What is there to do, really, other than laugh at stuff like this? Candace Owens investigates…lol. Candace’s grim look is the icing on the cake—putting on her best Katie Couric “this is very serious” face. It’s all so soul-crushingly dumb. And until the political culture of one of our two major political parties became completely subsumed by this absurdist cinematic universe of “alternative facts,” it also seemed relatively harmless. Indeed, I think my long-running fascination with America’s fringe and conspiratorial
What Christian Patriotism breeds is the scariest damn thing I have ever seen. All I see from the movement is hatred and destruction of others who are different. There's nothing amusing or funny about what they want to do, and it's been their mission since they fell in love with the Nazis and Hitler in the 1930's.
Every time these folks amass power ends the same way: dehumanization and political murder. They're ridiculous until they start disappearing their "enemies".
I was pretty much an apolitical person until my early-mid 20's, when I started to become aware of fundamentalist Evangelicals and the influence they had on the Republican Party. I was ignorant of a lot, but that was enough to convince me Republicans were bad news. I couldn't understand how any party would want to hitch their wagons to these people, knowing how out of touch they were with reality, and didn't see how it was possible for them not to end up a complete disaster in a modern world.
And what's really amazing about this is just how little I needed to understand about domestic policy, world affairs, even the philosophical difference between "liberalism" and "conservatism", in order to be as right about this as I have ever been about anything. The only thing I was wrong about was just how successful it would turn out to be. Growing up Catholic in the mid-Atlantic region, I would have never guessed there was enough ignorance in this country to make this sort of thing sustainable.
In the end, I was the ignorant one. Ignorant about the density of credulous crankery lying dormant in this country, just waiting for someone shameless enough to tap its incredible, destructive potential. I am just so angry, frustrated, disappointed, embarrassed, and ashamed of what we let these people do to us. We have done everything conceivable to show them the truth, and at every turn we have been countered by people either too foolish to know better or too amoral to care. I wish it were easier to tell the difference, but some days it just doesn't matter to me.
I often feel like I want to administer to all of them a giant slap to their collective face, as if that would somehow help to wake up the brainwashed ones and deliver just retribution to the others. And then I fall back into the realization that it wouldn't help, because the distinction between ignorance and malice is not so clear cut. They're mutually reinforcing. They like hating the rest of us, and resist being talked out of it. They don't want to be told the truth, which is why they punish anyone who tries.
We did everything we could to try to mend the rift. The mainstream media that they've been taught to despise spent the better part of 2017 navel gazing and thoughtfully examining what we all missed about Trump's appeal to people. Reporters would embark on tours of diners and bars in "Trump country", trying to understand. And all the while Trump's conduct got worse and worse, making understanding his voters increasingly irrelevant, because nothing justifies abject corruption and deception. And we kept thinking, "Surely now they'll realize they've been duped."
But that never mattered, because it wasn't about whether Trump told the truth. He told *their* truth, which was that mainstream American society was terrible and liberals were evil and hated them and wanted to destroy Christianity, and that they were right to hate us back and want to destroy us too. The rest was irrelevant. If hating liberals was wrong, they didn't want to be right.
And sadly, this is easy for Americans, because for some reason we're an especially susceptible people when it comes to conspiracy theories and absurd disinformation. Other developed countries aren't like this. Our anti-authority instincts make us receptive to kneejerk anti-institutional cynicism, which ironically makes us ripe for exploitation by authoritarians.
So now the American right is convinced they're in the midst of a populist revolution, when ironically they're the marks in a long con by elites. They've been living in an alternate reality constructed by rich media demagogues and corrupt, wealth-worshipping pastors, which has been slowly enveloping everything they think they know for the past 30 years or so. And it's only getting worse.
Our only out here is something most of us probably won't live to see. The younger generation is going to have to have a wholesale change of attitude. They're going to have to prioritize truth, and understand that in the social media and AI age, they have no hope of maintaining a shared reality unless they self-police, and divest themselves of the cynicism of conspiracy theorizing. They have to accept that they can no longer afford to indulge crazy, unverifiable ideas, even as an amusing diversion. The days of taking tabloid trash seriously have to end, or so will our mooring in the world.
