pls don't impugn the senator

Dorothy Thompson on "Mr. C" in her 1941 article, "Who Goes Nazi?":

How important do you think the element of double personality is for that psychological profile? It seems like it's central. A person who doesn't really belong to two classes while not really belonging to any one, and who hates himself because of it.

I have a friend who doesn't match the profile very well at all, but some of the duality and contradiction is there. He has a blue collar work ethic and disdain which he inherited from his father, but he was raised in a white collar culture. He was ostensibly a Bernie supporter during the primaries, but he's also deeply immersed in Pro-Putin, racist/bro memes and was an aggressive online troll (he trolled me so much it created a rift in our friendship). He knew about Milo and the alt-right before it broke as a major story during the election. He comes from a country club-style racist, northeastern Republican financial elite family, but he rejected his background for the sake of a bohemian urban lifestyle. He feels like he's rejected his upper middle class background, but it still tugs at him, and he's unsatisfied with himself because of it: as he perceives it, while everyone he grew up with is off getting conventional, "square" white collar jobs, he's been left behind, because he's chosen to work menial, low-paying jobs, and isn't living up to his perception of his own potential (based on the expectations he internalized from his upbringing). He regularly takes it out on his friends. Despite being surrounded by ethnic minorities, which he uses as a cover to prove that he isn't racist, he still remains, in actuality, somewhat racist. He also frequently picks political fights with friends from his hometown to demonstrate his liberal bona fides and his commitment to conventional liberal views, despite the fact that he consistently uses the n-word and other racist epithets in regular conversation. He seems to occupy two worlds: the liberal, diverse urban bubble that he lives in, and this world of festering, seething resentment which he's connected to through the internet.

The point: some strong tensions, and plenty of hypocrisy there. It doesn't seem pathological, as is the profile you describe. But it seems to make sense in a world where social media has destroyed the distinction between private and public life. It seems like a product of a certain kind of alienation. The feeling of being under constant surveillance by our peers inhibits self-expression and makes people perform a certain socially acceptable persona in what feels like a public space where their identity must be managed. At some point, that persona isn't something that one only performs online: they also have to perform it "IRL", because what one says and does can so easily end up on the internet. But since it's merely a facade, there's a need to channel one's sincere self into spaces that feel private, whether that's in conversation with people who can be trusted not to publicize one's views, or darker corners of the internet, where their anonymity is preserved, and they won't be held accountable for actions/beliefs that aren't socially acceptable.

In other words, it seems like the first episode of season 3 of Black Mirror nailed it.

I also really don't understand memes. Maybe someone here does. In a world where the medium is the message, they seem to be a medium that has gradually become associated with a specific political "movement", so to speak. Am I right that they've become stigmatized since the alt-right became culturally mainstream, because they became identified with the alt-right?

Nope! Teenagers and young adults of all stripes are obsessed w/memes now. A lot of my feminist friends who have turned into ardent communists are ****ing obsessed with memes.*

I think what's insidious abt the memes of the alt-right is that they've been around for a long time. 4chan has been putting out racist/misogynist/homophobic memes and cartoons and image macros for ten years at least, and the justification was always that it was always ironic & "meant to offend." MSpaint drawings of dead black people/jews/etc. Only in the last few years it's become clear that a very sizable contingent of those people weren't actually kidding.

*worth noting that "meme" in common parlance basically describes any funny picture w/words on it

Tapper vs.Conway. I'm sure most of you have seen it (it's from 2 days ago), but I just caught it, and thought this was really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-zwAtAsyno

Oh yeah, I'd Tapper.

o_O

More than anything else, my opinion of Kellyanne Conway comes down to the simple fact that fair-skinned people are not biologically adapted to live at these latitudes.

No need to hit on Conway when you can find thousands of women with just as much skin damage near Lake Tahoe.

Yeah, I was referring to how Tapper confronted her. I thought it was well done, and very necessary.

He's demonstrating how several White House and Trump claims are all false (including ones about the press), and she's really just spinning, deflecting and dodging the questions.

Trump reminds me so much of Wilders. Coming up with false statistics and then blaming the media for not reporting them. Duh, they're false.

Releasing a list of terrorist attacks that were extensively reported by every imaginable network and then claiming they were "underreported" or not covered at all.

These people, incredible.

Hah! Court rules the ban unconstitutional in a unanimous decision.

I'm going to pre-empt the conspiracy theorists who will claim that Trump will now orchestrate a false flag attack on American soil during the stay just to prove the judge wrong that there won't be "irreparable harm", by saying that a White House which can't even educate its cabinet on ethics rules won't have the competence to carry out a conspiracy.

But maybe Bannon will try, and then Congress gets to arrest the entire White House for treason.

lol, Trump tweeting in all caps.

This is where I don't get right wing trolls who claim to be for Trump's movement, but hesitant to stand by the man. He's acting just like you guys!!

Mark Levin just endorsed Trump's tweet on the air, including the caps. Lol.

This political theater is getting rather pathetic and unbecoming. Good for ratings, though, right?

