The Conversion of the GOP from Radical Right Tribe to Fascist Cult

GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel:

Asks for unity but will not try to stop GOP fascists

from rising to power

Fascism: a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy

The ongoing RINO hunts for prominent republicans who criticized the ex-president for the Jan. 6 coup attempt is a factor that has cowed many prominent republicans into leaving the party, silence or retirement. The GOP is collapsing into a fascist personality cult before our eyes. The personality is the ex-president. The New York Times writes:

Knute Buehler, who led Oregon’s Republican ticket as the candidate for governor in 2018, watched with growing alarm in recent weeks as Republicans around the nation challenged the reliability of the presidential election results.

Then he watched the Jan. 6 siege at the United States Capitol in horror. And then, to his astonishment, Republican Party officials in his own state embraced the conspiracy theory that the attack was actually a left-wing “false flag” plot to frame Trump supporters.

The night after his party’s leadership passed a formal resolution promoting the false flag theory, Mr. Buehler cracked open a local microbrew and filed to change his registration from Republican to independent. “It was very painful,” he said.

His unhappy exit highlighted one facet of the upheaval now underway in the G.O.P.: It has become a leaderless party, with veterans like Mr. Buehler stepping away, luminaries like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio retiring, far-right extremists like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia building a brand on a web of dangerous conspiracy theories, and pro-Trump Republicans at war with other conservatives who want to look beyond the former president to the future.

With no dominant leader other than the deplatformed one-term president, a radical right movement that became emboldened under President Donald J. Trump has been maneuvering for more power, and ascending in different states and congressional districts. More moderate Republicans feel increasingly under attack, but so far have made little progress in galvanizing voters, donors or new recruits for office to push back against extremism.

Instead, in Arizona, the state Republican Party has brazenly punished dissent, formally censuring three of its own: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of former Senator John McCain. The party cited their criticisms of Mr. Trump and their defenses of the state’s election process.

In Wyoming, Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, headlined a rally on Thursday to denounce Representative Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Joining Mr. Gaetz by phone hookup was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, who has been working to unseat Ms. Cheney and replace her with someone he believes better represents the views of her constituents — in other words, fealty to his father. (emphasis added)

The head of the party, Ronna McDaniel, backed away from the rise of the fascists and says that she is not going to intervene. She only asks for internal unity. The fascist wing of the party has no interest in unity. They are openly gunning to take over and get rid of anyone in power in the GOP who does not pay sufficient fealty to the ex-president.

DT Jr. publicly argued that fealty to his father better represents the views of the people of Wyoming. He is explicitly arguing for a personality cult. The cult values loyalty to the ex-president above loyalty to the Constitution, the rule of law, facts, truth or democracy itself. This really is fascism growing onto a powerful monster right before our eyes, right now in America.

Two prominent fascists from the past:

how close will the GOP come?

Is the poison spreading?

For context, it helps to understand how deadly toxic the ex-president is for democracy.  A few days ago, the military in Myanmar overthrew the democratically elected government. The military detained the president Aung San Suu Kyi. The rationale given for the coup was that the election was flawed and fraudulent. In the last election in 2020, Kyi was re-elected by a vote of 83% in her favor and the election was not fraudulent. Does that sound familiar?

Most everything good that the ex-president touches is poisoned, damaged and/or destroyed. He touched democracy. Or, is it unreasonable to ascribe some culpability to the ex-president for what happened to a democracy on the other side of the planet? Does what happens in American have no influence on the rest of the world?

Myanmar

"Fraudulent election" → coup overthrows democracy

The Application of Logos

 Logos is Greek term meaning "discourse" or "plea" and it's essentially argumentation.

We use it when we engage in debate. We can employ informal logic to articulate and critically examination positions through logos.

This is probably familiar to most of you.

If you're going to employ it helps to understand common fallacies that come up in debate. Things like burning straw men, appeals to hypocrisy, appeals to nature, appeals to tradition, appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, and even appeals to logical fallacies are often fallacious.

Here's the issue with it. It usually doesn't help, as per what I call John Stuart Mill's lament. He writes in "The Oppression of Women":

 The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old. And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of those which gather round and protect old institutions and custom, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress the great modern spiritual and social transition;

 

I only disagree with him on one aspect of this, and that is that it doesn't include thinking errors in his analysis. In fact, I'd say thoughts - more specifically thinking errors - are more profound than feelings in terms of causing us to hold incorrect beliefs. Feelings are where our investment in those thoughts are grounded. They work in tandem, but they are distinct, as I'm sure most any mental health professional familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy will tell you.