I laughed at Ammon Bundy's 2016 occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Bundy didn't manage to use that to radicalize ranchers or get them to reject collaboration/communication with the BLM regarding grazing rights... but he normalized violent open-carry confrontations w/federal officials.
I laughed at the Tea Party in 2010. They normalized abusive confrontations at meetings w/elected officials. Groups like Moms for Liberty continue to do this at school board meetings all over the country.
I laughed at the Proud Boys & Patriot Prayer's marches in Portland in 2017-2020. They normalized open-carry confrontations and club/rock/shield brawls with unarmed counter-demonstrators. They pioneered open collaboration between the violent far right & sympathetic local police (Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer and Lt Jeff Niiya had months of exchanges, including tactical information).
The American far right is deadly serious and eager to create the kind of violent chaos that conservative media will reframe as leftist-caused anarchy. MAGA politicians like Trump and Senator Tom Cotton are eager to use that as an excuse for 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' measures like invoking the Insurrection Act.
Agreed! We Discordians luved conspiracy theories--we called it "Mindfuck." It was a way of exploring alternate realities, seeing how far our creativity could take us. Eventually we'd disclose to any victims that it was all bullshit, & they'd wave us off & growl, "You guys." (Altho I'm sure some refused to believe it was bullshit.)
This all ended when that twirp Codemonkey decided to co-opt our religion for fun & games & rebrand it "Q." The problem was, he NEVER disclosed that none of his conspiracy theories were true. He didn't explicitly say they were true, but he wouldn't come clean either. He was having a blast gaming & we were all pawns in his game, feeding his delight in how easy it was to shuck us. Then a certain bunch of people took notice of how easily we could be influenced. They re-rebranded his game as "QAnon" & stole it for their own gain. Now it's a cult & we "normies" are the victims. Only deprogramming will have any effect on the adherents; but one needs to be trained for that, & we aren't.
I read this last month and it continues to resonant. Part of this is my memory of laughing with my friends about vicious, unhinged anti-semitism spouted by a Posse Comitatus group from our area of Wisconsin in the mid-80s. We had never heard such things. Our laughter was mockery, but, that was based on the notions that the hatred was much less common than it actually was.
On another level, I wonder how our political discourse came to accept bad faith nonsense (e.g. CRT in schools) and risible arguments (e.g. tax cuts always increase revenue) as, well, neither risible nor in bad faith. Did the little lies pave the way for big lies?
What Christian Patriotism breeds is the scariest damn thing I have ever seen. All I see from the movement is hatred and destruction of others who are different. There's nothing amusing or funny about what they want to do, and it's been their mission since they fell in love with the Nazis and Hitler in the 1930's.
Every time these folks amass power ends the same way: dehumanization and political murder. They're ridiculous until they start disappearing their "enemies".
I was pretty much an apolitical person until my early-mid 20's, when I started to become aware of fundamentalist Evangelicals and the influence they had on the Republican Party. I was ignorant of a lot, but that was enough to convince me Republicans were bad news. I couldn't understand how any party would want to hitch their wagons to these people, knowing how out of touch they were with reality, and didn't see how it was possible for them not to end up a complete disaster in a modern world.
And what's really amazing about this is just how little I needed to understand about domestic policy, world affairs, even the philosophical difference between "liberalism" and "conservatism", in order to be as right about this as I have ever been about anything. The only thing I was wrong about was just how successful it would turn out to be. Growing up Catholic in the mid-Atlantic region, I would have never guessed there was enough ignorance in this country to make this sort of thing sustainable.
In the end, I was the ignorant one. Ignorant about the density of credulous crankery lying dormant in this country, just waiting for someone shameless enough to tap its incredible, destructive potential. I am just so angry, frustrated, disappointed, embarrassed, and ashamed of what we let these people do to us. We have done everything conceivable to show them the truth, and at every turn we have been countered by people either too foolish to know better or too amoral to care. I wish it were easier to tell the difference, but some days it just doesn't matter to me.
I often feel like I want to administer to all of them a giant slap to their collective face, as if that would somehow help to wake up the brainwashed ones and deliver just retribution to the others. And then I fall back into the realization that it wouldn't help, because the distinction between ignorance and malice is not so clear cut. They're mutually reinforcing. They like hating the rest of us, and resist being talked out of it. They don't want to be told the truth, which is why they punish anyone who tries.
