The Kavanaugh situation is probably the greatest object lesson in motivated reasoning that we’ve encountered since Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman. Scott Adams calls it watching two different movies on the same screen. But Jonathan Haidt brought to my attention another way of thinking about this is a talk at UVA last year.
Motivated reasoning involves applying different standards of evidence to a proposition depending on whether or not you want the proposition to be true. If you want something to be true, you ask “CAN I believe it?” If you DON’T want something to be true, you ask “MUST I believe it?”
This is universal behavior. In the absence of extreme intention and self-discipline, we are all guilty of motivated reasoning, in areas both big and small. Think about how you watch sports. If you’re rooting for the Cowboys (as all right-thinking Americans do) and the ref rules that Dez didn’t catch the ball, you are absolutely convinced that he did. The evidence is so obvious that only a moron could claim otherwise, or possibly someone with an ulterior motive. If however, you’re rooting for the Packers, it’s as clear as day that it wasn’t a catch. The way you apply the rule, and interpret the facts in light of it, is entirely dependent on what you WANT to be true. As long as the evidence falls in the grey area between “can” and “must,” you see exactly what you want to see.
So how does this play out in L’Affaire Kavanaugh? If you went into that hearing wanting to believe that Kavanaugh was guilty, you certainly came out of it believing that he was. Looking at the evidence that was presented, CAN you believe he’s guilty? Of course. Dr. Ford apparently came across as a very credible witness, told a compelling story, and was completely convinced of its veracity. Judge Kavanaugh’s angry display was exactly what you’d expect from a rich, spoiled, jock who is having the thing he’s felt entitled to his whole life ripped away from him over what, to him, was a harmless romp. Of course, in the current environment, he can’t say that, so he tried to downplay his drinking and came up with strained explanations for obviously sinister yearbook quotes. He probably perjured himself multiple times, and hid the one person whose testimony would have been potentially most damning (Mark Judge) from the committee and behind a lame “rehab” excuse. What you saw in that hearing was exactly what you expected to see.
Now, if you went into it NOT wanting to believe him to be guilty, did anything in the hearing COMPEL you to believe that he was? Nope. As he pointed out, it’s an accusation from 35 years ago, about which no details are offered except the few that serve to implicate him (and nothing that could be proven false). Every person Dr. Ford said was at the party has no recollection of it, or outright denied that it happened – in sworn statements under penalty of perjury. Her lifelong friend – the person with the most incentive to back up her story – said she never knew Kavanaugh. High school yearbook quotes are essentially like YouTube comments now – where you say edgy things to make your friends think you’re cool. They often bear no resemblance to the actual person. Judge Kavanaugh’s anger was exactly what you’d expect from a man who had lived his entire life in a circumspect manner, carefully following the rules (a few brewskis aside) and building a stellar career and reputation, and was now being accused of something horrific – something he would never do – for pure partisan gain. He had watched his name and his family’s life ripped apart because some Senators thought he would rule in a way they didn't like on certain cases. And Dr. Ford, however sympathetic she may have appeared, had multiple holes in her story. There are contradictions between her therapist notes (or what was reported from them – she apparently refused to turn them over to the committee) and her later testimony. What you saw in that hearing was exactly what you expected to see.
The odds are that one of those last two paragraphs made you very mad. One of them was much harder for me to write than the other, because I’m as guilty of motivated reasoning as everyone else.
I’m certainly not telling you what to believe. How we FEEL about this case is based on a whole host of ideas and experiences that we’re often powerless to overcome. If you’re a woman who has been subject to sexual assault, and has watched men exactly like Kavanaugh get away with it time after time over the years, you’re probably traumatized by the very sight of him. If the rulings he might tilt toward reversal are ones that protect the freedoms that you cherish, his appointment is an existential threat to be defeated at all costs. If you’re a man who has been falsely accused of a crime by a vindictive ex, and been unable to prove your innocence, you’re furious at everyone involved in this process. And if the ruling he might tilt toward reversal are those that protect barbarisms that you find morally repugnant, anything that interferes with his appointment is a tool of evil.
