I heard from my mom last night that Putin directed Iran to tell Hamas to do the 10/7 attack. It was calculated to divide the US so we would be less effective in supporting Ukraine. This led to me yelling for two hours, which I don't feel good about, but I'm tired of explaining that when examining the world you have to strive to find plausible explanations for why things are happening, not something as fucking stupid as saying the people of Gaza were perfectly satisfied until a bunch of outside agitators got them stirred up.

Edit: She actually doesn't watch MSNBC. This is NYT brain. She used to be fine with criticizing media that promoted the war in Iraq, but doing that now means you're just like Trump.

I guess Bill O'Riely would be the Republican equivalent of her

Wrong, Bill is the shoulders which Rachel stands on. Every cable news talking head is copying his game. Bill walked so Tucker could run. He's only irrelevant now because he accelerated the american conservative past him.

John Stewart was a cheerleader for norms and civility from about 2002-2015. He defined what as worthy of ridicule (Kucinich, Chelsea Manning, occupy movement) and ultimately what was worthy of respect .

i feel like it's a mistake to let the face of these operations have too much credit. This is a performance, and it is an editorial team that sets her agenda, it's a crew that manages her image, and it's the network that gives her the platform - the personalities of these people are there for your consumption and an icon you're encouraged to relate to and see as a teacher.

A friendly feminine presence who is there every night to tell you how to be an obedient little liberal

but never forget she's just a performer in an ensemble.

In a proximate tier of liberal smugness, Sam Harris and Bill Maher have done damage.

I thought people were memeing about how much she blames everything on Russia until I watched a couple of clips of her

Ehhhh that's giving her waaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. Not many people watch MSNBC

It's plausible that Russia preferred Trump to his Democratic rivals, and did a little bit of trolling to fuck with America. But only to the tune of 0.1% of their military budget, not the 20% of GDP it would take to get anywhere near what BlueMAGA keeps accusing.

I remember in 2016 right after the election she was on some talk show and made some word salad like "Well Trump has a lot of policies that want to help only Americans so he's a nationalist. And he has policies that want to make sweeping social change, like a socialist. So he's really a national socialist." And I was nodding along with my lib brain.

Red MAGA propaganda - can you believe the libs think they know better than us, rage

Blue MAGA propaganda - we libs know better than them, rage

Synthesis: red libs who know better than everyone how to loot the country by enraging everyone as a distraction

Can't think of other examples. Just wanted to say that this happening is horrifying.

Back before I was an ML I knew a few PMC liberal types who listened to Rachel Maddow. Yes, those individuals were the worst humans one could imagine. But what used to shock me was how non-Amerikans would listen for an hour (?) each day about Russian electoral interference.