Given he wrote this in 1869 we can afford him some leeway in terms of how he conceptualizes the way we think, as he's close enough.

Untangling thinking errors is a personal thing. I've got loads of them due to a messy childhood and mental illness. The only way to untangle them is to want to. It has to start with the person themselves.

Logic isn't going to help instill the desire to change beliefs. Pain and loss due to those beliefs will as long as they can see the connection. Self-interest will. This makes debate almost futile except in the unfortunately rarer cases where all parties are interested in self-examination and self-correction, rather than self-preservation.

Take a page from Plato. Where logos is profoundly helpful - I'd argue most helpful - is when we debate ourselves - and do so honestly. Our ego spends much of its conscious time preserving our id. This includes defending our worldview, however flawed. We can apply critical thinking to our own internal rhetoric, and that is probably the most effective use of logos, because if you're willing to do so, you're receptive to change as a matter of course.

I'll go further and say that whether it's internal or external debate, another aspect of debating effectively is humility. If you already think you know everything you're going to defend it rather than be open to learning something new or being corrected. Humility is a foundational component - perhaps the foundational building block of wisdom, and it's central to allowing us to learn.

The question then becomes, are you capable of being humble and honest with yourself? It's not automatic. It takes work. Sometimes it even takes therapy, rather than a cathartic Internet debate. The work however, is good for you.

If you think you're immune to this, or think you've already mastered it then it will make you more susceptible to thinking errors in your complacency. None of us have mastered it because the kind of eternal and incessant vigilance required to check every one of our beliefs simply isn't human. We don't have the mental throughput to do that. That said, we can check the important ones, and be more open to others checking them on our behalf. Ultimately they're doing you a favor.

Some Thoughts on Evil Deeds (Even the Simulation of Them)

I'd like to explore a subject with you I raised on a gaming subreddit, because I think it has wider implications and can stimulate a broader discussion about active and passive messaging, the practice of "evil" and all the ways we encourage it and engage in it ourselves, by way of a video game.

The nice thing about this is, for a deeply immersive roleplaying game it can tickle the part of the brain that leads to emotional investment, much like you get invested in your favorite character from a book or TV show. That leads to moral investment so your conscience comes into play, and so it's interesting fodder for exploring doing extreme deeds you'd never do in real life to get a small taste of how you might react to them. I never feel guilty gunning everyone down or running them over with ambulances in Grand Theft Auto. I'm just not emotionally invested in that series. I don't get immersed in it. But some games, like Fallout 4 are different, and they're designed to be immersive and get you emotionally hooked.

This is about choices, guilt, and conscience ultimately.

These days when I play Fallout 4, I destroy the town of Far Harbor as a matter of course leaving its citizens to die gruesome deaths at the hands of horrible monsters, for the perk I get. It's easily one of the best in the game.

So from purely a gameplay standpoint, doing so is a win. Almost gamebreaking actually, but if you've already played through a bunch of times, it can be fun to play this way.

And here's the important issue for me, and that is personal to me - I don't want to try to universalize my experience, as you may feel differently, agree or disagree I'm not trying to start a war. This is a moral argument, but one that is again, individual and personal - it's not intended as judgment of anyone else or anything like that.

From a moral standpoint I get that familiar twinge of guilt whenever I bring down the windfarm and wipe far harbor off the map. Especially since I helped them all first and got their hopes up (for the experience points, you understand).

That brings up an issue for me. I've long understood, and read confirmation of the idea that we don't learn like a computer does. We learn like we acquire muscle memory. Our learning of math(s) is *like* learning to catch a ball, and that's why practice helps at least as much as instruction, and why experience is gold, but...

I've been taught (and I agree with the analogy) that one's moral core is like corrugated cardboard in that it gets weaker where you fold it. The more you fold it the weaker it gets. Bear with me.

The more you do math(s), the easier it is to solve math(s) problems.

The more you lie, the easier it gets to lie.

The more you steal the easier it gets to steal.

The more you destroy Far Harbor the easier it gets to destroy Far Harbor.

That little feeling of guilt gets eroded every time I hit that fateful button.

Why might it matter? I'm not sure, but could it make it easier for me to hurt people (even people I've helped) for personal gain? Again, I don't know.

I hope not, but there's a part of me that wonders.

I recognize the difference between fantasy and reality. The game is just pixels. But that guilt isn't. The guilt is real.