For reference: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3457898/2-9-17-9th-Circuit-Order.pdf

Thanks!

"There is no precedent to support this claimed
unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental
structure of our constitutional democracy. "

Ah, okay, it was about the reviewability, not the ban itself. Sorry about that.

Yeah, why should matters of national security somehow be excluded?

Pretty strong wording, I'm impressed.

To expand on this conspiracy theory a bit, what if the Muslim ban was a deliberate attempt not only to distract liberals and suck them back into identity politics and away from economic causes that could threaten Trump's hold on the base, but also a plan to deliberately provoke actual terrorists? With conservative talk show hosts like Mark Levin waging decades long propaganda campaigns against the judiciary by characterizing them as judicial activists who legislate from the bench, and now with Trump directly attacking judges on Twitter, what's not to say that some actual terrorists begin to enter the country, provoked by the initial ban, but now allowed into the country during the stay, allowing the White House to finally exploit the narrative they have been laying the groundwork for--that the judges have endangered the country, and that their powers should be revoked on matters of national security by executive order? If the resulting protests turn violent, he will also be able to extend his authority to domestic security.

Moreover, what's not to say that Putin won't do something behind the scenes to get the terrorist attack on the U.S. that he wants? If he found a way for the U.S. to turn authoritarian, he would stand to benefit immensely from partnership with the Trump administration, as well as imploding its democratic institutions, and therefore the long term prospects of Russia's number one adversary.

lol

"Every single jedi judge is now an enemy of the Republic"

Yeah, I've long abandoned that kind of conspiracy thinking. I'll worry about your theory when an actual attack happens. Hopefully it won't.

Well as I've said several pages back, Bannon is pretty much Trump's Palpatine, orchistrating from behind the shadows the chaos that collapses the very republic that the chosen one was meant to save.

On the matter of today's court ruling, check out yesterday's episode of the New York Times 'The Daily' podcast, which highlights the moment of yesterday's live stream of the hearing, including a moment where the judge confronts the DOJ lawyer about comments made by Trump that directly contradict their arguments, much like Jake Tapper threw back Trump's words at Conway to compete with her accusations against the media.

I guess it turns out that psychopathic behavior is self-defeating in the long run?

Well, yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this administration would crash and burn pretty quickly.

I mean, the whole deal with the White House addressing the thing with Ivanka Trump's clothing line. How has that anything whatsoever to do with governing the country? It's bizarre. And then Con way man advertising her stuff live on TV, which was already a first instance of the Trump family business interests getting mixed up with politics.

It's been an absolutely crazy two weeks.

...and at the end of the day, it was all a conspiracy between Trump's business associates and NBC / HBO to increase ratings of SNL and Real Time.

Which would make sense if his plan was to turn the country into a reality show.

It already is, isn't it?

I mean literally, like the Truman show, where we don't realize it, but Trump deliberately is acting crazy to boost ratings, because of an explicit agreement with the networks, with money changing hands. And at the end of the four years, he lets us all in on the surprise.

Somebody needs to pull Trump away from the television. Apparently, he was unaware that Bannon would be elevated to a principal of the National Security Coucil, and did not understand the significance of this until he was told it happened afterwards.

More recently today, Trump was on a call with Putin, but had not received a briefing from Russia experts. There are even sources who claim that Trump had to interrupt the call to ask his advisers what the START treaty even was, although the White House denies this.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/trumps_h1b_plan_leaks_american_techies_first/

I'd like to thank Donald Trump in advance for ushering in a Golden Age of international software development remote work.

Well it wouldn't be the first time in the last 100 years that a buffoonish right wing politician inadvertently created a golden age for scientists and other intellectuals outside the borders of his own country.

Or we need to get reports about executive orders on TV faster!

I have some more thoughts on your post, Eversor, but I'm honestly not up to writing them out it at the moment. But I think you really hit on something with what you said about alienation.

I think I could summarize my basic thesis at this point by saying that we've allowed technology to emerge an online "ghetto" of bourgeois teenagers out of pure boredom mixed together with some of the darker part of the male psyche that have always been around, but haven't necessarily been allowed to conglomerate into a movement... 4chan is a virtual `hood, an intellectual wasteland complete with its own dialect, addictions, and hit men, and has a very fascinating but pernicious relationship with symbols that breaks a lot of established protocols of human interaction. What's very strange (especially now with Trump president) is that it seems to be seeping into the rest of society (there goes the neighbourhood?). The question I have is: is this cesspool evolving too quickly into a post-modern monstrosity, capable of destroying the very epistemological foundations of society itself (that Trump is president suggests in some ways that it already has), before society has time to adapt?

Tell your children to stay far, far away.

Write up more once you're able to. I'd be down to keep the back and forth going. I don't have a very good way of understanding much of this stuff, outside of a few movies and TV shows that possess a penetrating insight into the ills of our culture. Birdman does it perfectly. The movie, released in 2014, seems like a prophecy now that Trump is our president.

Most of my thinking on this has had to do with the problems of the left's cultural war in the past four or five years. Of course, everything going on on the right and the left seems to be symptomatic of some deeper failure. What could it be?

