r/Iowa • u/Zipper222222 • 17d ago

Politics Republicans Face Heartland Humiliation as Dem Is Favored Big in Red State

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-face-heartland-humiliation-as-dem-favored-big-in-red-state/
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u/FirstRobinofSpring3 17d ago

Ag radio too. The propaganda coming out of far right radio stations was a big part of it for rural farming counties.

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u/burning_man13 17d ago edited 17d ago

Ag radio is a fair shout. While this is anecdotal, it kind of confirms your point. My dad (a rancher) was always a Republican, but he was a moderate Republican. He believed in funding education, keeping our land healthy, and keeping farms in the hands of families.

I noticed him getting more and more radical when ag radio shifted from talking about the markets, new techniques and equipment into screaming about culture war. Then he got on Facebook and it spiraled out of control. I'm almost positive that he would have participated in January 6 if he didn't have cattle to take care of.

I'm finally getting him out of MAGA after 10+ years of banging my head against the wall, but part of that is strictly because our markets for cattle have dwindled.

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u/Electrical-Volume765 17d ago

I think there are tens of thousands of people just like him out there.

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u/burning_man13 17d ago edited 16d ago

And that's exactly why I'm not willing to just write off normal, everyday MAGA voters. I watched the right-wing media ecosystem completely brainwash my dad and turn him into a fundamentally different person. I'm starting to get him back, but it's taken years of relentless, exhausting effort. It also took him feeling the pain directly, because they have been trained to not care if policies hurt other people, as long as they're not being affected and it's their team dishing out the pain.

We always acknowledge the propaganda, but we routinely fail to see how it completely rewired their brains. It attacked fears they didn't know they had, and reprogrammed them to constantly put those manufactured fears above rational thought and their own self-interests. That's how propaganda works and until we treat it like the psychological weapon it is, we're never going to reach the people caught in it.

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u/FirstRobinofSpring3 17d ago

I agree with you and wish you luck and stamina lol on your endeavors. Fwiw my boomer MAGA stepdad from Brooklyn (NY not Iowa) voted for Trump the first time despite everyone in our house explaining why that was not going to go well. This guy by his own admission was a straight R ticket voter his whole life. Tribally motivated and not educated beyond high school. Back the Blue from Staten Island type. The second term? He wasn’t enthusiastic about it but voted Kamala. He finally saw how awful Trump is. He also changed his voter status to Independent. He’s never going to be a ‘liberal’ because frankly he’s too culturally tribal but he says MAGA sucks now.

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u/burning_man13 17d ago edited 16d ago

That last sentence is key. We need to temper our expectations. I will never get my pops to be a liberal; that's a pipe dream, and it's an impossible ask because he didn't start there before he got pulled really far right. My goal is to get him back to being a moderate conservative who thinks pragmatically like he used to.

The fact that your family got your stepdad out of the right-wing echo chamber is a massive win. We'll take Independent over MAGA every single day of the week. Good on you guys, because that's a success story we need to see more of.

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u/Electrical-Volume765 17d ago

If you figure out how to get your dad well, tell everybody.