We’re seeing a total dismissal and mockery of all civic, traditional values, from stuff like “sharing is good” to “service and self-sacrifice to help others above one’s self is morally good.”
Even Dubya paid lip service to that stuff sometimes.
Even Dubya paid lip service to that stuff sometimes.
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They've rejected even their own limited mythology of beneficence and become Bond villains capable of getting the Homer Simpsons of the world to buy into their plans for domination.
Du Mez is good on how evangelicals have encouraged a version of masculinity that is completely antithetical to Christian virtues.
What's ironic is how cowardly these "manly men" are when it comes to standing up to Trump.
In other words, behavior that *isn’t* sociopathy is being actively punished.
https://youtu.be/iFt9Xgrnmk4
It's a level of greed is good and total abandonment of the collective - in a supposed democracy! - that feels almost uniquely insane.
1. is its revolutionary nature; fascists (unlike eg. Franco or Salazar) don't want to go back to better times or preserve the existing social structures; they want to create a new world
2. is its defiance of christianism - I'm not using the
Maybe it’s in part the capture of religion by nationalism and white supremacy ?
It's terrifying. It gives me the same weird, chilling feeling I got when ppl defended Biden-Harris' genocide, or challenged masking in public. This desire to ridicule anyone who values life. "No one really cares about mass death. You're just 'virtue signaling.'"
To me, if the current admin was doing all the things it is doing, but at the same time talking about doing it in the name of humanity, world peace, collectivism, that would be a similar example of virtue signaling.
*uncontrolled
It's almost like they are trying to fail?
https://bsky.app/profile/wikisteff.bsky.social/post/3lhqjpbpsvk2a
Greed over all. Money for the self, over all. This was always gonna end up at some juncture, sooner or later
Govenment not just by sociopaths, but uniquely spoiled sociopaths who are actively angering a lot of the actually hard people in government.
i don’t actually think there are any historical comparisons here.
Modern historians say the reports of corruption were widely exaggerated, but you have to wonder.
Won't work, but worth a try
Got half the nation excited for some good gulps of that Jonestown Kool-Aid.
I knew my uncle was a massive dick who complained that everyone was "too easily offended"
I didn't realize *so much* of the country agreed with him
... and it'll fall apart really fast as soon as the wrong/right people get hurt by it. It's unsustainable.
Objectivism is built in Marxist frames in many ways including how powerful (econ & moral) moguls are, but swapped good & evil.
Christian Nationalism is objectivism w/ theism flipped back.
https://bsky.app/profile/leahmcelrath.bsky.social/post/3lhmqln55qs2s
Silly me.
They crave adulation. They don't want to be feared OR loved, as in the mafia movies. They want to be feared AND loved.
Part of it is pure power play: drawing up the ladders they ascended on and locking in their dominance.
Also think of Putin’s war against a rules-based order.
Vice Presidents don't usually stoop to Twitter fights. But Vance picked this one, and he chose to lean into it, even though it endangers his own children.
Evil for evil's sake.
What was that Christian bro's quote "Do not commit the sin of empathy." I mean. . . .
Winter 2025 has been Coup #2 Boer Boogaloo
When it turns out pulling that lever damages a lot of other stuff they didn’t know about, they kind of shrug and keep moving. Mission accomplished.
Some people are psychopaths like rapists.
I’m just a retired librarian but seems not a bad comparison.
Then again, giving fourteen-year-olds the vote might be warily hilarious.
He’s just institutionalizing this.
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely—saw, and pined
His loss
milton got their asses in 1667
Some 15th century casuistry quoted by Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon, on Stalin's show trials in the late 1930s.
The clowns trashing our government no doubt see themselves in this light.
The first person to take anything seriously loses. Any and all sincerity deserves nothing but ruthless mocking.
Demanding it.
Pushing for it.
I think I managed almost three pages, but really only needed one. We did not become better friends.
We elected the Spidey and Friends version Sandman as president.
i also think W seems very human
you ever watch the doc journeys with george? pelosi's daughter made it following W on the campaign trail. it's pretty good, but watching it now would be surreal
The planning for an occupation in Iraq really requires one to come to terms with the fact that we're doing an evil thing, and resolving to do it well. Even that can end up better than what happened
That's the best I can think at present.
How do we reverse that?
It feels extremely weird to talk about virtue, values, and morality when—outside of the military—those terms have been abused by the religious right to justify oppression for well over a century, but it’s time to reclaim them.
“Gray and Wegner (2009) show that, in the minds of most people, moral relationships are by definition asymmetrical and therefore mutually exclusive: A moral agent can do right and wrong but not experience it.”
☹️☹️😡😡
We're into the realm of "I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."