What I am trying to do is help you understand that when we throw facts back and forth at each other, on this and a whole host of other issues, we’re not accomplishing anything. Ben Shapiro often says “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” He’s right, but the reverse is also true. Your feelings don’t care about the facts. Dr. Haidt’s solution to this seeming intractable problem is moral humility. Don’t be so sure that your perspective on an issue represents Good and any other represents Evil. Don’t talk about these issues in ways that preclude the possibility that someone else’s perspective might have merit. And empathize with the people who disagree with you. They’re no more in control of their feelings than you are. But we can all control how we express those feelings, and how we try to find common ground.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
How the Koch Brothers Destroyed America
The Koch/Republican network is taking over state legislatures, closing voting stations in minority areas and purging voters and extreme gerrymandering of districts and disenfranchising voters and imposing onerous Voter ID laws written by Koch front ALEC and changing the rules of governance to make their control permanent and legal.
All of this is being carried out by state legislatures the Kochs have funded and directed their network to campaign for who introduce legislation written by Koch front ALEC.
Then they begin passing legislation, written by ALEC, benefiting the Kochs, industrial and environmental deregulation, and tax cuts which coupled with supermajority laws is the cause of the drop in rural health care and education funding, stacking the judiciary, and gerrymandering Congress.
Now they're doing the same thing nationally. Trumps Vice President, cabinet members, and many administration positions are staffed with Koch cronies, more are taking on jobs in various regulatory agencies. And stackingthe federal judiciary.
While the Koch network continues apace lobbying for 'right to work' laws, opposing Public Transit ballots, and spending 400 million on this years midterms.
They're not done by a long shot. The Kochs want a Constitutional Convention. They have three items on the agenda for it already:
In any other country you'd call this a soft coup.
How do you stop this?
You can't vote them out, the gerrymandering and disenfranchisement ensure their minority has a majority of power.
You fight this in the court and either they've stacked them or the judges rule in your favor and they just try again and replace the judges for the next round. If it goes to the federal courts (that they stacked remember) either they rule in their favor or its litigated for so long the courts declare its too late to change.
And what a surprise, Michigan AG Bill Schutte opposed to the ballot initiative to create an independent body to draw districts, and is running for Governor, is another Koch Brothers crony.
Where is the Democratic Party while this goes on? Their biggest concern is avoiding scary words and creating the... BoomerCorps.
So what the hell do you do?
They are extreme ideologues. Its not enough for them to have a 100 billion dollars. They believe they are right and they know best. That taxation is wrong, that public education is wrong, that public transportation is wrong, that climate change is not happening, and doing anything about these things is contrary to the free market.
There might also be a darker motivation.
The Koch Brothers father Fred Koch was a Nazi war profiteer. When he concluded business in Germany in 1938 building oil and aviation fuel refineries for the Luftwaffe he wrote in his diary that he thought only Germany, Italy, and Japan were on the right path. He brought back with him a Nanny who was a member of the Nazi Party to help raise his boys correctly.
In the 1950s he co-founded the John Birch Society. The Birchers believed that School Integration and the Civil Rights Movement were Communist Plots.
Charles Koch worked for the Birchers as a young man, he later worked with Robert LaFevre in founding the Freedom School and Ramparts College. Both had Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Confederates on their faculty.
He later founded Reason Magazine. In its early years it featured Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Confederates as merely historical revisionists challenging the stuffy orthodoxy of academias ivory tower.
By the 1980s he teamed up with James McGill Buchanan. A free market economist considered so extreme people aren't introduced to him until they've read and adhering to Ayn Rand. Together they turned George Mason University into what it is today to produce economists and policy makers that would extol their shared beliefs and carry them out in academia, industry, and government. Many graduates find positions in Koch Industries or the Koch network or sponsored into positions at other colleges.
Buchanan got his start in Virginia in the 1950s in the fight against School Integration, he conceived of Charter Schools as a means of forming an opposition that would be stripped of racist jargon. He was an advisor to the Pinochet regime, helping them construct a Constitution that would be stuffed with "locks and bolts" against democracy and popular participation ensuring an elite minority would be serviced alone.
Now remember the Kochs are ardently opposed to public education, believe in privatization and charter schools as an alternative, and their actions with state legislatures are instituting the exact same kind of "locks and bolts".
The Kochs fund the American Enterprise Institute, David sits on its board of directors. Charles Murray the author of the Bell Curve is one of its fellows.
Also teaching at GMU is economist Garrett Jones. His work draws upon that of white supremacist and eugenicist Richard Lynn, and his work has been favorably reviewed by VDARE. Jones has delivered lectures arguing less democracy in the US would lead to better governance.
The Kochs 'prisoner outreach' program is overseen by Florida Atlantic University professor Marshall DeRosa, a member of the League of the South.
