Disturbing People near Lewes, DE yesterday

[orthoclad]

51. It's a positive feedback loop

I know some trumpers with personal integrity. I know many more who have had their brains eaten by worms.

The internet and other media like talk radio have been used by the ruling class for decades and decades to push emotional hot buttons. The RC knows that the ancient parts of the brain which deal with perceived threats are much more powerful motivators than the frontal lobes. As I put it above, emotional hot buttons trump sweet reason.

So the trumpers have increasingly been painted into a corner. Their fetish-object is under legal threat. They're told that their turf is being stolen by women, by other races, by aliens. The intensity of their feelings grows in proportion to the degree of threat they feel. The worms eat their brains until all that's left is the limbic.

Positive feedback amplifiers feed the output signal (I'm threatened) back to the input, which amplifies the output, which feeds back to the input... This spiral either gets limited somehow or it ends in a crash - a squeal of pure noise. This is why I take the "civil war" talk seriously.

Rationality can limit the feedback, but microblogs like xitter and button-pushers like talk radio throw rationality to the gutter. Buttons to push are short and sweet.