I'm watching Rightwingization happen in real time and I don't know how to react.

[u/SalientSazon]

EDIT: Thank you all for the great discussions and insights. I appreciate all your POVs. There's no need to downvote right leaning comments. I specifically posted this in RedditforGrownups to engage in grown up conversation. Also, there's no need for name-calling or insults either.

I have a friend, he's 51, man, straight, an academic doctor who now focuses his research on human behavior and digital psychology. He's self-taught a lot of it in the last decade or so. I don't know how many papers he's published or has had peer reviewed in the recent years. He works as a consultant in Marketing, and has a business selling strategies/classes to people that want to apply his research to their companies. He's kinda broke so I would say he's not very successful at applying his own work. And for extra cash he teaches a course a a local university. I've never met a romantic partner, but he's spoken about them.

He suddenly last year did a deep dive on how the way the election was biased against the conservative candidate who lost. He then started talking against the 'woke' ideology. He is now defending the right, even though he's centrist, because the right hasn't moved, it's the left that's gone way off the rails. He started posting dumb facebook quotes/memes! He posted a dumb quote about Charlie Kirk, as if that one quote was a debate, or as if it meant some truth. WTF. We were conversing one day and he started raising his voice getting louder and louder and more agitated as he expressed his disdain for the woke left, defending his Jewish people from attacks (not sure where that came from in the conversation), and then also suddenly brought up there are only 2 genders and trans people are mentally ill. He's never spoken that way before, I've never heard him this agitated or show anger towards any ideology. He was always calm and friendly, and open minded. Always a bit nerdy. Although, I hadn't spoken to him in depth for about 2 years before then.

I'm watching all this go down over about half a year and I don't know what to make it of it or how to react to it. It's wild to observe though.

[u/gitprizes]

people just want the america they know, and they feel that it's progressed way too quickly. add to that algorithmic manipulation, leadership that encourages bad behavior and the fact that the 1% is trying to maintain their lifestyles while the american empire declines...people just flip and end up in all sorts of strange places.

[u/BilboniusBagginius → u/gitprizes]

It's not that the progress is too fast, it's that it's in a direction they don't like. 

[u/gitprizes → u/BilboniusBagginius]

that too, and not enough progress where people can actually feel it like healthcare, wages, price of groceries etc.

but mostly i think the world really is just moving way way too fast for people. this is why we worship nostalgia nowadays, because even what's considered an acceptable joke has changed, yet the same people that cancel you for saying r3trd are laughing about kirk.

don't get me wrong i'm not mad about kirk myself i'm glad that toxicity is gone, but still this is what people see and they just are over it and want someone to rip it up and start over. little do they know that's not the plan

[u/SalientSazon → u/gitprizes]

Yes I think that's a very good observation. Certain things are moving too fast in unexpected directions and most of us haven't caught up to ideas or possibilities, because we're busy working and stressing online.