Mischief Maker wrote:

Oh hey, look what I found after less than 15 seconds of googling.

Bush jr's campaign manager was "Turd Blossom" himself, Karl Rove. One of the main pillars of Rove's brand-identity as a campaign staffer was his signature move of taking your opponent's biggest strengths and crafting a smear that turned it into a weakness. So Republican primary opponent John McCain did something laudable like adopting a Bangladeshi orphan into his home? Rove twisted it into a smear campaign in the south that his youngest daughter was the illegitimate product of an affair McCain had with a black woman. Was John Kerry a decorated war hero while Bush jr. was a silver spoon rich kid who dodged the draft in the national guard, then still managed to go AWOL? Rove crafted a smear campaign that there was something "fishy" about those medals Kerry earned.

So when your thought leader says that Rove's campaign smear transformed his worldview, he's not Neo taking the red pill, he's Cypher eating the steak and saying, "ignorance is bliss!"

Also speaking of your thought leaders and their "red pill" terminology, the long-running fan theory that The Matrix was a big allegory for coming out as trans was recently confirmed: