egalitarian and controlled by democratic institutions they were the opposite. More peaceful and equal.

You are completely right. There’s an entire ecosystem of right wing propaganda channels out there but most people get their news from their friends. It’s the key phenomenon behind influencer culture. And that’s how most of the damage is done.

If someone has one friend who is considered knowledgeable on current affairs and that one friend watches Fox, chances are that none of his associates will have an accurate understanding of any given topic. And that’s by design. The kind of tripe spread on fox news is inflammatory and salacious. The sort of noxious trash you’d share with friends in private conversation.

I realize this is what TikTok and facebook maximize: The friend effect. People learn from their friends. The kind of lies spread by right wing networks is magnified by social media and Russian bot farms.

When narcissists become triggered they have a fight or flight response. Trump is having that same response every day of his life. He was having it during the coup, he was having it when he was raping, he was having it when he got convicted. The observation that Trump is mentally crumbling is true. But it’s something that he does daily.

Just think how contorted someone’s thinking must be I’m order to derive their self worth from a poll.