We did everything we could to try to mend the rift. The mainstream media that they've been taught to despise spent the better part of 2017 navel gazing and thoughtfully examining what we all missed about Trump's appeal to people. Reporters would embark on tours of diners and bars in "Trump country", trying to understand. And all the while Trump's conduct got worse and worse, making understanding his voters increasingly irrelevant, because nothing justifies abject corruption and deception. And we kept thinking, "Surely now they'll realize they've been duped."
But that never mattered, because it wasn't about whether Trump told the truth. He told *their* truth, which was that mainstream American society was terrible and liberals were evil and hated them and wanted to destroy Christianity, and that they were right to hate us back and want to destroy us too. The rest was irrelevant. If hating liberals was wrong, they didn't want to be right.
And sadly, this is easy for Americans, because for some reason we're an especially susceptible people when it comes to conspiracy theories and absurd disinformation. Other developed countries aren't like this. Our anti-authority instincts make us receptive to kneejerk anti-institutional cynicism, which ironically makes us ripe for exploitation by authoritarians.
So now the American right is convinced they're in the midst of a populist revolution, when ironically they're the marks in a long con by elites. They've been living in an alternate reality constructed by rich media demagogues and corrupt, wealth-worshipping pastors, which has been slowly enveloping everything they think they know for the past 30 years or so. And it's only getting worse.
Our only out here is something most of us probably won't live to see. The younger generation is going to have to have a wholesale change of attitude. They're going to have to prioritize truth, and understand that in the social media and AI age, they have no hope of maintaining a shared reality unless they self-police, and divest themselves of the cynicism of conspiracy theorizing. They have to accept that they can no longer afford to indulge crazy, unverifiable ideas, even as an amusing diversion. The days of taking tabloid trash seriously have to end, or so will our mooring in the world.
I laughed at Ammon Bundy's 2016 occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Bundy didn't manage to use that to radicalize ranchers or get them to reject collaboration/communication with the BLM regarding grazing rights... but he normalized violent open-carry confrontations w/federal officials.
I laughed at the Tea Party in 2010. They normalized abusive confrontations at meetings w/elected officials. Groups like Moms for Liberty continue to do this at school board meetings all over the country.
I laughed at the Proud Boys & Patriot Prayer's marches in Portland in 2017-2020. They normalized open-carry confrontations and club/rock/shield brawls with unarmed counter-demonstrators. They pioneered open collaboration between the violent far right & sympathetic local police (Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer and Lt Jeff Niiya had months of exchanges, including tactical information).
The American far right is deadly serious and eager to create the kind of violent chaos that conservative media will reframe as leftist-caused anarchy. MAGA politicians like Trump and Senator Tom Cotton are eager to use that as an excuse for 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' measures like invoking the Insurrection Act.
Spending the amount of energy it takes to hate this much and lie this much is baffling.
Agreed! We Discordians luved conspiracy theories--we called it "Mindfuck." It was a way of exploring alternate realities, seeing how far our creativity could take us. Eventually we'd disclose to any victims that it was all bullshit, & they'd wave us off & growl, "You guys." (Altho I'm sure some refused to believe it was bullshit.)
This all ended when that twirp Codemonkey decided to co-opt our religion for fun & games & rebrand it "Q." The problem was, he NEVER disclosed that none of his conspiracy theories were true. He didn't explicitly say they were true, but he wouldn't come clean either. He was having a blast gaming & we were all pawns in his game, feeding his delight in how easy it was to shuck us. Then a certain bunch of people took notice of how easily we could be influenced. They re-rebranded his game as "QAnon" & stole it for their own gain. Now it's a cult & we "normies" are the victims. Only deprogramming will have any effect on the adherents; but one needs to be trained for that, & we aren't.
I read this last month and it continues to resonant. Part of this is my memory of laughing with my friends about vicious, unhinged anti-semitism spouted by a Posse Comitatus group from our area of Wisconsin in the mid-80s. We had never heard such things. Our laughter was mockery, but, that was based on the notions that the hatred was much less common than it actually was.
On another level, I wonder how our political discourse came to accept bad faith nonsense (e.g. CRT in schools) and risible arguments (e.g. tax cuts always increase revenue) as, well, neither risible nor in bad faith. Did the little lies pave the way for big lies?