Lemmy is being overrun by brainwashed wankies more than anything.
It’s all the same people who comment on YouTube and post ForwardsFromGrandma on Facebook. Its not like there’s some secret reserve of “normal” people that are being diluted. Americans are going to American, whether they’re cheer leading our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, freaking out over a gay couple trying to buy a wedding cake, or marching around Charlottesville with torches.
These assholes are everywhere. And when you call them on their bullshit, their knee-jerk response is “You’re anti-American! No aktuly you’re the extremist! You’re either with us or you’re with the Terrorists! You’re not even a real person, you must be an elaborate engineered computer program / insincere paid special agent specifically tasked with tricking me into questioning my preconceptions!”
Implying that folks are “brainwashed” assumes they had some better prior understanding of the world that was subsequently overwritten by a nefarious evil agent. But this baseline ultra-nationalism is the original conception we’re raised with. American Exceptionalism is the norm and believing in it is for normies.
They’re not the freaks and weirdos and wankies for adhering to this very cloistered understanding of the world. We’re the freaks for questioning it, for interrogating it, and god-fucking-help-us-all rejecting it.