Not a day has gone by this week without one of my friends saying, “I don't understand how people believe in this nonsense about the Virgin Mary. Not a day has gone by when my other friends have not excused those who do believe that by the psychological state in which most Ukrainians find themselves. The American researcher Monica Black describes the reasons why this happens on the example of the Germans after World War II: the less confidence in what surrounds people, the more faith in the other world. In God, witches, psychics, charged water, ultra-homeoneuro-linguistic influences - it's up to you what you like.

At first glance (and second and one hundred and twenty-third, if we look from Ukraine), the United States looks like a prosperous country. Both financially and politically. They do not risk spending the winter without light and do not sit under daily rocket attacks, and therefore can afford to think twice about returning to the White House a man who had never been involved in politics before his first presidency, and then spent four years doing politics in a way that made the world shudder (repeatedly).

Therefore, when first all major newspapers and TV channels, and then American President Joe Biden personally, began to unanimously refute the thesis that Democrats are able to control the hurricanes that are now terrorizing the southern states one after another, it raises a natural concern about the moral state of the citizens of our strategic partner. Because there is a growing belief among Republican voters (which is about half of the country) that the Democratic Party is deliberately sending wind to those parts of the map that will definitely vote for the Republicans. And the Democrats feel compelled to respond, and therefore to repeat and spread, repeat and spread, repeat and spread, this crazy nonsense that any high school student who has not skipped physics and geography classes can shatter.

Before the last presidential election in 2020, the leading American media reminded us that the mistakes of 2016 have not yet been addressed. The media continue to give Trump and his fakes too much airtime. And the exposure of marginal fakes on the pages of the country's largest publications only increases the audience for these fakes. In four more years, nothing new has happened. It's just that now, instead of a secret organization of pedophile devil worshippers involving Hillary Clinton and a popular pizza restaurant in Washington, they talk about the weather. Refuting, refuting and refuting again the claims that Democrats have a magic button to control American hurricanes. It has reached the point where the world's largest news agencies, Reuters and the Associated Press, are releasing stories saying that it is impossible to control natural disasters of this magnitude.

The reason for the scale of this information disaster is obvious. The headline “they can control the weather” sells. It is clicked on. It will definitely earn its dollars on advertising. In 2016, Trump, who was on the air of Democratic TV channels much more than their own candidate Clinton, was sold in the same way, absolutely free of charge, simply because of the daily flow of nonsense. Journalistic ethics, values and mistakes can be discussed after the election. But it would be better to invite Trump to an hour of live broadcast in 2023, because it will definitely be one of the most expensive hours of the year.

It would be funny if the same congresswoman, Marjorie Green, who does not hesitate to spread this nonsense on her own social media, had been consistently using every fake news story since the winter of 2022 to undermine American support for Ukraine. This has had clear consequences: from a few of the most radical members of the Republican Party, who initially disliked helping Ukraine, doubts about the feasibility of such support have grown in less than two years to the point that last winter, money for military aid to Ukraine was blocked by a majority vote in Congress for four months.

And even if she is accused of playing along with Putin by the deeply Republican press and members of her own party, they will do nothing about it as long as Republican voters - who mostly don't care about Putin because the only interesting international news they get is from the next state over - continue to bathe in conspiracy theories. And so they will need new, even crazier ones. So in what Marjorie Taylor Green is doing, she is no different from CNN managers, making money during a hot election season.

Four years ago, this electoral polarization led to a stampede to the White House. Now, a month before the election, another topic that is being discussed in earnest - along with the refutation of conspiracy theories - in the mainstream American media is the uncertainty of Democrats that the election will end in peace. It's hardly worth putting the blame for this fierce polarization of society on radical Republicans alone.

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