I’m a contractor in Texas. in 2021 I had 3-4 clients that I did several weeks long remodels on their houses in Austin. all of them had at least one yard sign or Fauci votive candle or Kamala action figure etc, etc.
every night as I was leaving, each family sat down to eat in the living room and turned on MSNBC for the two minutes hate. Trump was no longer president but they had become so addicted that it didn’t matter. and cable news seemed to always have Trump hate on during dinner time. it was bizarre.
perhaps the most interesting aspect was that these were very nice, warm people. but the dichotomy was so strange to see them seethe so much. I have no doubt they wanted the unvaccinated to be shunned, starved and denied medical care. and yet they were perfectly pleasant in every other sense. in a quiet way, it was terrifying...
"perhaps the most interesting aspect was that these were very nice, warm people. but the dichotomy was so strange to see them seethe so much. I have no doubt they wanted the unvaccinated to be shunned, starved and denied medical care. and yet they were perfectly pleasant in every other sense."
I see this too.
I spent most of my adult life as one of those socially-liberal, economically-conservative, libertarian-voting types. My friends were almost all liberal. I was a teen and young adult in the 80s, so things were far saner than they are now. Socially, I was just more at home and at ease with liberals, and 80s religious conservatives were drunk on the power to coerce. As a natural born squeaky wheel, pushing back against overbearing entitlement and coercion meant rejecting the drug war, persecution of gays, censorship of overly-sexual song lyrics and moral panics around Satanic cults and Dungeons & Dragons.
I have friends my age who still think we're living in the 1980s and that the abuses of power that need to be resisted now are the same as they were back then. They seem constitutionally incapable of conceiving of left-leaning state and social coercion. Right = Oppressive and Left = Liberation. Period. No room for negotiation, nuance or exception. They support draconian punishments for hate speech and imagine themselves to be hate-free, but then their voices ooze hatred when they talk about Trump and, worse, Trump supporters.
And yet, they still have it in them to be pleasant people capable of intelligent conversation when the topic doesn't involve Trump or conservatives.
I have friends that feel the same. for them it’s really just "Who, Whom".
who is doing it and to whom does it help or hurt. they have show themselves to be without any principle and it’s obvious they never really believed in the first place. in the 80’s they hated right wing religious people and now they still hate right wing religious people. so oppressing and censoring them now is totally justified.
Completely terrifying. This is what happens when you are absolutely positively convinced of your own righteousness. No room for self doubt or humility.
Wow, great comment! I think that when people feel a loss of control, they can seek to restore their sense of control by using government as a proxy to control others. Donald Trump was existential in this way, the same way that Covid was. There used to be a number of academic papers online which showed that nascent authoritarianism rose as a result of parasite stress.
The long and the short of it is, the more people feel a loss of control in their own lives, the more they will turn to government to control the lives of others. Personally, I'm dealing with it by occasionally binge drinking copious amounts of single malt and have taken to wearing a 'Make 1984 Fiction Again' T-shirt.
No, they are still there. The difference is that they are no longer promoted, and one has to know for what one was looking. I kid you not, I first came across the literature before the pandemic, made as an argument by liberals to explain the election of Donald Trump, who, despite his occasional bluster and ill-advised compliments towards foreign autocrats for their military parades, was considerably less authoritarian in his deeds than his successor...
First line: 'According to a "parasite stress" hypothesis, authoritarian governments are more likely to emerge in regions characterized by a high prevalence of disease-causing pathogens.'
A lady named Hannah Arendt's or something Arendt but anyway ... she witnessed the Nuremberg trials and coined the phrase "The banality of evil" because the people she saw on trial, in spite of the horrors they were accused of, were otherwise everyday people nobody would have guessed could have participated in, sanctioned or at the least sat back and done nothing during a time of such indiscriminate slaughter. Sounds eerily familiar to these Latter Daze.
Yes. Solzhenistyn commented famously about how the line between good and evil dissects every human heart. All totalitarian dictatorships in the 20th century were began with unrealistic good intentions, Utopian thinking, that were impossible to realize and went sideway in rather abominable ways.
One thing I didn't say in my reply above to make its point complete was that these people on trial in Nuremberg were propagandized to hate a certain ethnic minority over a span of time, I think the 1st Jewish laws were started in 1933 with their banning from all German public swimming pools, just as the people addicted to the mainstream press have been subjected to years of the heroin of Trump hate. So there is indeed historical precedent to your essay's thesis.
Interesting reply Hollis, given that Trump still PROUDLY boasts about his genocidal Operation Warp Speed agenda, calling himself 'The Father of The Vaccine'.
Do you REALLY think Trump wants his deluded followers to be 'unvaccinated' ??
And just BTW, until about July 2020, soon after the LYING conman and text-book wolf in sheep's clothing, Donny Trump announced his mass-murdering OWS scam, I was one of his most devout (yet totally hoodwinked) fans outside the US (I'm Australian).
When will you and the rest of the Trumptarded herd snap out of your trance and notice the huge elephant in the room, dude?
And I don't support any of the treasonous, humanity loathing actors you mentioned either. I don't support ANY politicians of any stripe anywhere - all of them are UN/WEF puppets and are loyal to the cabal, NOT YOU, ME or any of us proletariats.
I don't participate and ANY of their rigged (S)elections and haven't voted in any of them since 2009.
If you vote for these lying, treasonous puppets, you're a slave and albeit unknowingly: actually condoning and enabling their tyranny.
A "friend" of mine recently, after I pointed out that the democrat party, media and intelligence community have an unholy relationship embracing authoritarianism, called me a fascist, misogynist, bigot and clueless idiot. I had never been anything but kind and friendly to him. That is when I knew, he would not just stay silent if the State arrested me, he would cheer and slander me.
I too have “ friends “ like that. It’s sad and frightening when I hear then rant such frothy hatred. I feel like a total fraud because I know they love me only because they think I’m like they are. I say nothing because I value my windows and car tires and my ability to work in the same industry.
