50 or 100 times a day this week I have wondered how so many people became so morally dead inside as to not only accept grotesque cruelty and bigotry but cheer it, often for no other detectable reason than that human suffering seems to make them cheerful. Not even greed; just a love of cruelty. Humans who have made monsters of themselves by hating humanity so much they delete their own humanity.
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@JuliusGoat
They have convinced themselves that they are superior, and anyone else is their bogeyman.
There is always a bogeyman because they need to have someone to blame because it is never their fault.
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@JuliusGoat
Sado-populism
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@JuliusGoat
"You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"
"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway."
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer
[#]facism #uspol
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@JuliusGoat
Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
It’s not that people are greedy; but
(I hate to inform you)
people are mean.
It’s not that we desire the piles of
gilt and coin — that’s just a ploy.
We want to enjoy standing above the
hoi polloi.
We want with great passion to dance
at the top of the heap, to be elite.
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@JuliusGoat
Whenever I gently point out human beings are vicious hominids who apply far too much of their considerable intellect to the justification of the terrible things they do to their fellow man - I always get a lot of guff.
But this, too, is to be expect. Man is the animal who lies - mostly to himself.
To be fair, a few people have evolved a bit, rejecting the cruelty and selfishness and untruthfulness of human nature - but we don't degenerate into moral death.
We start there.
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@JuliusGoat My two rules for life have greatly facilitated my understanding why the world is the way it is:
Not all of them, no, of course not.
But by definition half the population has below average intelligence.
Combine that with the assholes, and since they don't overlap completely well over half the population is one or the other or both.
1/2
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@JuliusGoat The smart, good people build systems to keep the stupid people and assholes in check. Then we forget why those systems are important and stop maintaining them, and they start to weaken. Then the smart assholes take advantage of the weaknesses in the poorly maintained systems and manipulate the stupid people into thinking it's all a good idea.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
2/2
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@jik @JuliusGoat
This is a remarkably cogent summary
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@JuliusGoat It reminds me of how people used to gather around to watch public hangings and beheadings. Someone was literally dying -- a thing that can't be taken back. And people were glad to gather around to watch.
I wonder what part of human nature it is that makes us like that.
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@nazokiyoubinbou @JuliusGoat
Public stonings, the Roman circus... There are records and signs of the public display of cruelty throughout human history. This cannot be a coincidence, it must be human nature.
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@JuliusGoat
Sadism, bigotry, & fascism go together. They see it as "strength", not a sign of fragility.
The self-appointed "judge, jury, & executioner" beliefs of sanctimonious authoritarians.
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-trump-voters
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/13/what-trump-supporters-believe-and-expect/
https://www.opeu.org.br/2024/09/18/a-profile-of-trump-voters-the-demographics-of-his-maga-enthusiasts/
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/ib-knowledge/management/neuroticism-deprivation-and-racial-bias-trumps-unique-authoritarian-appeal/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/finding-a-new-home/202407/what-donald-trumps-most-loyal-followers-may-have-in-common
Trump voters admire the mental illness & borderline personality disorders of the rich.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010760890/adam-serwer-on-new-book-the-cruelty-is-the-point-in-trump-america
It gives moral license & a permission structure for their...
1/2
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2/2
...own exhibition of "The Cruelty is the Point".
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/harris-and-trumps-personal-traits-and-the-tone-of-their-campaigns/
It's the same motivation for terrorism that bolstered taking proud photos of lynchings by segregationists.
https://wordinblack.com/2022/01/the-horrors-of-lynching-photographs-and-postcards/
John Lewis's excellent book...Without Sanctuary.
https://withoutsanctuary.org/
They want to instill fear & use it to regain status.
It never occurs to them that their dinosaur belief system is the cause of their decline
Nazis photographed their own atrocities too
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/arts/design/holocaust-photos-dutch-nazi.html
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@Npars01
Yes.
More than just admiring Trump, they imagine themselves to be Trump.
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@JuliusGoat people are convinced that "they" did it first.
There are good people who have been genuinely deceived - they'll defend it like "these LGBT just need to stay away from kids, why is that so hard", "well the left didn't care about bodily autonomy when they were forcing us to vax". There is an entire ecosystem designed to brainwash them this way.
Then there's the inherently cruel. They also think they're punching back, but they're deceiving themselves, no external input needed.
