Thoughts about ill-will in American politics

Rhetoric from MAGA (America's authoritarian radical right) consists almost completely of ill-will toward its opposition.[1] There is a lot of evidence to support that assertion. In view of the evidence, one can see that as being a fact, not mere opinion. For example, JD Vance recently publicly said that he will lie to the public as a means to draw attention to all the horrible things being done to the Americans people. He did not specify what the horrible things are or why lies were necessary to get the job done, when facts and reason work just fine for sane people.* He used that "reasoning" to justify vicious lies about falsely alleged illegal Haitian immigrants (they are not illegal) eating house pets (none have been eaten). That clearly consists of both lies and Great Replacement Theory racism. 

* One can reasonably believe that Vance sees himself, DJT and the MAGA movement generally as populated by sane people. If asked, that is what he will say.

In malicious mendacity like that, where is the good ill or good faith? There is none as far as I can tell. There is cynical ill-will for sure, but where is the good will? 

The same argument can be leveled at the MAGA rank and file. Many or most of them have been argued to joyfully revel in the discomfort and pain their arrogant lies, racism, bigotry and slanders inflict on innocent targets. From my blog post yesterday:

MAGA likes inflicting pain on its political enemies. It likes and enjoys creating these ridiculous and absurd memes. It loves to provoke people who are on the outside. It’s part of the joy of this MAGA movement that can include this extreme aggression online. The people who are in on the joke [Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio], the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

From what I can tell, there is a lot of truth in that argument. Much of the MAGA rank and file seems to be having a darned good time, or at least they act that way. Listen to them talk. They like pissing off attacked and slandered people and groups.

In response to all the ill-will, joyful or not, what reactions among the lied to, slandered, attacked and crackpotted upon are fair and reasonable? From what I can tell from science and personal experience, emotional and moral impulses give rise to most of the reactions among groups and individuals that MAGA attacks, insults, lies and slanders. As usual, the range of responses is quite broad, probably ranging from boredom and/or indifference to seething outrage and/or intense fear.

Some argue that the center and left are not sufficiently empathetic toward MAGA compared to other groups. Well, isn't that to be expected? Sure it is. Most attacked and/or insulted people will tend to emotionally distance themselves from attackers in emotional/moral self-defense. In those situations, negative feelings like anger and resentment toward abusers will override empathy for many or most people. In these moral assessments, one needs to be cognizant of who is the attacker and who is the attacked. 

I have experienced exactly that kind of self-defense and democracy defense response. Early on, e.g., 2016 to about 2018, I had some empathy for the rank and file. I accorded the MAGA rank and file less moral responsibility for supporting DJT, because I saw them as deceived, manipulated and betrayed by MAGA dark free speech. I accorded MAGA elites ~85% of the blame and ~15% to the rank and file back then. But now after years of accumulating evidence proving that DJT is extremely dangerous and thoroughly morally rotted (and a convicted felon), I accord the rank and file 45% of the blame and the elites 55%. Although blame assessment in politics for things like this is mostly a subjective assessment, maybe I should nudge the blame estimate to ~50:50.

When it comes to the MAGA rank and file, I lost my empathy. In my opinion, mostly amounts to just being a sane human being under attack.

Q: Is it reasonable or morally justifiable to lose empathy for all of MAGA, elites and rank and file, in the face of a perceived deadly MAGA attack that is grounded mostly in ill-will, was unprovoked and is implacably opposed to my core moral values?***

*** My core moral political values: support for and belief in pluralistic, secular democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, fact, true truth, sound reasoning, etc.

Footnote:

1. What about ill-will from the left aimed at the right and center? Yes, some liberals express ill-will toward conservatives and/or the very different MAGA wealth and power movement.* Examples include, stereotyping and insulting language, e.g., "idiot[s] out on the farm", uneducated, racist, homophobic. How prevalent that is in the non-MAGA world is unclear. But the prevalence of ill-will is shown by overwhelming rank and file MAGA support for DJT. That is quantified by opinion polls. One cannot rationally, or in good faith, argue that support for Harris and Dem politicians amounts too a mindset as about equally driven by ill-will as minds that support MAGA.

* Real pro-democracy conservatives are not MAGA -- they have left the GOP or been RINO hunted out by some combination of the elites and the rank and file. The rank and file, not the elites, voted Liz Cheney out of power.

Is liberal ill-will qualitatively and quantitatively about the same as MAGA ill-will? From what I can tell, most conservatives do not convey nearly the same level of ill will and mendacity that MAGA does. Fact-checkers provide significant evidence of ill-will in the MAGA movement. In my firm opinion, lies** and slanders are direct evidence of ill-will. And to me, lies are direct evidence of moral rot, ranging from mild immorality to flat out evil. Political lies aimed at political opposition tend to, probably usually do, attack and/or insult the target. 

** Lies are intentional and knowing, unlike honest mistakes that are unknowingly based on false information, insufficient information (ignorance), or unintentionally flawed reasoning. 