Interesting observations. At this point I would not put anything past them in regards to their opposition. TDS is a real thing, I have witnessed otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people in my own life completely bristle with hate at the mention of his name. They fully believe every lie or half truth that the corporate media has foisted upon Trump without any doubt.
I fall into the same category as you when it comes to Trump, never really liked him, thought he was kind of douchey, and I do not subscribe to the notion that he is some sort of political saviour. That being said, I do not fall for the endless and rampant demonization of Trump and the MAGA crowd, it definitely feels like a psyop and I could absolutely see it being used as a tool to go scorched earth on anyone who would protest another election.
"I have witnessed otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people in my own life completely bristle with hate at the mention of his name."
—It is disproportionate. Kind of insane and so obviously (to me, at least) totally programmatic. Like continuing to say that the planet is warming when global temperatures have not increased since the mid 90s.
This is not a recent phenomena. It is one of the things that propelled me out of the left. I realized the people I was aligned with would happily gulag anyone that opposed them. It wasn't just the nascent authoritarianism. The pseudo-religious zeal was what really clued me into how batshit these people were.
Someone remarked that college educated women are the beating heart of the left. The problem here is that no other group is so untutored in violence. They are ignorant of history and have never thrown or received a punch in anger. They are enthusiasts for something of which they are entirely ignorant.
They think crushing the magats would be like ordering a pizza. They think they will watch it on The View; cheering on violence they believe themselves insulated from. There is no consideration as to what happens when a wide swath of the population takes it into their heart that their enemies want to grind them under their heel.
Well said. And a fine description of the cavalier way that many people end up thinking about violence.
I love hearing "why I left the left" stories. They almost always have the same core thrust: "I didn't realize how batshit/authoritarian/angry/violent these people are."
What’s incredible to me is that those hateful magats are mostly ordinary Americans who just don’t like the way things are going. All the hate poured over the country because Washington didn’t want an outsider in their business has been truly amazing to behold. Magats are the lady in the grocery store and the guy fixing your car. The propaganda apparatus had to help these people to become villains. It only succeeded as well as it did because of years and years of the educated urban elites looking down on their country cousins. The rot is deep but the fish rots from the head.
In 1984 it was also the young women who hated the most venomously, if you recall. It’s is interesting. You can tell our country, especially the middle class and above, especially the college educated, is full of people who have never truly suffered hardship. They have never worried about where their next meal is coming from or had to worry about the destruction of their cities due to war. Only people who have truly never known this kind of hardship could glorify violence in this way.
First, the TDS people won't do much of the actual fighting. They will just support and cheerlead whatever actions are taken by government stormtroopers.
Second, as an aside, I personally do not want a revolution. I do not want to fight to take over the system and then impose my blueprint upon unwilling others. I just want to be able to decentralize/secede/leave.
Well, they think they won't. Once the stormtroopers start doing their work, things are going to get ugly real quick. When people's families start disappearing into government detention or winding up dead, moderation will go out the window. People will realize real quick that the government requires a level of skill to deal with. However, that bitch three blocks over, spouting on NextDoor about how your brother's church had it coming when the feds took them away? Well, that's a different story.
Darryl Cooper, of Martyr Made, believes civil conflict gives free reign to the psychopaths. I think this partially true. I also think once you create a group of people with nothing to lose, or who believes they will lose everything, you create people capable of atrocity.
Yeah. Y'know, when I think of Solzhenitsyn's "The line between good and evil runs through every human heart" and apply it to myself, I think about what I might do, and how far I might go, in the face of real oppression and threats to freedom.
I had a disturbing conversation with one of my friends at the beginning of Covidmania. "Bro, if you saw a neighbor out in public without a mask, you wouldn't call the cops on them, would you?" And without a pause he replied: "If it was the law." That wrinkle in time changed me forever. That's when I knew "Holy Fk. Oh holy fkn fk. I need to brace up. This shit is coming AGAIN. In my lifetime." I thought that question was resolved. The Cain/Abel Question. Then I knew that question is never resolved. Ever.
As awful as the world is that you had to write this piece, I took some cold comfort in it, knowing others are dealing with the same issues. When I realized I had lost trust in the people closest to me, and then that I actually feared them, it was a feeling of dread I'd never experienced.
We have to forge new connections with each other—with people whom we can trust. And we have to build the connections now, before some Neo-Stasi makes it impossible to trust anyone.
They surely changed the minds for the state in the Riche. Don’t we ever learn from history what horrible things we shouldn’t repeat or is it only the horrible things we’d like to repeat?
I completely agree with your assessment of Donald Trump. I thought there was an equivalence between those who see him as a savior and those who see him as a demon because both extremes accuse us of being the other extreme rather than understand our real position on him.
Since the propagandists on the left own the mainstream media, perhaps the propagandists on the right, who are mostly confined to alternative media, are reacting to the existential threat of the left capturing the "normies" and convincing them to demonize and dehumanize anyone who doesn't share TDS.
I thought the "lawfare" and demonization of Trump was backfiring because it was making so many of us who don't like Trump root for him as the lesser of two evils. However, your insights make me wonder if the strategy is succeeding by including us with the extreme MAGA supporters as objects of hatred. That hatred is continually being expanded to include anyone who resists any of the manufactured crises you mention, not just Trump supporters.
And yes, the normies, and the authorities whose at whose boots they grovel, will not distinguish between MAGA and libertarian and conservative and anarchist and sensible people and questioning people and people who just want to be left alone, or who even raise a mild concern that we might be plunging off a cliff. All will be "enemies."
Scary stuff, but all too real. I know some otherwise nice folks who are afflicted with TDS - that includes immediate family. I don't love Trump much personally, but like George Patton I respect the results he obtained and could obtain again. By comparison, Biden is a walking cadaver whose strings are pulled by people I suspect but cannot see. That makes the choice easy.