Assistant Professor Jonathan Anomaly at the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science at the University of Arizona, which has received 1.8 million from the Kochs and 2.6 million from their associates, published an article Public Goods and Education. In it Anomaly discussed the value of exploring links between genetics and IQ of different racial groups, and the value of eugenics. He has also written about the need to replace public education.
They provide funding to Young America's Foundation that funds those lecture tours featuring Murray, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Ted Nugent, Robert Spencer, Milo Yiannopoulos. Ben Shapiro is a new addition. Its board member James B. Taylor is the former president of the National Policy Institute, now run by alt right icon Richard Spencer.
Rebel Media in Canada was founded by Ezra Levant - who has previously worked for the Fraser Institute the Kochs main Canadian think tank and before that did his internship at the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Rebel Media is hive of altright activism.
Jordan Peterson started at Rebel Media, and often promotes Koch linked groups.
Stefan Molyneux has associated with Jones, Murray, and the League of the South.
So when you start to really dig into them you find a lot of connections to racism, from the Birchers in the 1950s to 'racial realists' and the alt right today. All with a consistent narrative that 'they' are undermining 'our' society.
Which might then lead one to question why it is so many of the policies they advocate for target, marginalize, and limit the rights of minorities.
They work for rich and powerful people who demand their policies be adopted and feel extremely entitled and don't take no for an answer.
Then they begin passing legislation, written by ALEC, benefiting the Kochs, industrial and environmental deregulation, and tax cuts which coupled with supermajority laws is the cause of the drop in rural health care and education funding, stacking the judiciary, and gerrymandering Congress.
Now they're doing the same thing nationally. Trumps Vice President, cabinet members, and many administration positions are staffed with Koch cronies, more are taking on jobs in various regulatory agencies. And stackingthe federal judiciary.
While the Koch network continues apace lobbying for 'right to work' laws, opposing Public Transit ballots, and spending 400 million on this years midterms.
They're not done by a long shot. The Kochs want a Constitutional Convention. They have three items on the agenda for it already:
- Repealing the income tax and estate tax.
- A balanced budget amendment - ensuring all Federal regulatory agencies, the SEC and FDA and EPA and FEC and so on, Department of Education, Social Security and Medicare, and everything else the right have had a bee in their bonnet about since the 1930s is dismantled and shut down or privatised.
- Repealing the 17th Amendment - the right to vote for Senators. It will revert to state appointment. 32 Republican states, that's 64 Republican Senators. Just three shy of a 2/3 majority. In addition to taking over states and gerrymandering Congress and stacking federal courts.
In any other country you'd call this a soft coup.
How do you stop this?
You can't vote them out, the gerrymandering and disenfranchisement ensure their minority has a majority of power.
You fight this in the court and either they've stacked them or the judges rule in your favor and they just try again and replace the judges for the next round. If it goes to the federal courts (that they stacked remember) either they rule in their favor or its litigated for so long the courts declare its too late to change.
And what a surprise, Michigan AG Bill Schutte opposed to the ballot initiative to create an independent body to draw districts, and is running for Governor, is another Koch Brothers crony.
Where is the Democratic Party while this goes on? Their biggest concern is avoiding scary words and creating the... BoomerCorps.
So what the hell do you do?
They are extreme ideologues. Its not enough for them to have a 100 billion dollars. They believe they are right and they know best. That taxation is wrong, that public education is wrong, that public transportation is wrong, that climate change is not happening, and doing anything about these things is contrary to the free market.
There might also be a darker motivation.
The Koch Brothers father Fred Koch was a Nazi war profiteer. When he concluded business in Germany in 1938 building oil and aviation fuel refineries for the Luftwaffe he wrote in his diary that he thought only Germany, Italy, and Japan were on the right path. He brought back with him a Nanny who was a member of the Nazi Party to help raise his boys correctly.
In the 1950s he co-founded the John Birch Society. The Birchers believed that School Integration and the Civil Rights Movement were Communist Plots.
Charles Koch worked for the Birchers as a young man, he later worked with Robert LaFevre in founding the Freedom School and Ramparts College. Both had Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Confederates on their faculty.
He later founded Reason Magazine. In its early years it featured Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Confederates as merely historical revisionists challenging the stuffy orthodoxy of academias ivory tower.
By the 1980s he teamed up with James McGill Buchanan. A free market economist considered so extreme people aren't introduced to him until they've read and adhering to Ayn Rand. Together they turned George Mason University into what it is today to produce economists and policy makers that would extol their shared beliefs and carry them out in academia, industry, and government. Many graduates find positions in Koch Industries or the Koch network or sponsored into positions at other colleges.
