Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was meeting last week with representatives from a teachers union in his home state when things quickly devolved.

Before long, Fetterman began repeating himself, shouting and questioning why “everybody is mad at me,” “why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do” and slamming his hands on a desk, according to one person who was briefed on what occurred.

As the meeting deteriorated, a staff member moved to end it and ushered the visitors into the hallway, where she broke down crying. The staffer was comforted by the teachers who were themselves rattled by Fetterman’s behavior, according to a second person who was briefed separately on the meeting.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      14 days ago

      I have had to watch this happen to a close friend.

      Back in 2015, I had a buddy who got into a nasty bike accident, and suffered a TBI. He was always a bit of a snarky asshole, but we definitely did see eye to eye on political matters before that happened. But during his recovery, he became a lot more viciously vindictive and outright mean, and also ended up going full MAGA later on. It was weird and depressing to watch a close friend spiral out of control and lash out at people who were previously his very close friends, to the extent that he alienated basically all of them.

      It sucks, and it’s very real.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Same happened to my uncle, in his case due to a stroke in the temporo-frontal region when he was in his late 50s. He was a kindhearted man of moderate habits. After the stroke, he went full Mr Hyde, seemingly intent on burning through his retirement in pursuit of cocaine and prostitutes. Luckily for his family, he had another stroke within a year and that was game over.

      • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I wonder how much high school athletics have contributed to conservatism via head injuries and groupthink?

    • AidsKitty@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Yet with your combined superior intellect Democrats have lost control of all 3 branches of government and the supreme court. Maybe you guys are not as superior as you believe you are?

    • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I think it was more like money damage… Being offered enough to completely abandon former thoughts and goals.

      • dickalan@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I have had a couple concussions, and I am generally intolerant of religion as a whole, doesn’t sound like any of the study findings any research on people who weren’t religious to begin with. Unless I’m reading this wrong, which I could be you know, because of the concussions🤣🤣🤣

        • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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          14 days ago

          A link doesn’t mean every single person did - maybe each concussion is rolling a die on the gullible idiot check and you got lucky.

        • NABDad@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          Based on what the article said, your general intolerance of religion might be the very symptom they were referencing.

          Their research doesn’t suggest that damage to that particular area of the brain causes religious beliefs, but rather that it more or less locks you into your beliefs religious or otherwise.

          The injured brain becomes less able to consider other viewpoints, so changing beliefs becomes less likely even when confronted with facts that disprove the belief.

          • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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            14 days ago

            Right, it bears pointing out that atheism is in itself a faith, or at least its adherents treat it very much like one to the point that it might as well be one. For me it is the faith in the non-existance of a supreme being or deity.

            • NABDad@lemmy.world
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              14 days ago

              For me it is the faith in the non-existance of a supreme being or deity.

              I agree. I prefer to consider myself agnostic rather than atheist.

              I’m really a dishonest agnostic since I can’t really imagine a proof of deity that I wouldn’t discount as a hallucination.

              I did have a dream many years ago in which I woke up with absolute proof that God existed, but then I went back to sleep.

              When I woke later, I couldn’t remember what the proof was. If the proof was real, and God let me forget it, then he’s an ass and he doesn’t deserve my belief.

              • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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                13 days ago

                I think the problem is that most people think of god as non material. In my view m whatever you want to call god is a material thing and you are touching it right now. And there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence to prove that this isn’t true and most thought exercises will have you reach the conclusion that there is a high likelihood that we are indeed part of a bigger thing that could be defined as god.

                I guess a big divide here is how you define god, for most people it’s this intelligent and willful being. But that’s just what a human, who fashions gods in his image, thinks a god is.

                For me intelligence is not a requirement for supremacy. I believe the universe itself for all intents and purposes is god. It has no will and no intelligence but that doesn’t make it any less powerful.

                • futatorius@lemm.ee
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                  1 day ago

                  That belief is either pantheism or panentheism.

                  No man is an island,
                  Entire of itself;
                  Every man is a piece of the continent,
                  A part of the main.
                  

                  That’s a 400-year-old take. There are pre-Socratic philosophers and Taoist and Buddhist scriptures with similar messages that are far older (500 BCE or so), and Hindu ones a couple millennia older than those.

            • naught@sh.itjust.works
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              13 days ago

              It doesn’t require faith to NOT believe in something. It requires faith to accept religion which cannot be proven.

              • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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                13 days ago

                It does require faith when you’re disbelieving something that has as much proof of its existence as of its non existence. There is no conclusive proof against the existence of a supreme being, in fact like I said in another comment there is physical evidence of one if you observe the universe, which is that all of existence collective is god.

                If you zoom into a human being there are millions of microorganisms and bacteria that inhabit us, and at that level of zoom they all look like they inhabit their own little planets, zoom in more and you start to see the very molecules that make us up. But you zoom out and see a person, zoom out and see a planet, then a galaxy, then clusters and so on. Who’s to say that if you looked at the universe from outside of it, it would not be the very body of another living organism?

                • futatorius@lemm.ee
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                  1 day ago

                  Repetition of patterns at different scales is a sign that some aspects of reality are fractal, not evidence of a creator deity.

                • naught@sh.itjust.works
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                  13 days ago

                  I like this thought experiment and think about this a lot. However this does nothing to remotely indicate the existence of the Abrahamic god. People tell you with certainty that god exists and he’s three persons and jesus rose from the dead yada yada. That’s a complete fantasy derived from literally nothing.

                  No proof but still believe? Faith.

                  Not believing in something that has zero evidence requires no faith. I don’t need faith to tell you Cthulu isn’t real