I do watch cable news, now mostly NewsMax, but my favorite source, to my surprise, is YouTube Premium. It costs me something (I forget how much), but there are NO commercials and a wide variety of news sources worldwide and clips on subjects I am truly interested in. YT's software engines (AI?) observe what I watch and tee up more related material if I want to see it. That too is kinda scary - Google owns YT. At the moment, I'm partial to Douglas Murray, Konstantin Kisin, and Victor Davis Hansen. But the material is worth the risk, and it helps me keep my sanity -- like Chris' "Freedom Scale" and his subscribers!
Excellent piece. I often wonder what caused the irrational hatred for Trump. I understand people not liking him, but the extreme anger is just unhinged. And the hatred of his supporters is very real and equally disturbing.
They hate Trump because he's a white man and isn't part of the ivy league, NPR social set. He's brash and uncouth. They hate him because of his race and gender, but mostly because of his social class.
Most normies have fallen for the propaganda that only a crazy person, or a “traitor,” would question the integrity of the 2020 election.
But the democrats questioned the 2016 election and, before that, the 2000 election.
I'd hate to think that the government is trying to desensitize people so that they can commit genocide against conservatives and moderates.
They've already done it where the unborn are concerned.
And if they are, it may backfire on them. The people they want to destroy are the most heavily armed in the country, not to mention that they live in rural areas and are responsible for food production. Should anything happen, the MAGA crowd might refuse to sell food to their enemies, and if the government tries to take it by force, they could be shot while defending their property.
All true. But they would have to reach a breaking point that transcends the fear each individual has for going to jail, being killed, etc. That tipping point is possible, but only if the authorities overreach and push beyond the boil-the-frog pace they're currently on.
Great comment. I think there were a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding 2020 which didn't do the cause of whether it was rigged or not any particular favours. The answer was that it was structurally rigged, but that rigging- although unfair and unrepresentative of the views of the electorate compared to other elections in the past- was mostly legal, compared to elections in the past. Sure, there were plenty of instances of local and anecdotal ballot harvesting but the question quickly dichotomised into two camps, one which saw shadows in anecdotes and the other for which the election was entirely free and fair- a completely false binary.
I could go into details about the extraordinary amount of money spent by Mark Zuckerberg, or point out that mail-ins shifted the percentage of people under 65 1.5% in favour of the young and democrats, but instead here's a recent poll by Rasmussen on the subject- long after the question of whether the election was stolen or not has been consigned to the wastebin of history, we find out that it actually was.
Several YouTube personalities I follow have suggested that if Ballot harvesting is legal in some states, then the conservatives should do the same. Hit up the same old folks' homes and long-term care facilities that the Democrats hit up and try to get some of those votes.
Hey, if the laws have been changed, then use those laws. The days of whistlestops and personal appearances are over.
Most of the current statistical disadvantage which effects Republicans relates to mistrust of mail-ins. Some had noted in 2020 that it would only take bad weather to swing Arizona in favour of Biden. It's also worth noting that, if anything, Democrats are doing everything possible to continue the conservative mistrust of mail-ins by outright refusing to allow common sense fraud prevention measures like signature verification, of which roughly two-thirds of African Americans are in favour.
Long-term care facilities are a particular problem. Mainly conservative residents and mainly Democrat care workers and medical staff. It's one of those instances where everything possible should be done to allow bipartisan monitoring teams in to make sure ballots are cast fairly and without undue influence.
I remember the moment, a couple of years ago, when I realized that some of my own friends and family members would hand me over without a moment's hesitation. It was a stark and heart-piercing moment. When loyalty to an ideology outweighs familial love, we've crossed a civilizational rubicon. I tried to place myself in their shoes and understand how they would mentally justify sending a loving family member to the gulag, or the re-education camp, but that void was too terrifying to stare into for very long. Evil is utterly real, and utterly banal.
I know it's been said before. But this is/was my favorite series. I feel as if I am in TZ episode. Serling knew! He was trying to tell us! What was in man's heart. We baby boomers watched these morality fables and learned NOTHING...Or a classic scifi movie where people who look and act "normal" on the outside, until you mention the "T" word...It's Body Snatchers, Zombies. Let's face it: TDS is borderline possession. I grieve that most of my loved ones, truly kind, intelligent and talented people, would side with the dark side and let me and my ilk to the gulags...God have mercy...
I also don't like Trump, but you need to understand the level at which cognitive dissonance plays out for those who despise Trump with a passion, or have the belief that the presidents should have Obama gravitas and embody everything serious and thoughtful in America (when presidents like Lincoln, although erudite, could be incredibly uncivil and uncouth when the moment required it).
Recently, I watched the Joe Rogan episode with Jonathan Haidt. It's difficult to express how much I admire the man's work. I've been a fan ever since I read The Righteous Mind. But here is this amazing, thoughtful left-leaning liberal and when the subject turns to the recent supposed 'bloodbath' comment I am shocked. Like Rogan, I've attributed the corporate media misrepresentation of the things Donald Trump has said as bad faith and gaslighting- an attempt to beat Donald Trump by any means necessary, because they see him as an existential threat.
The thing is that's not what Jonathan Haidt saw when he watched the clip of Trump with Joe Rogan. If the best of all liberals couldn't see the somewhat clumsy 'bloodbath' comment as a direct reference to the effects on the American car industry if Joe Biden was re-elected, then why would we expect the rest of America's liberal half to be any better? It was with a sinking feeling I realised that instrumental rationality could not only occur at the subconscious level, but also was also likely to be the predominant factor in people's hatred or love of Donald Trump.
It should be noted I am a Brit, so I don't have skin in the game. I also don't like Trump- apart from anything else what America desperately needs is someone who can explain to the elite and highly educated class why Trump is a symptom, not the disease- backlash against a system of neoliberal globalisation, which, when run in tandem with high non-selective immigration, effectively turns a large segments of the populace into little more than economically precarious serfs- for the simple reason that for many people no amount of education is ever going to help.