Buchanan got his start in Virginia in the 1950s in the fight against School Integration, he conceived of Charter Schools as a means of forming an opposition that would be stripped of racist jargon. He was an advisor to the Pinochet regime, helping them construct a Constitution that would be stuffed with "locks and bolts" against democracy and popular participation ensuring an elite minority would be serviced alone.
Now remember the Kochs are ardently opposed to public education, believe in privatization and charter schools as an alternative, and their actions with state legislatures are instituting the exact same kind of "locks and bolts".
The Kochs fund the American Enterprise Institute, David sits on its board of directors. Charles Murray the author of the Bell Curve is one of its fellows.
Also teaching at GMU is economist Garrett Jones. His work draws upon that of white supremacist and eugenicist Richard Lynn, and his work has been favorably reviewed by VDARE. Jones has delivered lectures arguing less democracy in the US would lead to better governance.
The Kochs 'prisoner outreach' program is overseen by Florida Atlantic University professor Marshall DeRosa, a member of the League of the South.
Assistant Professor Jonathan Anomaly at the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science at the University of Arizona, which has received 1.8 million from the Kochs and 2.6 million from their associates, published an article Public Goods and Education. In it Anomaly discussed the value of exploring links between genetics and IQ of different racial groups, and the value of eugenics. He has also written about the need to replace public education.
They provide funding to Young America's Foundation that funds those lecture tours featuring Murray, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Ted Nugent, Robert Spencer, Milo Yiannopoulos. Ben Shapiro is a new addition. Its board member James B. Taylor is the former president of the National Policy Institute, now run by alt right icon Richard Spencer.
Rebel Media in Canada was founded by Ezra Levant - who has previously worked for the Fraser Institute the Kochs main Canadian think tank and before that did his internship at the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Rebel Media is hive of altright activism.
Jordan Peterson started at Rebel Media, and often promotes Koch linked groups.
Stefan Molyneux has associated with Jones, Murray, and the League of the South.
So when you start to really dig into them you find a lot of connections to racism, from the Birchers in the 1950s to 'racial realists' and the alt right today. All with a consistent narrative that 'they' are undermining 'our' society.
Which might then lead one to question why it is so many of the policies they advocate for target, marginalize, and limit the rights of minorities.
They won’t be around much longerI saw an interview with Rupert Murdoch years ago where he spoke about his desire to live to 100. He works out every day with a physical trainer, has his meals catered by a nutritionist, and both are overseen by a doctor. I don't doubt many others in his class and with his wealth feel the same way.
I also don’t understand why the Republicans’ response upon realizing that they are unelectable in an ethically run democracy opt for unethicalThey're not going to admit their policy ideas are wrong. So the cynical will go for the money, and the true believers will concoct the elaborate fantasies about how liberals and Democrats are funded by George Soros to bus in illegal immigrants.
They work for rich and powerful people who demand their policies be adopted and feel extremely entitled and don't take no for an answer.
Conservatives are Fear-driven with Symptoms of Low Social Mobility
It's easier to digest the Trump enabling conservative mindset when you consider why it is they are so susceptible to the principles of authoritarianism. Why is adherence to the king important to them? Why do they relish in the behavior of petulance and infantilism? Why all the rabble-rousing? Why do conservatives find these toxic virtues appealing? Why are they insecure and emotionally volatile? Why are they intellectually dishonest and why do they engage a topic in bad faith? What are they so afraid of?
Aside from the very obvious observable reputation and behavior of a lifelong scumbag and pathological liar in Donald Trump, allow me to do my best explaining what conservative authoritarianism looks like in the head-space of conservative America. I personally feel that Trumpism has transcended whatever is left of conservatism into something far more dangerous and radical, but for now we will refer to them as conservatives, even though fiscal conservatives or what's left of them voted for Hillary. Regardless, these right-wing concepts and feelings transcend democratic partisanship given the principles of authoritarianism as they relate to what is true and when truth is diametrically opposed to one's beliefs.
As it can be understood, the foundation of social and cultural 'fear' is rooted in hate and modern conservatives typically take a 'Good versus Evil' approach towards that which runs counter to their identity. They often express their beliefs and values exclusively in absolutes and superlatives for this reason, not unlike the linguistic congruence of Trump himself, who literally cannot speak at length about a complex subject and navigate the discourse successfully enough to promote his beliefs and express his points, making him unqualified to comment on matters social, cultural, economic, and political.
