Some on the side that just won the presidency and the Senate, retained control of the House, and enjoy a Supreme Court majority believe they are on the verge of losing access to credit markets based on their political beliefs.
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I genuinely wonder how they are doing psychologically. Like with this level of paranoia, you have to be in a constant state of fear and stress.
They have to be having panic attacks 24/7 if they actually believe this is a realistic scenario.
This is also bound up in the most hysterical cancel culture narratives. The far right is made up of a lot of deeply unlikeable people others generally don't want to be around, but they interpret not having friends as instead evidence of political oppression. https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/you-haven-t-been-canceled-you-re-just-unlikable
The far right controls the entirety of the Republican Party, while the far left has influential positions in a number of edgy websites and comparative literature departments
The hard-hitting, definitely-not-fake-fairness takes I come here to see. We legitimately have a fascist for president, and your novel counterargument is "Jacobin writers are also hypocritically aggrieved". This is leaky-brain stuff! Why the reframing?
A vastly better example would be someone going right-to-left. The grift pipeline is overwhelmingly unidimensional, and those names are essentially my point! They're (quite possibly) going to be confirmed to cabinet positions. Your Jacobin counterweights are still just hanging around Brooklyn.
We're talkin' grifters here. The far left and far right are totally different things, and reimagining them to fit a structure that is clean, easy to understand, and wrong is just a lazy take befitting the "I'm so above it all" cynicism of people who don't actually pay attention to anything
Probably why has-been actors and celebrities tend to support Trump, feeling like they're being denied opportunities when either A: they just suck or B: no one wants to work with a bigoted asshole.
Painting themselves as perpetual victims, as opposed to the discarded 'Happy Warrior', gives them license to always be on the attack and cover for bullyish behavior.
Don't forget that AI will be used to put people in prison. It is so easy to make very convincing videos of confessions about anything without a real confession. Political opponents will start disappearing and AI generated video will come out of them saying they committed crimes they did not commit.
I can assure such idiots that the companies in the *for-profit* business of extending credit could give a shit what the politics of their customers are - this is only the sort of performative nonsense these MAGA cult members cam dream up.
It was never based on the politics of the customer, it was based on actual or assessed risk of unlawful activity related to the customer's industry or operations, and the guidance provided banks was to ensure that this risk was understood and managed by the bank...
This is not a defense of it, on the whole I'm philosophically opposed to the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act and its progeny (outside the components that require monitoring to identify when the bank's customer is a victim), but it was never some partisan political attack.
Appreciate the reply, but it was 100% based on politics: extra scrutiny of disfavored groups. And all the evidence is in my favor. I don't need Marty Gruenberg to show up on cable news with a big sign that says "I'm doing this because the Obama admin told me to"
It being a policy choice of the Obama admin does not make it a partisan political attack. You think there’s some partisan bent of ATM owners, or pornographers, or dating service operators?
While that meme never happened, the fear it shows is fairly warranted as there have been many cases of banks and payment processors denying services on ideological grounds
that’s like saying anti-vaxx people’s fears of being sent to camps for not taking vaccines is ”fairly warranted” because thw Trump admin used old anti-TB laws to detain and deport people at the border.
Vullo was totally wrong, an advocacy organization is not an individual consumer, a unanimous SCOTUS decision, with the majority opinion written by one of the Court’s liberals, beat it back decisively. I can go on, but there’s no need since that saga doesn’t come close to substantiating the meme.
Claiming the status of victim gives them permission to victimize others, which is what they want in the first place. The grievance is reverse engineered to support this.
Yes, this is what my fundamentalist evangelical Christian school warned us about back in the 80s. In their 'endtimes/antichrist' narrative, they would absolutely be the persecuted ones. There's an unbroken throughline... and a profound lack of ironic distance.
If they somehow get capped interest rates on credit cards, a lot of people will lose those cards. And I bet a lot of folks that voted for Trump will be among them.
I see an untapped market for "Political Identity Credit Insurance". It's like LifeLock, but in this case, you pay us $2,500 a year and we'll guarantee that if your card is ever declined due to your political views, we'll charter a helicopter to your precise location and pay your bill in cash.