Donald Trump is not that man- but he does speak to the rage generated by an inability of a generation of highly educated people to realise what exactly it is they are endorsing for their fellow countrymen, or that no amount of government help could ever remediate the loss of dignity caused by the loss of labour value and status which high blue collar migration causes. America needs an explainer-in-chief to correct for the catastrophic mistakes of the last 30 years, not someone who plays well to ordinary people's justifiable fury at the seeming betrayal. But if the best of all liberals hears something which simply isn't there when Donald Trump opens his mouth, what chance does the rest of the country have of ever approaching something along the lines of a cultural rapprochement?
"But if the best of all liberals hears something which simply isn't there when Donald Trump opens his mouth, what chance does the rest of the country have of ever approaching something along the lines of a cultural rapprochement?"
—Very little chance, methinks. It feels like an incoming storm here—ominous clouds just waiting on the horizon for the right moment to roll across the prairie. If the election is Biden vs. Trump, for example, it is hard to see either side accepting the results no matter who "wins." It's a recipe for civil war...
If civil comes this time it will be from the Left. MAGA is not interested in burning down the country, we want to save it. However, the Left, if they lose would burn it all down rather than let MAGA or conservatives run the country. America is going to quickly find out that the Left, once it has power doesn’t willingly let it go.
Hence the adage, that I hope proves untrue; you can vote your way into socialism/Marxism, but you have to shoot your way out.
For you dumbasses bragging that you won’t be voting, do me a favor and just shut the hell up! I for on one am pretty tired of those that run their mouths but don’t have the gumption to do anything about it. If you are in the middle and don’t know who to vote for this time around after the last four years, then you are the problem. You don’t want to vote for either because you don’t like them, vote for the country and fuck the personalities. I’m not voting for a personality, I’m voting for my grandchildren.
I understand how you feel. My argument for not voting is more sophisticated than that. I have been writing about it for some time. I understand that you won't accept it right away, but if you are interested in learning why, I will happily share links with you, or answer questions. Thanks!
I would like to apologize for my colorful language. I did appreciate your article, but I see a country on fire and in the last 20 years of my life I feel like I have an obligation to do the best I can to leave the best country behind. if Democrats win another election, it is over. I could never elect not to vote once so much is on the line right now, our basic human American values are on the line. Science is on the line. The difference in a country where we view children is sexual objects or we don’t is on the line.That’s where I’m coming from, I love this country grew up and have accomplished much along with my nine siblings, growing up in a household without a father. No need in trying to convince me otherwise, I’m not someone that will be convinced not to vote. I look forward to your next article.
I hear you, for sure. I felt just the same, and as strongly, for a long time. And allow me to say that I appreciate the fact that you are here, in spite of the fact that we do not agree on something so fundamental.
This is an important post. Like you, I don't especially like Trump, I am not even American, I am mostly indifferent to him. I see his failings clearly, yet I also see the 24/7 MSM propaganda whipping his haters into a frenzy. TDS is real, and its dangerous, far more dangerous than Trump.
This assessment is on target. I have it within my own family and it is scary knowing those people are raising children. They are completely ignorant of any real facts, but rabid with their ideological hate.
Yes, I believe we do. Had a BIL block me on social media, rage me out and accuse me of wishing his entire family dead from the vax; out of the blue, so I think there may be something to the effects of chemicals on the brain, then showed up last week like it never even happened.
I’ve been saying for weeks that if they manage to get Biden back in they will most likely take over the House. That means they will legally have the ability to pass laws to make MAGA a terrorist group just like the Germans are trying to do to AFD.
Then they will legally go after conservatives or people who donated or worked for groups associated with MAGA. If your thesis is right the TDS people will go along with this and likely cheer it on.
I immigrated to the US when I was a child from a communist country. The things my parents warned me about have already happened in the US. We are in the midst of a communist take over of America. If the Biden folks win in Nov they will be taking off the gloves.
Surprise….they’re doing that now. And since Johnson let them pass the “it’s ok to skip citizens 4th Amendment rights and do whatever without a warrant”, we are not prepared for what the full force of a rouge government can and WILL DO, especially if we keep voting these damn people in. We’re screwed from the bottom up.
Obviously there are numerous systems of governance, and numerous ways of maintaining a stable order, other than democratic systems. Some of these are worse; some are better.
An inescapable feudal caste system and hereditary authority is worse. Full-blown dictatorship is worse. But I am of the anarcho-libertarian school. There are other systems—some theoretical, some that have actually been used—that I believe are far better, and more moral, than any system that uses voting. I favor these.
Well a Republican form of government is surely dead, and now that they control the voting they don’t need the People, so it’s totally useless.
Anything from a more libertarian bent would be better but I doubt the Chinese, who have spent billions all over the planet, would allow that. What’s happening is Marxism versus a free governed people.
dude.
I’m a contractor in Texas. in 2021 I had 3-4 clients that I did several weeks long remodels on their houses in Austin. all of them had at least one yard sign or Fauci votive candle or Kamala action figure etc, etc.
every night as I was leaving, each family sat down to eat in the living room and turned on MSNBC for the two minutes hate. Trump was no longer president but they had become so addicted that it didn’t matter. and cable news seemed to always have Trump hate on during dinner time. it was bizarre.
perhaps the most interesting aspect was that these were very nice, warm people. but the dichotomy was so strange to see them seethe so much. I have no doubt they wanted the unvaccinated to be shunned, starved and denied medical care. and yet they were perfectly pleasant in every other sense. in a quiet way, it was terrifying...
That is indeed terrifying. And all too common.
Thanks for adding this personal account!
"perhaps the most interesting aspect was that these were very nice, warm people. but the dichotomy was so strange to see them seethe so much. I have no doubt they wanted the unvaccinated to be shunned, starved and denied medical care. and yet they were perfectly pleasant in every other sense."
I see this too.
I spent most of my adult life as one of those socially-liberal, economically-conservative, libertarian-voting types. My friends were almost all liberal. I was a teen and young adult in the 80s, so things were far saner than they are now. Socially, I was just more at home and at ease with liberals, and 80s religious conservatives were drunk on the power to coerce. As a natural born squeaky wheel, pushing back against overbearing entitlement and coercion meant rejecting the drug war, persecution of gays, censorship of overly-sexual song lyrics and moral panics around Satanic cults and Dungeons & Dragons.
