Listened to a disinformation expert on the radio this morning asked about Republican lawmakers beginning to tell the truth to their constituents. Her response: “I don’t know if this can be put back into a box.”

Conservative media has become a self-sealing vacuum where conspiracies are floated from the base, picked up by the news, validated by the President, then repeated again, louder, by the base.

We’ve allowed this disinfo ecosystem to exist parallel to reality, and major media outlets have spent their time bending over backwards to profile this mob, and appear nonpartisan without calling out the rhetoric and behavior for what it is.

After the election, we FINALLY saw news networks cutting away from Trump, being bolder about calling lies and conspiracies what they are, and reminding their audience of what’s happening “in reality”.

The disinfo environment is so firmly rooted that any pushback is now seen as “censorship”, and there hasn’t been a line where reality has really caught up with this audience. It wasn’t COVID, and it wasn’t the results of the election, and it hasn’t been interregnum proceedings.

It’s so heartbreaking that we are here. It’s continually upsetting and wildly irresponsible to see national representatives and conservative media outlets continue to feed falsehoods and then feign surprise (or try to shift blame!) when destructive action is taken.

I don’t know how anyone with any understanding of history can be surprised about yesterday. I don’t know how unprepared everyone was when this was planned and instigated in highly public spaces.

I don’t believe that any Congressperson planning to oppose Biden’s certification had a change of heart, I think they had a change of backbone. The state of the modern Republican Party is an embarrassment, but not a surprise given all the conditions and people that let it thrive.