Like I said though, I believe it's possible to erode feelings of guilt and remorse. Basically any time you violate your own code the code becomes less effective. (Everyone with a conscience has a moral code even if they haven't articulated it to themselves).

In other words, *your own* standards are the judge. If *you* do something *you* know is wrong, it makes it easier to do that thing *you* feel is wrong, and related things as well. I firmly believe that to be true. I think I can make a solid factual case for it as well, but I'll spare you for now.

As far as transferring from the game, if you are invested enough in the game where your conscience is coming in to play, then yes, I think the same rules apply, because what I said above is about nurturing or harming your conscience.

When you harm your conscience it becomes less effective, *at least when it comes to specific areas where you've violated it, like stealing* - a mobster can have a big problem with theft, but no problem with murder under the right circumstances, for example.

But does it harm your conscience more generally too? Does it make the whole thing weaker? I don't know. Maybe the answer is yes? Is that same mobster *more* likely to do other criminal acts after they've killed someone? I tend to think so, since they've already violated a major societal norm, what's one more?

Am I more likely to lie, cheat, or otherwise do someone dirty for my own benefit because I *am* violating my own conscience by destroying far harbor?

That's the question I'm wrestling with. Far Harbor as a sandbox for my own moral navigation, but also possibly bleeding over into real life precisely *because* my conscience bleeds into the game. As I said this doesn't happen with GTA.

Maybe this whole thing seems ridiculous to you.

A) Maybe it seems silly in the first place that someone could get so invested in a game - to which i'd say a good game is like a good novel. you haven't found the right one. and some just don't like to read. and some people just don't like games. I'm actually sympathetic to that last one as I really only like the fallout franchise.

B) Maybe it seems silly to you that games could impact your conscience, but if so I'd like to hear why, so please carefully consider what I wrote, such that you understand the many angles I'm coming at to get to my point. I'd love to hear from you.

Or maybe you'd like to add something, or this makes you think of a related situation. Let's talk about it.

You be the judge...

 

Some relevant philosophical questions:

Q1.) If some of the insurrectionists believed / interpreted that Donald Trump was calling on them to storm the Capital, guilt-wise, does it matter if Trump actually said the words “storm the Capital,” or just merely implied it (spoke in code)?

- How do you (personally) draw that line?

 

Q2.) The impeachment article says that Donald Trump was responsible for inciting the insurrection, not that he caused the ensuing injuries and deaths.  Should Trump also be held responsible in some way for the effects of the insurrection as well?

- How do you (personally) draw that line?

Q3.) Do you think Donald Trump is guilty of inciting the Capital Building insurrection?

- What’s your final verdict on the House's Article of Impeachment, and what is your reasoning behind your verdict?

 

Thanks for your thoughts. And for recommending.

A Story About a Mind's Trip Into QAnon and Then Out Again

Lenka Perron: “At some point I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a reason this doesn’t fit.’ 

We are being manipulated. Someone is having fun at our expense.”

Credit.

..

A major personal interest is in how a normal, educated human mind can leave reality and enter a world of reality-detached nonsense and obvious lies. The New York Times writes about one woman's trip into the crackpot conspiracy theory QAnon world than then back out. What led to her ability to see that she was being manipulated was her acceptance as real of the bits of contradictory reality she allowed herself to see. Her ability to see and accept contradictory reality for what it was saved her from an ugly life. 

Her journey into QAnon began with her fears for the future and her deep disappointment in the democratic party with its abandonment of the blue collar middle class. 

The NYT writes:

In the summer of 2017, Lenka Perron was spending hours every day after work online, poring over fevered theories about shadowy people in power. She had mostly stopped cooking, and no longer took her daily walk. .... It would all be worth it, she told herself. She was saving the country and [her children] would benefit.

But one day while she was scrolling, something caught her eye. People claiming to be sources inside the government had posted on Facebook that John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff, was about to be indicted. And yet on her phone she was watching a video that showed him chatting casually in front of an audience. Around the same time she saw Hillary Clinton, another supposed target for an indictment, walking in Hawaii, looking relaxed and holding a coffee cup.

“She just wasn’t behaving like someone who was about to get arrested,” she said.

It was the first nagging feeling that something did not add up. Five months and many more inconsistencies later, Ms. Perron, a consultant in the insurance industry in suburban Detroit, finally called it quits.

“At some point I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a reason this doesn’t fit,’” she said. “We are being manipulated. Someone is having fun at our expense.”

But while much has been said about how people descend into this world, little is known about how they get out. Those who do leave are often filled with shame. Sometimes their addiction was so severe that they have become estranged from family and friends.