I have friends my age who still think we're living in the 1980s and that the abuses of power that need to be resisted now are the same as they were back then. They seem constitutionally incapable of conceiving of left-leaning state and social coercion. Right = Oppressive and Left = Liberation. Period. No room for negotiation, nuance or exception. They support draconian punishments for hate speech and imagine themselves to be hate-free, but then their voices ooze hatred when they talk about Trump and, worse, Trump supporters.
And yet, they still have it in them to be pleasant people capable of intelligent conversation when the topic doesn't involve Trump or conservatives.
The banality of evil is what you are witnessing.
Yup. Hannah Arendt, call your office…
I have friends that feel the same. for them it’s really just "Who, Whom".
who is doing it and to whom does it help or hurt. they have show themselves to be without any principle and it’s obvious they never really believed in the first place. in the 80’s they hated right wing religious people and now they still hate right wing religious people. so oppressing and censoring them now is totally justified.
Yes! You articulated my experience as well …and said it better than I could!
💯
Completely terrifying. This is what happens when you are absolutely positively convinced of your own righteousness. No room for self doubt or humility.
Wow, great comment! I think that when people feel a loss of control, they can seek to restore their sense of control by using government as a proxy to control others. Donald Trump was existential in this way, the same way that Covid was. There used to be a number of academic papers online which showed that nascent authoritarianism rose as a result of parasite stress.
The long and the short of it is, the more people feel a loss of control in their own lives, the more they will turn to government to control the lives of others. Personally, I'm dealing with it by occasionally binge drinking copious amounts of single malt and have taken to wearing a 'Make 1984 Fiction Again' T-shirt.
"There used to be a number of academic papers online which showed that nascent authoritarianism rose as a result of parasite stress."
—The papers are gone?
No, they are still there. The difference is that they are no longer promoted, and one has to know for what one was looking. I kid you not, I first came across the literature before the pandemic, made as an argument by liberals to explain the election of Donald Trump, who, despite his occasional bluster and ill-advised compliments towards foreign autocrats for their military parades, was considerably less authoritarian in his deeds than his successor...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3641067/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20%22parasite%20stress,prevalence%20of%20disease%2Dcausing%20pathogens.
First line: 'According to a "parasite stress" hypothesis, authoritarian governments are more likely to emerge in regions characterized by a high prevalence of disease-causing pathogens.'
Wow, that is seriously disturbing in so many ways!
A lady named Hannah Arendt's or something Arendt but anyway ... she witnessed the Nuremberg trials and coined the phrase "The banality of evil" because the people she saw on trial, in spite of the horrors they were accused of, were otherwise everyday people nobody would have guessed could have participated in, sanctioned or at the least sat back and done nothing during a time of such indiscriminate slaughter. Sounds eerily familiar to these Latter Daze.
100 percent. Because human nature is human nature, and because evil power-mad people are always the same too.
Yes. Solzhenistyn commented famously about how the line between good and evil dissects every human heart. All totalitarian dictatorships in the 20th century were began with unrealistic good intentions, Utopian thinking, that were impossible to realize and went sideway in rather abominable ways.
One thing I didn't say in my reply above to make its point complete was that these people on trial in Nuremberg were propagandized to hate a certain ethnic minority over a span of time, I think the 1st Jewish laws were started in 1933 with their banning from all German public swimming pools, just as the people addicted to the mainstream press have been subjected to years of the heroin of Trump hate. So there is indeed historical precedent to your essay's thesis.
Yes indeed.
I really need to read the Gulag Archipelago…but I find myself not wanting to confront the horror.
Interesting reply Hollis, given that Trump still PROUDLY boasts about his genocidal Operation Warp Speed agenda, calling himself 'The Father of The Vaccine'.
Do you REALLY think Trump wants his deluded followers to be 'unvaccinated' ??
And just BTW, until about July 2020, soon after the LYING conman and text-book wolf in sheep's clothing, Donny Trump announced his mass-murdering OWS scam, I was one of his most devout (yet totally hoodwinked) fans outside the US (I'm Australian).
When will you and the rest of the Trumptarded herd snap out of your trance and notice the huge elephant in the room, dude?
And I don't support any of the treasonous, humanity loathing actors you mentioned either. I don't support ANY politicians of any stripe anywhere - all of them are UN/WEF puppets and are loyal to the cabal, NOT YOU, ME or any of us proletariats.
I don't participate and ANY of their rigged (S)elections and haven't voted in any of them since 2009.
If you vote for these lying, treasonous puppets, you're a slave and albeit unknowingly: actually condoning and enabling their tyranny.
where in my comment did I say I was a Trump supporter? if I don’t explicitly condemn him, do you automatically assume?
A "friend" of mine recently, after I pointed out that the democrat party, media and intelligence community have an unholy relationship embracing authoritarianism, called me a fascist, misogynist, bigot and clueless idiot. I had never been anything but kind and friendly to him. That is when I knew, he would not just stay silent if the State arrested me, he would cheer and slander me.
This is a terrifying thought…because I think it could even apply to family members. Indeed, in East Germany, it absolutely did!
I too have “ friends “ like that. It’s sad and frightening when I hear then rant such frothy hatred. I feel like a total fraud because I know they love me only because they think I’m like they are. I say nothing because I value my windows and car tires and my ability to work in the same industry.
I was once outed as a conservative on a TV show I was working on. That didn't got well.
Interesting observations. At this point I would not put anything past them in regards to their opposition. TDS is a real thing, I have witnessed otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people in my own life completely bristle with hate at the mention of his name. They fully believe every lie or half truth that the corporate media has foisted upon Trump without any doubt.
I fall into the same category as you when it comes to Trump, never really liked him, thought he was kind of douchey, and I do not subscribe to the notion that he is some sort of political saviour. That being said, I do not fall for the endless and rampant demonization of Trump and the MAGA crowd, it definitely feels like a psyop and I could absolutely see it being used as a tool to go scorched earth on anyone who would protest another election.