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@JuliusGoat for an awful lot of the ‘acceptance’ I think it’s just attention capacity. Struck me with George Floyd that that wasn’t anything new (sadly) but somehow that got so many people’s attention. Why? Because of the plague. Lots of people had a lot of down time they otherwise wouldn’t have had so they had time to take it in. And really didn’t approve.
As far as those who like it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
But still, fuck them.
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@JuliusGoat
I have an issue with calling cruel, sadistic and other people who commit horrendous acts, "monsters".
These traits are all too human. These people haven't deleted their own humanity, they've embraced the "worst" parts of our species' capacities. And yes, it brings them joy.
Or perhaps, more simply they are rejecting our "better" tendencies, most exemplified by empathy. Without empathy, they can find joy in the pain in others.
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@JuliusGoat Maybe we were wrong to think there were just a few serial killers.
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@JuliusGoat Welcome to year 46 of neo-liberalism and year 24 of the Global war on Terror.
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@JuliusGoat Republican voters are my enemy.
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@JuliusGoat big ditto. For me, it comes in the form of thinking on how neighbors used to help neighbors. If someone was sick o me going through cancer or just had kids, someone would show up with a dinner or help with trash or whatever. Then people started spitting or coughing on cancer patients. Like … just freely emptied their souls to let in the cruelty.
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@JuliusGoat @eilonwy If you focus on this too much, you’ll despair.
Here’s a different perspective: roughly a third of American people voted for Trump, a third voted Harris, and a third just didn’t vote. Of both Trump and Harris’ third, roughly half just went along.
That means if you care, you’re facing an equal number that hate. You can easily sway the other 2/3 of Americans that have soft convictions.
Don’t despair.
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@JuliusGoat Ye shall see, heathens, once you have washed your hands with the last of your grape soda, how hollow the grape-soda-less life you've sacrificed so much to preserve will be.
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@JuliusGoat I also wonder why. Many humans seem to lack any degree of caring for humanity. We are not a nice species.
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@JuliusGoat There is abundant evidence of a preference for cruelty in US culture: It can be seen in the sociopathy of reality TV, pay-per-view fighting, warrior policing, stand-your-ground gun laws, higher incarceration and longer prison sentences than in other countries, and a continuation of capital punishment that has been abandoned by most democracies. Now we’ve added a renewed focus on bigotry for marginalized persons.
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@JuliusGoat
It's illness. Infection lowers empathy. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-infections-social-empathy.html
I believe that gum disease is the biggest source of this problem. It's painless and therefore ubiquitous. It turned me into Super Karen....
It's reversible too. https://zombieinstitute.blogspot.com/p/auntie-zombie-explains-insanity.html
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@JuliusGoat They don't think it's cruelty for the sake of cruelty. They think it's tough love and eye-for-an-eye justice (because they don't understand overgeneralization and bigotry).
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@JuliusGoat same
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@JuliusGoat To be successful in Captitalism is one of the reasons.
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@JuliusGoat always say "good morning" to your torturer, it affirms your humanity and exposes the lack of theirs. Don't take tea with them as if you were friends, but accept water, for water is from God.
a recently released palestinian prisoner
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@JuliusGoat I think some of these people miss their days in junior high/middle school when they could bully their classmates for no good reason other than the classmate was "different" in some way, and get away with it because the school had a zero-tolerance policy on #bullying but no school official wanted to go through the hassle (and the paperwork) of expelling a student for violating that policy, and therefore insisted that no incident of bullying ever occurred at their school.
In many schools a kid could beat the crap out of another kid right in front of the principal's office and the principal would turn his chair to look out the window or at the wall so he couldn't see what was happening. So, no bullying!
Now you have the former bullies that really miss those days, as well as the people who were bullied who think "nobody stepped in to help me so I don't give a fuck about anyone else."
And that's before you get to the "Christians" who think that if the planet is nuked into oblivion they will get to spend eternity in an eternal paradise while everyone else goes to hell (they think that because they don't know that in the original languages, their "good" book has three different words all translated to the English word hell, and ALL humans go to one of those (the place of the dead) while the place of eternal torment is only for the devil and the rebellious angels. So even their own mythology doesn't support that belief, but of course they will believe any crap their religious leaders tell them).
And if you try to be a really good person then you become a target. Some very small percentage of people are strong enough to deal with that, but a whole lot of other people aren't.
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