The theories seem crazy to Ms. Perron now, but looking back, she understands how they drew her in. They were comforting, a way to get her bearings in a chaotic world that felt increasingly unequal and rigged against middle-class people like her. These stories offered agency: Evil cabals could be defeated. A diffuse sense that things were out of her control could not.

The theories were fiction, but they hooked into an emotional vulnerability that sprang from something real. For Ms. Perron, it was a feeling that the Democratic Party had betrayed her after a lifetime of trusting it deeply.

She spent weeks combing through the emails, hacked from Mr. Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton. Her stunned discovery enraged her and put her on the path to conspiracy theories and, eventually, QAnon.

“There was no hint of conversation about the working class,” she said about the emails. Instead, she said, it was “expensive dinner parties, exclusive get-togethers.”

The emails were Ms. Perron’s doorway to the conspiracy world, and she found others there too. She was no longer a lonely victim of a force she did not understand, but part of a bigger community of people seeking the truth. She loved the feeling of common purpose. They were learning together how to research, looking up important people in the emails and figuring out how to trace them back to big donors.

“There was this excitement,” Ms. Perron said. “We were joining forces to finally clean house. To finally find something to explain why we were suffering.”

People who tried to talk her out of the conspiracy theories by sending her factual information only made it worse.

“Facts are not facts anymore,” Ms. Perron said. “They are highly powerful, nefarious people putting out messaging to keep us as docile as sheep.”

Mr. Trump himself was a source of doubt. Q presented him as a brilliant mastermind, and for a while she accepted that. But it became harder to reconcile that persona with what she observed in real life.

When she first left QAnon, she felt a lot of shame and guilt. It was also humbling: Ms. Perron, who has a master’s degree, had looked down on Scientologists as people who believed crazy things. But there she was.

“Trump just used us and our fear,” she said. “When you are no longer living in fear, you are no longer prone to believe this stuff. I don’t think we are anywhere near that yet.” (emphasis added)

The emotional component overwhelms the rational

Perron put her finger on a key aspect of people's descent from reality into bizarre fantasy. Specifically, emotion overwhelms reason. She was fearful about growing wealth inequality, democratic party betrayal of blue collar workers and a sense that everything was out of control and going in the wrong direction. She was not stupid or uneducated. She was not authoritarian. She was scared.

This is why I keep discouraging the labeling of all supporters of the ex-president as stupid, vindictive or authoritarian. Most are frightened, deceived, manipulated and betrayed. Perron is a example of that. How many are like Perron? I don't know, but believe it is more than half for rank and file republicans.[1] The research I've looked at suggests that fear was one of the top factors that drove people to support the ex-president. In my opinion, it was and still is the most important factor. Economic fears. Social, racial and demographic fears. Fear of democrats and the press as enemies of the state. All kinds of fears, some reasonable but most not.

Perron figured out for herself on her own what had been done to her. Unfortunately, she is probably in the minority. Probably no more than about 15% of the deceived can do this on their own. The rest need help, but how to help isn't clear to me. Trying to stay civil, respectful and understanding but consistently truthful is the best I can come up with. 

Footnote:

1. I bet that most (~75% ?) of the low to moderate tens of thousands of people who have dropped their republican party registration since the Jan. 6 coup attempt have somehow managed control their fear level enough to let them see reality with less distortion. When emotions go up, rationality tends to go down. That is the human condition. It is well-known among experts. People who make their living based on dark free speech also know this. Propagandists use this aspect of the human condition ruthlessly to manipulate minds and perceptions of reality to serve their own ends. 

People who claim to deceive and manipulate to serve the public interest are flat out liars. They are just selling a product that people most people (~65% ?) would not buy unless it was packaged in toxic snake oil. Therefore, it comes packaged in snake oil, a/k/a dark free speech.

Willingly throwing away democracy…

Was the American Experiment doomed/destined to eventually fail?  Was it just a good idea on paper with no hope of ever achieving its lofty goal of a/that “more perfect union?” Has it finally reached some kind of critical mass and is about to blow sky high?

I was hoping Nicolle Wallace would post this segment with Eddie Glaude, Jr., from her show yesterday.  Please take a look:

https://twitter.com/NicolleDWallace/status/1354940194319958018?s=20

Here’s the question:

Is there really any room for compromise anymore?  Can we compromise with extremists?  Or by compromising, do we embolden?  Is Eddie Glaude right here?  Your thoughts.

Thanks for posting and recommending.