The first time I read 'The Crucible', I wondered how it was possible for seemingly normal people to fall for 'spectral evidence' and believe their long-time friends and neighbors were witches in league with satan. People asked similar questions about how average Germans and Italians could have fallen under the sway of racist, bigoted di…
The first time I read 'The Crucible', I wondered how it was possible for seemingly normal people to fall for 'spectral evidence' and believe their long-time friends and neighbors were witches in league with satan. People asked similar questions about how average Germans and Italians could have fallen under the sway of racist, bigoted dictators and happily carry on under a fascist state.
Now I look at the steaming remnants of what was parents' republican party' and see the answer. Weakness, fear, political ambition, and looking for someone else to blame for their problems in life. The federalist is symptomatic of the 'new right'; they're the Caesar putting on games at the Coliseum to distract from their lack of ideas, solutions or even principles.
The Republican Party has been on this trajectory since at least 1968--They just knew not to say the quiet parts out loud. See Lee Atwater's famous quote. None of what's happening today popped out of thin air, it's got a very clear lineage of people willing to concentrate power no matter the human cost.
The thing is we have to stop thinking that these people are a small minority, or that most will be offended by their overt racism and characterizing normal law abiding non fascist people as safe from their vitriol. Once they get real organized---and it is happening----none of us will be safe.
We are not safe NOW. There's just nothing we can do about it because one party is the problem and the other party has no solution or no willingness to implement the solutions that do exist (until election day).
Tribalism and group think is much more powerful than I ever gave them credit for. I mean...come on...if people were presented with undeniable facts....they'll change their minds, right?
I think the other powerful hook is how easy it is to "hate" and how Fox feeds this emotion. They're clever though....it's hate without the guilt because....<drum roll>...they're the RIGHTEOUS ones.
The thing that gets me is that the MAGAs act like they're the only ones who've ever felt the sting of disappointment when the candidate they supported lost an election. We've ALL been there. But none of us allowed disappointment to turn to anger, anger to resentment, and resentment to revenge. Why? Because we actually are righteous. And grown-ups.
They are beyond disappointment. Trump is a crude, obnoxious and stupid, but he's rich. So they have made him their leader. They aim to install him as The Presidenté
Worse than that, they use the "diversion" to quietly implement their agenda - passing laws at the state level to take away rights and freedoms, and set up their ability to not only limit who can vote, which votes will be counted, and to legally overturn the results they don't like.
Let's be a bit more careful here. There is no correlation between intelligence and goodness. Clearly, some of the more intelligent among us -- at least as measured in test scores, grades, and credentials from selective institutions -- are currently among our most vicious (Cruz, Hawley, DeSantis, and D'Souza in the first tier; Abbott in the second).
One of the wisest and most generous people I knew had but 8th grade schooling; and an extended family member with Down's syndrome had a heart of gold.
At the very core, if you peel away all the rationalization, lies envy at the core -- that thing which we so well cultivated as stimulus to a consumer economy. Once called the root of all evil -- well, really and truly it is.
Yes, indeed, there certainly credulous people. However, isn't the phenomenon of "if they are for it, we are against it" not a matter of credulity, but one of self definition and identity? What's the matter with Kansas, so to speak, was not failure to comprehend self-interest, it was not accepting some outsider's definition of it. Kansans are not gullible, they just don't like us telling them what to believe.
The first time I read 'The Crucible', I wondered how it was possible for seemingly normal people to fall for 'spectral evidence' and believe their long-time friends and neighbors were witches in league with satan. People asked similar questions about how average Germans and Italians could have fallen under the sway of racist, bigoted dictators and happily carry on under a fascist state.
Now I look at the steaming remnants of what was parents' republican party' and see the answer. Weakness, fear, political ambition, and looking for someone else to blame for their problems in life. The federalist is symptomatic of the 'new right'; they're the Caesar putting on games at the Coliseum to distract from their lack of ideas, solutions or even principles.
The Republican Party has been on this trajectory since at least 1968--They just knew not to say the quiet parts out loud. See Lee Atwater's famous quote. None of what's happening today popped out of thin air, it's got a very clear lineage of people willing to concentrate power no matter the human cost.
The thing is we have to stop thinking that these people are a small minority, or that most will be offended by their overt racism and characterizing normal law abiding non fascist people as safe from their vitriol. Once they get real organized---and it is happening----none of us will be safe.
We are not safe NOW. There's just nothing we can do about it because one party is the problem and the other party has no solution or no willingness to implement the solutions that do exist (until election day).
Tribalism and group think is much more powerful than I ever gave them credit for. I mean...come on...if people were presented with undeniable facts....they'll change their minds, right?
I think the other powerful hook is how easy it is to "hate" and how Fox feeds this emotion. They're clever though....it's hate without the guilt because....<drum roll>...they're the RIGHTEOUS ones.
The thing that gets me is that the MAGAs act like they're the only ones who've ever felt the sting of disappointment when the candidate they supported lost an election. We've ALL been there. But none of us allowed disappointment to turn to anger, anger to resentment, and resentment to revenge. Why? Because we actually are righteous. And grown-ups.
They are beyond disappointment. Trump is a crude, obnoxious and stupid, but he's rich. So they have made him their leader. They aim to install him as The Presidenté
Worse than that, they use the "diversion" to quietly implement their agenda - passing laws at the state level to take away rights and freedoms, and set up their ability to not only limit who can vote, which votes will be counted, and to legally overturn the results they don't like.
Let's be a bit more careful here. There is no correlation between intelligence and goodness. Clearly, some of the more intelligent among us -- at least as measured in test scores, grades, and credentials from selective institutions -- are currently among our most vicious (Cruz, Hawley, DeSantis, and D'Souza in the first tier; Abbott in the second).
One of the wisest and most generous people I knew had but 8th grade schooling; and an extended family member with Down's syndrome had a heart of gold.
At the very core, if you peel away all the rationalization, lies envy at the core -- that thing which we so well cultivated as stimulus to a consumer economy. Once called the root of all evil -- well, really and truly it is.
Yes, indeed, there certainly credulous people. However, isn't the phenomenon of "if they are for it, we are against it" not a matter of credulity, but one of self definition and identity? What's the matter with Kansas, so to speak, was not failure to comprehend self-interest, it was not accepting some outsider's definition of it. Kansans are not gullible, they just don't like us telling them what to believe.
That sounds like the same business model used by all the 'prosperity gospel' hustlers.