For years now I've been able to laugh off my grandparents, FOX News and brainwashed Republicans in general.
But my roommate's interaction with her parents changed things for me.
Her parents told her that they were scared. They were scared because something serious was underway in America, that a revolution was happening that threatened to destroy the entire country and that it was serious. They told her that Marxists were on the brink of pulling Biden to the Left, and that they were legitimately danger.
I usually laugh this off, but something struck me: they weren't angry, or grumpy, or bone-headed, like I usually imagine Republicans. They were legitimately afraid, and perceived themselves to truly be descending into a national emergency, one that FOX News has completely manufactured.
I used to laugh off people that said FOX is paving the way to Fascism, or Drumpf = Hitler. But I've come to comprehend that fear, not anger, was the driving motivator in Nazi Germany, and now understand that FOX is pumping sheer terror into the American public at levels only possible in modern society.
I don't really think FOX is a laughing matter anymore, because I begin to understand how an American public this afraid could condone Nazi Germany level atrocities under the impression that they were saving themselves.
Those who regularly consume Fox News (or any, single news source really, but that's not the point) functionally live in a different reality from us.
Fox News does a really good job of establishing that they and they alone are the sole arbiters of truth. Other news channels, or papers, or magazines all have an agenda, but Fox doesn't because they're patriots, and you're a patriot too aren't you? So just sit your ass down and generate some my pillow ad revenue while Sean Hannity angry cries at you about those scary scary BLM thugs.
It's a difficult thing to break through by itself, but usually it's paired with some other annoying brain worm like the belief that any politics left of center will inevitably be aged out of or that or that any post middle school education is some type of indoctrination to the DNC.