A symptom of this 'fear' is a susceptibility to disinformation and propaganda, in which conservatives will immediately come to defense of money-grubbing, fear-mongering oligarchs from the GOP, the right-wing media, and their corporate 'investors', who have worked in tandem to systematically undermine the overall well-being of humanity for personal profit. As we have seen time and time again, trickle-down is still widely accepted despite evidence to the contrary. The GOP is essentially a conduit for fostering a...political ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. These are the same morally bankrupt vulgarians that brought us anti-intellectualism as a virtue and radical identitarianism (see Richard Spencer and Fox News) and are currently moving us towards an ‘illiberal democracy’ akin to the economic and social corruption of Putin’s Russia.
The studies listed below help illustrate the manner in which the brain is susceptible to demagoguery and the principles of authoritarianism. As demonstrated, conservative youths develop more grey matter ('shorter' or preferred neural pathways/behaviors) around their amygdalas (fear processing center of the brain), whereas liberal youths develop more grey matter around the Anterior cingulate cortex (the reasoning center of the brain ). Accordingly, the ACC includes: the anterior region, which is involved in executive function, the dorsal region, which is involved in cognitive processes, and the ventral region, which is involved in emotional regulation. Fear in this capacity is often void of nuanced restraint and clarity and is the manner in which conservatives feel discomfort and insecurity in dissonance arousing situations. They're in a way, wired to be 'snowflakes', in that fear and discomfort around a subject act as a defense mechanism that overrides objective truth in order to feel safe about one's reputation, beliefs, and values. This while hiding behind the veil of politics to feel justified in their hatred of social and economic change through the bias of their community, the GOP itself, and conservative propaganda in the media. You routinely see this effect in religious groups and the like. Simply put, they’re fear-driven beings with symptoms of low social mobility (cultural capital).
Study A --- Brain scan
Study B
Study C
Study D
Study E
There is fact, and there is cognitive dissonance. the latter of which is an emotional landscape where truth is relative and lowbrow conspiracy theory runs rampant. Gas lighting and projection are a staple here and falsehoods feel vindicating when they run counter to perceived liberal agendas or entities, which allows lies to perpetuate and grow. Not out of policy, but out of malice. A place of self-aggrandizement where conservative constituents reside and by which the GOP has them hook, line, and sinker. As has been routinely observed, a frightening number of these people will not hesitate to vote for a bona fide dictator, a literal Nazi, child predator, or rapist. One needn't look hard to see that these people ravenously support a quality of man they'd never, ever allow to be left alone with their wives or children. It is as if the content of one's character doesn't matter anymore as long as Republicans are 'winning.' Winning feels good, so winning is the moral high ground. A place where the reputation of a man's character is worthless and self-reflection is impossible. Authoritarianism is very much alive in modern America and there is no shortage of narcissistic supply.
Furthermore, they all went out and voted for a malcontent snake-oil salesman who lives in a golden tower with his name written on it in caps lock. An abusive, spray-tanned, affluent egomaniac in a baggy suit with no redeeming qualities as a man, husband, father, and leader. The kind of adult you can't bring around because you're too ashamed and too worried about his behavior. Donald J. Trump is a person so fraught with hypocrisy and scandal that reasonable people are questioning whether he has a histrionic personality disorder or degenerative brain disease without a hint of hyperbole.
We now have a literal President who refuses to read long-form text and hasn’t finished a novel in five decades. A man so untethered from reality that he feels he has earned his right to be a criminal and that fondling women is genuinely appropriate. Not only will he do the crime, but he will brag about it publicly while simultaneously denying it and then turn around and gaslight whoever points out the behavior. Regardless of what you believe, or whether you think a narcissist can do good through bad in a vacuum, this is what conservative authoritarianism looks like and how it functions in the collective psyches of conservative America. Anybody who supports Donald Trump at this juncture is a certifiable dumbass or worse, a nihilistic troll. Conservatism has almost fully transitioned unto unbridled authoritarianism, and that's not hyperbole. Things have gotten so bad that hyperbole is dead.
Aside from the very obvious observable reputation and behavior of a lifelong scumbag and pathological liar in Donald Trump, allow me to do my best explaining what conservative authoritarianism looks like in the head-space of conservative America. I personally feel that Trumpism has transcended whatever is left of conservatism into something far more dangerous and radical, but for now we will refer to them as conservatives, even though fiscal conservatives or what's left of them voted for Hillary. Regardless, these right-wing concepts and feelings transcend democratic partisanship given the principles of authoritarianism as they relate to what is true and when truth is diametrically opposed to one's beliefs.