I don't have my finger on the pulse when it comes to things like 4chan, some of the darker corners of reddit, etc. I've watched a few InfoWars videos, but they seem like a different phenomenon (InfoWars seems like Fox News on steriods), even if somewhat related.

Another thing that ive found helpful for thinking about such things is this podcast:

https://www.google.co.il/amp/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2016/12/23/14052804/oligopoly-tim-wu

A lot of it is about Tim Wu's life, which is actually entertaining enough. But the really thought provoking stuff comes in closer to the end, when Wu talks about the way mass media has functioned throughout history and the psychological effects associated with it. The discussion complements Birdman surprisingly well.

And just throw this in there, because why not?

https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/ernst-cassirer-fascism-national-socialism

I've wanted Cassirer to be relevant for years. This lets me down, but someone may find it worthwhile. I'm not entirely sure what Cassirer means by mythical thinking and I haven't read this carefully enough.

But it's clear he doesn't just mean something like political symbols (like the frog) coming into prominence. Perhaps the idea is something like this: whereas rational thinking is critical, and therefore inherently individualistic (because individuals can scrutinize and demand explanations for information they receive -- they don't simply take it for granted; rational people don't assent to truths unless they've been given reasons to justify them), mythic thinking is inherently collective, because it involves semantic symbols (not only visual ones, but also words and political slogans) who's meaning is not clear (even, they're inscrutable), but which elicit emotion similarly across the sections of society that are familiar with them.

Either way, mythical thinking has the effect of producing herd mentality, by creating ways of thinking/acting that destroy critical reflection, and driving large swaths of society to act in a certain way.

Well, so far they're sticking to making up terrorist attacks. You know, the "Bowling Green Massacre".

Incredible, these lies. I can't believe how they're getting away with this. Apparently Trump supporters don't care if stuff is being made up, or they actually believe it. I can't decide what's scarier.

Aside from his direct political opponents, Trump's conflict with the truth is mostly in opposition to the media and the court system. If his populist supporters cared enough about the integrity of those institutions, well, they wouldn't be populist Trump supporters. As for movement conservatives, I am sure they cringe when he outright lies, even if they look past his fibs when there is a larger unstated truth in their minds. Which is why they probably try not to think about it too much, and when they do, they remind themselves of liberal lies instead. This isn't incredibly hard when talk radio is blaring into their ears eight hours a day why this is obviously the American thing to do.

As for the administration, well, I find it pretty humorous that the president thinks that an opinion poll about trustworthiness can be used to define truth. The guy is a troll.

Defining truth by majority rule sounds a lot like this definition of anti-intellectualism:

--Isaac Asimov

One seemingly obvious (but IMO stunning) conclusion that I've come to in the past couple of days, is: in a polarized democracy like the US, if you seriously ask the country an obvious (but apparently contentious) question, one side is bound to be dead wrong. The big question is, what happens when you give the wrong side a voice? It's like democracy in America has become a machine for creating epistemological toxic waste that we haven't figured out how to treat. The usual processing (education) seems to be failing.

In my mind, this rather tenuous relationship with universal truth just means there are deeper problems that aren't being addressed. I am sure Jon`C would say they are economic, and at this point I completely agree. Basically, if we think of lies as answers that are 'wrong', I think we should view those who would rationalize the lies as people who are just grasping for a way to express their view that the real problem in fact lies with the question (it has been said that in politics, one should never answer the question which you were asked, but the question you wish you were asked. Lying apparently works too, if you can pull it off--more so if you can make it into a movement. This is easier for some groups of people than others, and I also see no small coincidence that this group of people tends to "congregate" ).

IMO, conservatives are fundamentally about territory, whereas liberals are fundamentally interested in correctness. Given those GDP charts that Jon posted, it's not hard to see that the two can come into conflict. And once you understand that, it's not hard to realize just how divided the country has gotten.

I think that in order to to see 'democracy' in America return to a historically more stable modality, we'd need to see three things:

1. Closer economic parity between political opponents
2. Stronger political political party structures
3. The establishment of accessible and comforting myths, constructed by the elite for mass consumption

If that doesn't much sound like democracy, well... it's not. But I don't think too many people in the 18th century seriously thought that democratic forces should completely rule the country, and in certain hard to control ways they have begun to.

With technology and globalization making #1 and #3 less and less likely every year, I don't see the US returning to this stable modality any time soon. It looks like we're instead going to oscillate, getting a good (depending on your point of view) government every other time, but only by completely ****ing the country for half (or all) of us, since pissing people off seems to be the only unifying force at this point.

Of course, utter panic at the systematic decay of our institutions might also work, but I wouldn't count on that, so long as the fascist in the oval office has the reigns, and conservatives remain sufficiently focused on their economic and constitutional woes to continue looking the other way.

Let me just say something about Pepe the Frog. Pepe, who emerged from 4chan (but did not originate from /pol) is as much about racist ideology, as red or blue apparel is about Bloods or Crips.

And yes, in my analogy between 4chan and actual physical slums, /pol most definitely corresponds to a gang.