Yup to all that.
"I have witnessed otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people in my own life completely bristle with hate at the mention of his name."
—It is disproportionate. Kind of insane and so obviously (to me, at least) totally programmatic. Like continuing to say that the planet is warming when global temperatures have not increased since the mid 90s.
This is not a recent phenomena. It is one of the things that propelled me out of the left. I realized the people I was aligned with would happily gulag anyone that opposed them. It wasn't just the nascent authoritarianism. The pseudo-religious zeal was what really clued me into how batshit these people were.
Someone remarked that college educated women are the beating heart of the left. The problem here is that no other group is so untutored in violence. They are ignorant of history and have never thrown or received a punch in anger. They are enthusiasts for something of which they are entirely ignorant.
They think crushing the magats would be like ordering a pizza. They think they will watch it on The View; cheering on violence they believe themselves insulated from. There is no consideration as to what happens when a wide swath of the population takes it into their heart that their enemies want to grind them under their heel.
Well said. And a fine description of the cavalier way that many people end up thinking about violence.
I love hearing "why I left the left" stories. They almost always have the same core thrust: "I didn't realize how batshit/authoritarian/angry/violent these people are."
What’s incredible to me is that those hateful magats are mostly ordinary Americans who just don’t like the way things are going. All the hate poured over the country because Washington didn’t want an outsider in their business has been truly amazing to behold. Magats are the lady in the grocery store and the guy fixing your car. The propaganda apparatus had to help these people to become villains. It only succeeded as well as it did because of years and years of the educated urban elites looking down on their country cousins. The rot is deep but the fish rots from the head.
Perhaps we will be the maggots that devour the fish.
In 1984 it was also the young women who hated the most venomously, if you recall. It’s is interesting. You can tell our country, especially the middle class and above, especially the college educated, is full of people who have never truly suffered hardship. They have never worried about where their next meal is coming from or had to worry about the destruction of their cities due to war. Only people who have truly never known this kind of hardship could glorify violence in this way.
Very well said.
Everyone wants a revolution, until they have to actually do revolutionary stuff. It is unnerving witnessing the bravado of the TDS Armies.
Two thoughts…
First, the TDS people won't do much of the actual fighting. They will just support and cheerlead whatever actions are taken by government stormtroopers.
Second, as an aside, I personally do not want a revolution. I do not want to fight to take over the system and then impose my blueprint upon unwilling others. I just want to be able to decentralize/secede/leave.
Well, they think they won't. Once the stormtroopers start doing their work, things are going to get ugly real quick. When people's families start disappearing into government detention or winding up dead, moderation will go out the window. People will realize real quick that the government requires a level of skill to deal with. However, that bitch three blocks over, spouting on NextDoor about how your brother's church had it coming when the feds took them away? Well, that's a different story.
Darryl Cooper, of Martyr Made, believes civil conflict gives free reign to the psychopaths. I think this partially true. I also think once you create a group of people with nothing to lose, or who believes they will lose everything, you create people capable of atrocity.
Yeah. Y'know, when I think of Solzhenitsyn's "The line between good and evil runs through every human heart" and apply it to myself, I think about what I might do, and how far I might go, in the face of real oppression and threats to freedom.
I had a disturbing conversation with one of my friends at the beginning of Covidmania. "Bro, if you saw a neighbor out in public without a mask, you wouldn't call the cops on them, would you?" And without a pause he replied: "If it was the law." That wrinkle in time changed me forever. That's when I knew "Holy Fk. Oh holy fkn fk. I need to brace up. This shit is coming AGAIN. In my lifetime." I thought that question was resolved. The Cain/Abel Question. Then I knew that question is never resolved. Ever.
Well said. I even fear some family members.
As awful as the world is that you had to write this piece, I took some cold comfort in it, knowing others are dealing with the same issues. When I realized I had lost trust in the people closest to me, and then that I actually feared them, it was a feeling of dread I'd never experienced.
We have to forge new connections with each other—with people whom we can trust. And we have to build the connections now, before some Neo-Stasi makes it impossible to trust anyone.
They surely changed the minds for the state in the Riche. Don’t we ever learn from history what horrible things we shouldn’t repeat or is it only the horrible things we’d like to repeat?
I completely agree with your assessment of Donald Trump. I thought there was an equivalence between those who see him as a savior and those who see him as a demon because both extremes accuse us of being the other extreme rather than understand our real position on him.
Since the propagandists on the left own the mainstream media, perhaps the propagandists on the right, who are mostly confined to alternative media, are reacting to the existential threat of the left capturing the "normies" and convincing them to demonize and dehumanize anyone who doesn't share TDS.
I thought the "lawfare" and demonization of Trump was backfiring because it was making so many of us who don't like Trump root for him as the lesser of two evils. However, your insights make me wonder if the strategy is succeeding by including us with the extreme MAGA supporters as objects of hatred. That hatred is continually being expanded to include anyone who resists any of the manufactured crises you mention, not just Trump supporters.
All good points.
And yes, the normies, and the authorities whose at whose boots they grovel, will not distinguish between MAGA and libertarian and conservative and anarchist and sensible people and questioning people and people who just want to be left alone, or who even raise a mild concern that we might be plunging off a cliff. All will be "enemies."
Scary stuff, but all too real. I know some otherwise nice folks who are afflicted with TDS - that includes immediate family. I don't love Trump much personally, but like George Patton I respect the results he obtained and could obtain again. By comparison, Biden is a walking cadaver whose strings are pulled by people I suspect but cannot see. That makes the choice easy.
I do watch cable news, now mostly NewsMax, but my favorite source, to my surprise, is YouTube Premium. It costs me something (I forget how much), but there are NO commercials and a wide variety of news sources worldwide and clips on subjects I am truly interested in. YT's software engines (AI?) observe what I watch and tee up more related material if I want to see it. That too is kinda scary - Google owns YT. At the moment, I'm partial to Douglas Murray, Konstantin Kisin, and Victor Davis Hansen. But the material is worth the risk, and it helps me keep my sanity -- like Chris' "Freedom Scale" and his subscribers!