As it can be understood, the foundation of social and cultural 'fear' is rooted in hate and modern conservatives typically take a 'Good versus Evil' approach towards that which runs counter to their identity. They often express their beliefs and values exclusively in absolutes and superlatives for this reason, not unlike the linguistic congruence of Trump himself, who literally cannot speak at length about a complex subject and navigate the discourse successfully enough to promote his beliefs and express his points, making him unqualified to comment on matters social, cultural, economic, and political.
A symptom of this 'fear' is a susceptibility to disinformation and propaganda, in which conservatives will immediately come to defense of money-grubbing, fear-mongering oligarchs from the GOP, the right-wing media, and their corporate 'investors', who have worked in tandem to systematically undermine the overall well-being of humanity for personal profit. As we have seen time and time again, trickle-down is still widely accepted despite evidence to the contrary. The GOP is essentially a conduit for fostering a...political ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. These are the same morally bankrupt vulgarians that brought us anti-intellectualism as a virtue and radical identitarianism (see Richard Spencer and Fox News) and are currently moving us towards an ‘illiberal democracy’ akin to the economic and social corruption of Putin’s Russia.
The studies listed below help illustrate the manner in which the brain is susceptible to demagoguery and the principles of authoritarianism. As demonstrated, conservative youths develop more grey matter ('shorter' or preferred neural pathways/behaviors) around their amygdalas (fear processing center of the brain), whereas liberal youths develop more grey matter around the Anterior cingulate cortex (the reasoning center of the brain ). Accordingly, the ACC includes: the anterior region, which is involved in executive function, the dorsal region, which is involved in cognitive processes, and the ventral region, which is involved in emotional regulation. Fear in this capacity is often void of nuanced restraint and clarity and is the manner in which conservatives feel discomfort and insecurity in dissonance arousing situations. They're in a way, wired to be 'snowflakes', in that fear and discomfort around a subject act as a defense mechanism that overrides objective truth in order to feel safe about one's reputation, beliefs, and values. This while hiding behind the veil of politics to feel justified in their hatred of social and economic change through the bias of their community, the GOP itself, and conservative propaganda in the media. You routinely see this effect in religious groups and the like. Simply put, they’re fear-driven beings with symptoms of low social mobility (cultural capital).
Study A --- Brain scan
Study B
Study C
Study D
Study E
There is fact, and there is cognitive dissonance. the latter of which is an emotional landscape where truth is relative and lowbrow conspiracy theory runs rampant. Gas lighting and projection are a staple here and falsehoods feel vindicating when they run counter to perceived liberal agendas or entities, which allows lies to perpetuate and grow. Not out of policy, but out of malice. A place of self-aggrandizement where conservative constituents reside and by which the GOP has them hook, line, and sinker. As has been routinely observed, a frightening number of these people will not hesitate to vote for a bona fide dictator, a literal Nazi, child predator, or rapist. One needn't look hard to see that these people ravenously support a quality of man they'd never, ever allow to be left alone with their wives or children. It is as if the content of one's character doesn't matter anymore as long as Republicans are 'winning.' Winning feels good, so winning is the moral high ground. A place where the reputation of a man's character is worthless and self-reflection is impossible. Authoritarianism is very much alive in modern America and there is no shortage of narcissistic supply.
Furthermore, they all went out and voted for a malcontent snake-oil salesman who lives in a golden tower with his name written on it in caps lock. An abusive, spray-tanned, affluent egomaniac in a baggy suit with no redeeming qualities as a man, husband, father, and leader. The kind of adult you can't bring around because you're too ashamed and too worried about his behavior. Donald J. Trump is a person so fraught with hypocrisy and scandal that reasonable people are questioning whether he has a histrionic personality disorder or degenerative brain disease without a hint of hyperbole.
We now have a literal President who refuses to read long-form text and hasn’t finished a novel in five decades. A man so untethered from reality that he feels he has earned his right to be a criminal and that fondling women is genuinely appropriate. Not only will he do the crime, but he will brag about it publicly while simultaneously denying it and then turn around and gaslight whoever points out the behavior. Regardless of what you believe, or whether you think a narcissist can do good through bad in a vacuum, this is what conservative authoritarianism looks like and how it functions in the collective psyches of conservative America. Anybody who supports Donald Trump at this juncture is a certifiable dumbass or worse, a nihilistic troll. Conservatism has almost fully transitioned unto unbridled authoritarianism, and that's not hyperbole. Things have gotten so bad that hyperbole is dead.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
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