Unlike the MAGA movement, which is led by a candidate who is defiantly amoral, post-liberalism is steeped in a revolutionary religiosity.
Most Americans haven’t heard of the post-liberal right, the small but influential group of conservative, mostly Catholic men who have declared that liberal democracy, the animating principle of America’s founding, has failed and want to bring about a new social order where there is no separation of church and state and men and a hyperconservative Catholicism reign supreme. They are disdainful of secularism and individual liberty. Just like Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump illustrated during Tuesday night’s debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, these men idolize the authoritarian Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary.
They’re also nostalgic for Spain as it was run by the dictator Franco and see Orbán’s government and Franco’s as potential models for the kind of regime they wish to install in the United States. The group’s political priorities — which include restricting access to contraception and divorce and banning marriage equality and pornography — are wildly unpopular. And yet the Republican nominee for vice president, my former friend JD Vance, is a prominent voice of this fringe movement, as so many of his regrettable podcast interviews have demonstrated.
Went through something broadly similar a few years ago. It’s kinda confidence-shattering, tbh. I had thought I was a pretty deft judge of character up to that point. Years after the fallout, I’ve come to realize that while I am actually still probably a better than average judge of character, that doesn’t really apply to psychopaths that actively hide their true nature as a habit and rule. But the whole clusterfuck and how much I missed the signs still fucks with my head sometimes even today.
I’ve given up thinking I’m a good judge of character completely. You can’t do much better than judging people by the company they keep, anyway. Sometimes people of quality can be alone, but utter bastards never are.
But I’ll be damned if I’m not still good at standing up to my friends. After I failed to make them see reason for long enough to be sure it was permanent… I cut them off 4 years ago and haven’t said a word to them since, even when they literally stalked me.
If you haven’t got integrity, you don’t really have anything, do you?
Judging character and identifying psychopaths are two wildly different skill sets, though arguably one depends on the other.
I’m slowly getting better (more experienced) at identifying psychopaths and narcissists, but holy shit it can be difficult.