Even at their most triumphalist, right-wing populists are psychologically reliant on an indelible sense of being in a permanent outsidership. There will always be a swamp, or a deep state, or a uniparty to go up against in a cartoonish "us against the empire" dramaturgy.
I think this is because they narrowly win and comprehend their undergirding is ephemeral bc it's based on fanning flames that could easily die out. They win by power grabs via monies interests like Leonard Leo type people and orgs. But still its not solidified enough for them. Its not the good place
Kinda fun that they've genuinely advanced their status as pariahs with a lot of folks even as they seem politically ascendant. At absolute best, they're those creepy uncles that folks don't want to talk to at Thanksgiving. More likely, they're just not invited anymore.
You’re talking about a fringe that is only found by nutpicking, with zero power in any place in America. Not. One. Place. Not even in the supposed “groups” centrists claim are so influential they lost the election for Democrats. Or fake leftists that are actually right wing.
Jill stein is not a serious person, but maybe the lack of success of any left party has something to do with every force aligned with the status quo working in concert to discredit and thwart them. Maybe your belief they aren’t grown ups is itself a centrist trope.
An ineliminable feature of Trumpian consciousness is a reflexive feeling that you are always and everywhere being oppressed. It's an endlessly renewable victim complex.
The psychology of MAGA collective: utterly ensconced in power, dominant within many communications platforms and across a variety of society's most consequential institutions (police, military), yet operating with a self-conception as a dispossessed insurgency valiantly opposing Orwellian forces.
This mindset is a political tool, shaping a victim narrative to fuel their supporters’ emotions and drive action. Their script is full of lines like, ‘We’re the heroes, but we keep getting cast as the villains
Between that and the charismatic leader, it’s easier to see why white evangelicals fit the MAGA movement than it is to evaluate them through the lens of reason or morals.
If you come preloaded with a persecution complex, it’s easy for anyone with sufficient charisma to activate it.
Not to be controversial, but I think that is why Trump seems to have such a hold on the evangelical voting bloc. Christians have been constantly told they are two steps away from becoming martyrs when in reality Christianity has always been in control.
This is one reason behind the Trumpian right’s abiding sense of disempowerment: they never really win the respect or admiration of those they perceive to occupy the seats of cultural power. It’s why they foam at the mouth whenever a c- or d-level music artist shows even the slightest interest.
If it is one thing I realized the past year or so it's that liberals don't have the full respect or admiration from the seats of cultural power either.
The other, as I’ve noted here, is that right-wing populism is architecturally designed to require an “us vs the system” motif in order to power its political program. It doesn’t work without it—so it must be invoked even under the preposterous conditions like when it is already the ruling regime.
That psychology is pre-installed with fundamentalists and is one reason they are so in thrall. Growing up as a fundamentalist kid we were acutely aware that basically zero scientists or historians or other sources of respectable opinion agreed with our views about the history of earth/humanity.
THIS ^ is not nearly understood widely enough
The system in which they live constantly pushes them into actual fear, fragility, precarity, insecurity, then sells them goods and services "designed" to protect them, restore their "rightful" place, exalt them, and offers scapegoats when it always fails
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They have to be having panic attacks 24/7 if they actually believe this is a realistic scenario.
They are the swamp, yet they rail against “the swamp.”
They rail against “cancel culture,” yet they themselves are the cancelers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
https://docs.ergoplatform.com/uses/cbdc/
https://www.aclu-wa.org/blog/hobby-lobby-decision-imposing-religious-beliefs-employees
They’d rather be alone and pass their own purity tests than do the dirty work of effecting change.
Even if you got rid of the structural biases against them, DSA and Green Party folks would rather keep stepping on rakes.
This country is eager for one or both of the major parties to crater, and there are no grown-ups out there ready to step up to the plate.
If you come preloaded with a persecution complex, it’s easy for anyone with sufficient charisma to activate it.
Source: I grew up in it.
Unless we're talking about electability, why would it? But there is a thirst for vindication and respect.
The system in which they live constantly pushes them into actual fear, fragility, precarity, insecurity, then sells them goods and services "designed" to protect them, restore their "rightful" place, exalt them, and offers scapegoats when it always fails
After all, it's within the lifetime of a great many of us that we did not, in fact, have the right to independent credit.