Thank you, DL!!
Very good piece. The Totalitarian left would cheer the genocide of millions of Americans. They are a dangerous, corrupt, deluded group of fascists.
Sadly including otherwise very normal, even "nice" people.
Excellent piece. I often wonder what caused the irrational hatred for Trump. I understand people not liking him, but the extreme anger is just unhinged. And the hatred of his supporters is very real and equally disturbing.
💯 well said.
They hate Trump because he's a white man and isn't part of the ivy league, NPR social set. He's brash and uncouth. They hate him because of his race and gender, but mostly because of his social class.
among other things.
Most normies have fallen for the propaganda that only a crazy person, or a “traitor,” would question the integrity of the 2020 election.
But the democrats questioned the 2016 election and, before that, the 2000 election.
I'd hate to think that the government is trying to desensitize people so that they can commit genocide against conservatives and moderates.
They've already done it where the unborn are concerned.
And if they are, it may backfire on them. The people they want to destroy are the most heavily armed in the country, not to mention that they live in rural areas and are responsible for food production. Should anything happen, the MAGA crowd might refuse to sell food to their enemies, and if the government tries to take it by force, they could be shot while defending their property.
All true. But they would have to reach a breaking point that transcends the fear each individual has for going to jail, being killed, etc. That tipping point is possible, but only if the authorities overreach and push beyond the boil-the-frog pace they're currently on.
I disagree. We are not far away.
Hope so!
Great comment. I think there were a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding 2020 which didn't do the cause of whether it was rigged or not any particular favours. The answer was that it was structurally rigged, but that rigging- although unfair and unrepresentative of the views of the electorate compared to other elections in the past- was mostly legal, compared to elections in the past. Sure, there were plenty of instances of local and anecdotal ballot harvesting but the question quickly dichotomised into two camps, one which saw shadows in anecdotes and the other for which the election was entirely free and fair- a completely false binary.
I could go into details about the extraordinary amount of money spent by Mark Zuckerberg, or point out that mail-ins shifted the percentage of people under 65 1.5% in favour of the young and democrats, but instead here's a recent poll by Rasmussen on the subject- long after the question of whether the election was stolen or not has been consigned to the wastebin of history, we find out that it actually was.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/one_in_five_mail_in_voters_admit_they_cheated_in_2020_election
Several YouTube personalities I follow have suggested that if Ballot harvesting is legal in some states, then the conservatives should do the same. Hit up the same old folks' homes and long-term care facilities that the Democrats hit up and try to get some of those votes.
Hey, if the laws have been changed, then use those laws. The days of whistlestops and personal appearances are over.
Most of the current statistical disadvantage which effects Republicans relates to mistrust of mail-ins. Some had noted in 2020 that it would only take bad weather to swing Arizona in favour of Biden. It's also worth noting that, if anything, Democrats are doing everything possible to continue the conservative mistrust of mail-ins by outright refusing to allow common sense fraud prevention measures like signature verification, of which roughly two-thirds of African Americans are in favour.
Long-term care facilities are a particular problem. Mainly conservative residents and mainly Democrat care workers and medical staff. It's one of those instances where everything possible should be done to allow bipartisan monitoring teams in to make sure ballots are cast fairly and without undue influence.
I remember the moment, a couple of years ago, when I realized that some of my own friends and family members would hand me over without a moment's hesitation. It was a stark and heart-piercing moment. When loyalty to an ideology outweighs familial love, we've crossed a civilizational rubicon. I tried to place myself in their shoes and understand how they would mentally justify sending a loving family member to the gulag, or the re-education camp, but that void was too terrifying to stare into for very long. Evil is utterly real, and utterly banal.
Very well said. This echoes my own experience, and a sentiment expressed by multiple others. It is very real.
I know it's been said before. But this is/was my favorite series. I feel as if I am in TZ episode. Serling knew! He was trying to tell us! What was in man's heart. We baby boomers watched these morality fables and learned NOTHING...Or a classic scifi movie where people who look and act "normal" on the outside, until you mention the "T" word...It's Body Snatchers, Zombies. Let's face it: TDS is borderline possession. I grieve that most of my loved ones, truly kind, intelligent and talented people, would side with the dark side and let me and my ilk to the gulags...God have mercy...
Yes. Even loved ones. So sad.
I also don't like Trump, but you need to understand the level at which cognitive dissonance plays out for those who despise Trump with a passion, or have the belief that the presidents should have Obama gravitas and embody everything serious and thoughtful in America (when presidents like Lincoln, although erudite, could be incredibly uncivil and uncouth when the moment required it).
Recently, I watched the Joe Rogan episode with Jonathan Haidt. It's difficult to express how much I admire the man's work. I've been a fan ever since I read The Righteous Mind. But here is this amazing, thoughtful left-leaning liberal and when the subject turns to the recent supposed 'bloodbath' comment I am shocked. Like Rogan, I've attributed the corporate media misrepresentation of the things Donald Trump has said as bad faith and gaslighting- an attempt to beat Donald Trump by any means necessary, because they see him as an existential threat.
The thing is that's not what Jonathan Haidt saw when he watched the clip of Trump with Joe Rogan. If the best of all liberals couldn't see the somewhat clumsy 'bloodbath' comment as a direct reference to the effects on the American car industry if Joe Biden was re-elected, then why would we expect the rest of America's liberal half to be any better? It was with a sinking feeling I realised that instrumental rationality could not only occur at the subconscious level, but also was also likely to be the predominant factor in people's hatred or love of Donald Trump.
It should be noted I am a Brit, so I don't have skin in the game. I also don't like Trump- apart from anything else what America desperately needs is someone who can explain to the elite and highly educated class why Trump is a symptom, not the disease- backlash against a system of neoliberal globalisation, which, when run in tandem with high non-selective immigration, effectively turns a large segments of the populace into little more than economically precarious serfs- for the simple reason that for many people no amount of education is ever going to help.
