I've been here for some 20 years and I don't think I've ever seen so much goddamn FUD.

[ancianita]

25. Some days it's FUD Central here. I'm with you.

Worry and anxiety can become emotional habits. Many have had to break that need to trust corporate media and pundit class who've been perception managing the general public for decades.
Chomsky said it first and best in Manufactured Consent.
Then came Lee Atwater and his political scarification project of all things liberal.
Then came his trained operatives like Manafort, Stone, even Rick Wilson who sold autocratic leaning oligarchs on the program of maligning fact based communications to the point of politicizing science during the first wave of Covid.

One can be negatively emotionally groomed -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt aren't just something only sexual predators do.

When people come to think that reality can exist by consensus, we get the basis of the Republican Party, their mob boss and supporting oligarch class. It's why their oligarchs now spend so much money, time, and doctrine factory building, because they're maintaining Earth 2 so that they can eventually plunder the wealth of democratic nations' economies.