Incoherence isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
I remember back in 2008, just before the election. I was reading the NY Post; two op-ed pieces on why Obama was terrible. One said that Obama was centrist who was pushing a soft version of the Right’s polices and we should have real Right policies, not a watered down version. The other piece claimed Obama was a hard left radical with dangerous polices.
It’s the way Biden can be a dangerous tyrant who heads a vast crime network and a silly, senile weakling at the same time.
Quite literally from the “book” of fascism:
- Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
Per: Umberto Eco - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
Also Orwell on Hitler:
It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.
And Sartre on anti-semitism:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Fascism is boring. It hasn’t fundamentally changed in almost a hundred years.
It says a lot about the human condition, that a sadomasochistic death cult is still so deeply appealing to so many of us.
That last line from Sartre reminds me of this Innuendo Studios video about the “alt right”: https://youtu.be/yts2F44RqFw
Remember the kinder, gentler days when we all invoked Goodwin’s Law. As of 2017, Godwin himself called the GOP and Trump Fascists.
If the jackboot fits…
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
It turns out when your entire base rejects the concept of reality, you can spew whatever contradictory bullshit you want.
It’s a pinch maneuver: Undermine the left’s confidence, while solidifying the right’s opposition.
It’s quite effective too - it gave us Trump because potential left voters get the impression that “they’re both the same”, “Hillary had baggage”, “Bernie or no reform is possible”, - that kind of shit.
It doesn’t engage with preventing the enormous harm of right wing policies until they are in place eg abortion access, money is speech etc.
Been going on for ages, and tbf it was that way with bush and Trump too, somehow they were both evil, criminal masterminds, and bumbling morons who can’t do anything. So which is it. It’s just the sides within the sides fighting out for which narrative to use. Obama got it worse though, the racism was on display and they were going after him for the stupidest bullshit like tan suits, Reagan wore tan suits all the damn time!
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Stop blaming the media. Trump was open about ‘liking soldiers who didn’t get captured’ and millions of people decided that was okay with them.
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There’s a difference between an editorial presented as opinion and news reporting.
The example I used was an openly right source [NY Post is owned by the Fox Media Empire]
All the facts about Trump were there for anyone to see. Pussy grabber was in all the media, as were his remarks about POWs.
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The culture wars aren’t about cohesion. They’re about creating fake villains so the real villains go unnoticed.
There is opportunity in chaos for those willing to leverage the fractures.
Part of me feels bad for him as I don’t think anyone should get outed like that, but the rest of me wonders how many times he told people they were going to hell for the same things he was doing behind closed doors.
Maybe it was internally motivated or maybe it was external pressure form the people around him… but still he chose to be a bigot instead of simply accepting or embracing that people can want to be different than they are. At any point he could have accepted who he was and what he wanted from life, but he rejected that, even though it was the authentic truth.
It’s sad that this guy, and so many other people like him, would sooner give up on life itself than simply rejecting their past bigotry. It says a lot.
I don’t think its incoherence was ever hidden.