Donald Trump is not that man- but he does speak to the rage generated by an inability of a generation of highly educated people to realise what exactly it is they are endorsing for their fellow countrymen, or that no amount of government help could ever remediate the loss of dignity caused by the loss of labour value and status which high blue collar migration causes. America needs an explainer-in-chief to correct for the catastrophic mistakes of the last 30 years, not someone who plays well to ordinary people's justifiable fury at the seeming betrayal. But if the best of all liberals hears something which simply isn't there when Donald Trump opens his mouth, what chance does the rest of the country have of ever approaching something along the lines of a cultural rapprochement?
"But if the best of all liberals hears something which simply isn't there when Donald Trump opens his mouth, what chance does the rest of the country have of ever approaching something along the lines of a cultural rapprochement?"
—Very little chance, methinks. It feels like an incoming storm here—ominous clouds just waiting on the horizon for the right moment to roll across the prairie. If the election is Biden vs. Trump, for example, it is hard to see either side accepting the results no matter who "wins." It's a recipe for civil war...
If civil comes this time it will be from the Left. MAGA is not interested in burning down the country, we want to save it. However, the Left, if they lose would burn it all down rather than let MAGA or conservatives run the country. America is going to quickly find out that the Left, once it has power doesn’t willingly let it go.
Hence the adage, that I hope proves untrue; you can vote your way into socialism/Marxism, but you have to shoot your way out.
At one level of analysis, all of that is totally true!
You mean Obama fake gravitas.
Obama had no gravitas. Only chutzpah.
That stentorian voice gave the illusion of gravitas and great oration. But it was only an illusion.
For you dumbasses bragging that you won’t be voting, do me a favor and just shut the hell up! I for on one am pretty tired of those that run their mouths but don’t have the gumption to do anything about it. If you are in the middle and don’t know who to vote for this time around after the last four years, then you are the problem. You don’t want to vote for either because you don’t like them, vote for the country and fuck the personalities. I’m not voting for a personality, I’m voting for my grandchildren.
I understand how you feel. My argument for not voting is more sophisticated than that. I have been writing about it for some time. I understand that you won't accept it right away, but if you are interested in learning why, I will happily share links with you, or answer questions. Thanks!
I would like to apologize for my colorful language. I did appreciate your article, but I see a country on fire and in the last 20 years of my life I feel like I have an obligation to do the best I can to leave the best country behind. if Democrats win another election, it is over. I could never elect not to vote once so much is on the line right now, our basic human American values are on the line. Science is on the line. The difference in a country where we view children is sexual objects or we don’t is on the line.That’s where I’m coming from, I love this country grew up and have accomplished much along with my nine siblings, growing up in a household without a father. No need in trying to convince me otherwise, I’m not someone that will be convinced not to vote. I look forward to your next article.
I hear you, for sure. I felt just the same, and as strongly, for a long time. And allow me to say that I appreciate the fact that you are here, in spite of the fact that we do not agree on something so fundamental.
I will not try to convince you. I understand the utility of your point. My view, if you are curious, is summarized here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/vote-or-not-vote
This is an important post. Like you, I don't especially like Trump, I am not even American, I am mostly indifferent to him. I see his failings clearly, yet I also see the 24/7 MSM propaganda whipping his haters into a frenzy. TDS is real, and its dangerous, far more dangerous than Trump.
I suspect you are also immune from, or at least more resistant to, many other kinds of programming.
Perhaps, sir, you have a strong internal locus of control?🔥💪
Thanks, I like to think so. I definitely encourage others to develop an internal locus of control!
Same!
This assessment is on target. I have it within my own family and it is scary knowing those people are raising children. They are completely ignorant of any real facts, but rabid with their ideological hate.
I recently have been asking myself what even family members might do if faced with the choice of me or the state. I fear I know the answer…
Yes, I believe we do. Had a BIL block me on social media, rage me out and accuse me of wishing his entire family dead from the vax; out of the blue, so I think there may be something to the effects of chemicals on the brain, then showed up last week like it never even happened.
Sad. That said, this same phenomenon has been repeated at various times in history without any jab to blame…
I’ve been saying for weeks that if they manage to get Biden back in they will most likely take over the House. That means they will legally have the ability to pass laws to make MAGA a terrorist group just like the Germans are trying to do to AFD.
Then they will legally go after conservatives or people who donated or worked for groups associated with MAGA. If your thesis is right the TDS people will go along with this and likely cheer it on.
I immigrated to the US when I was a child from a communist country. The things my parents warned me about have already happened in the US. We are in the midst of a communist take over of America. If the Biden folks win in Nov they will be taking off the gloves.
Anything can happen after that.
Surprise….they’re doing that now. And since Johnson let them pass the “it’s ok to skip citizens 4th Amendment rights and do whatever without a warrant”, we are not prepared for what the full force of a rouge government can and WILL DO, especially if we keep voting these damn people in. We’re screwed from the bottom up.
Maybe voting isn't the answer at all…
What could be the alternative to voting?
Not voting.
Oh wait—did you want more? 🤣
Obviously there are numerous systems of governance, and numerous ways of maintaining a stable order, other than democratic systems. Some of these are worse; some are better.
An inescapable feudal caste system and hereditary authority is worse. Full-blown dictatorship is worse. But I am of the anarcho-libertarian school. There are other systems—some theoretical, some that have actually been used—that I believe are far better, and more moral, than any system that uses voting. I favor these.
Well a Republican form of government is surely dead, and now that they control the voting they don’t need the People, so it’s totally useless.
Anything from a more libertarian bent would be better but I doubt the Chinese, who have spent billions all over the planet, would allow that. What’s happening is Marxism versus a free governed people.
I hope we win!
I am hearing you.
Do you think it might be possible, though, that "free governed people" is an oxymoron…?
This is certainly possible. But it may also backfire…
God willing it will backfire.
We have to believe it can and spread hope. Totalitarianism survives on fear and despair!