My emotional and moral assessment:

Lies = ill-will and ranging from immoral to evil

Honest mistakes = good will and moral

One commentator about the joy of being MAGA; Miscellaneous

NYT columnist David French opines (not paywalled) on how he currently sees the enormous appeal of DJT to the MAGA rank and file. French lives in rural Tennessee, surrounded by MAGA people, so he has a metric buttload (50 butt-tons) of relevant personal experience. He writes:

To understand MAGA, we have to understand the joy and sense of belonging that the movement bestows upon its adherents. .... The lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets — appeal to his followers’ “sense of gleeful transgression.”

If you’re on the outside, your experience with MAGA is all of the anger projected outward. So you see MAGA as almost entirely an angry movement.

MAGA likes inflicting pain on its political enemies. It likes and enjoys creating these ridiculous and absurd memes. It loves to provoke people who are on the outside. It’s part of the joy of this MAGA movement that can include this extreme aggression online.

The people who are in on the joke [Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio], the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

Clip of TikTok: I don’t know about you, but I’m Voting Donald Trump, baby.

Clip of Donald Trump Jr.: “You know, honestly, I’m waiting for Merrick Garland to indict my father for being part of an assassination. You know, that’s what’s next.”

Jesse Watters: “It’s a conspiracy.”

They’re trashing our body politic. They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P., but they are having a good time and hey, the people they’re making mad, they don’t like them anyway.

And you might think for a minute that, well, wait, this can’t go on forever. Surely, surely the majority of Republicans, when they know they’ve been had, when they know these are lies, will stop paying attention to these memes. They’ll reject this method.

And the really sad answer is that the Republican response to Jan. 6 and the Big Lie showed us the tolerance that Republicans have for dishonesty and for lying if it is directed against their hated Democratic enemies. (emphasis added)

The opinion touches on two other joyful MAGA crackpot memes, one of which is exuberant fun with non-existent election fraud now that early voting has started in some places.

So, there we have it from one commentator: MAGA folks are just having fun and don't care about truth. Since they don't like the rest of us anyway, so why should they give a fig about truth or lies? It's all just good clean fun at our expense. C'mon people, lighten up!

French: They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P. 

Response: What?? The GOP has been wrecked in many ways at least since 2016. Wrecked puts it waaay too mildly. Blown to smithereens is closer to the mark.

Once again an uncontrollable compulsion to ask about moral responsibility for adult American citizens bubbles up from the bowels of my unconsciousness.  

Q: If what French writes is mostly correct, and most of the MAGA rank and file (i) really is having joyous fun at our expense and at the expense of targeted groups, e.g., falsely accused Haitian immigrants who are allegedly illegal immigrants eating people's dogs and cats, (ii) does not like us, (ii) does not care about truth or lies, and (iv) will vote for the lying, fornicating, pussy-grabbing, kleptocratic dictator-thug and convicted felon DJT, are these MAGA folks just good, honest people and patriots who deserve our respect and good will? Or, it is time to call a spade a spade, and openly speak the actual truth that most of the MAGA rank and file is bigoted, pro-dictator and a dangerous but joyful enemy of American democracy, and people like you and me who oppose DJT and his radical kleptocratic authoritarianism? 

Q: Once again, is Germaine off his rocker, over the top, insanely deluded by identity politics, hoodwinked by pragmatic rationalist hyper-partisanship, or otherwise beguiled and missing the mark?

Darned Germaine and his double darned pragmatic rationalism . . . . grumble, grumble . . . . . darn it.

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A peanut from the gallery commenting on the faux horror of dogs and cats being eaten in Ohio: The campaign seems to have stumbled into a strange unintended message: “Let’s go to war with Taylor Swift to stop Haitians from eating dogs.” At least that's less worrisome than their other stated goals. (good point, peanut)

WaPO: Why Big Tobacco is betting on Trump -- As the industry fights a ban on menthol cigarettes, a Reynolds American subsidiary has become the largest corporate donor to the main pro-Trump super PAC  (good 'ole brass knuckles capitalism -- it supports a dictator-kleptocrat as long as its profits are protected and to hell with public health, honest government, democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, the environment, etc.)

WaPo: Hezbollah leader says device attacks are an ‘act of war,’ as Israeli warplanes fly over Beirut -- In his first remarks since thousands of electronic devices exploded across the country, Hasan Nasrallah said that Hezbollah suffered “a major blow,” but that his forces would not stop attacking Israel as long as the war in Gaza continued -- “The enemy transgressed all boundaries and redlines,” Nasrallah said in a widely anticipated speech Thursday evening local time about the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The attacks were “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime — an act of war,” he added, and they dealt an “unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah and Lebanon. (Hm, the stench of another new war is in the air . . . . Hezbollah complaining about transgressing all boundaries and redlines? Ha, that's the pot calling the kettle black -- leaders in the Middle East are all stupid, spoiled, corrupt monsters)

WaPo on demagogic dictatorship: Putin wants Russia’s youth to become ultranationalist patriots. Many are all in. -- Young Russians are embracing Kremlin propaganda, reshaping the Ukraine war narrative with ultranationalist views and seeing themselves as patriotic truth defenders.  (Hm, the stench of fascism is in the air . . . . Putin is turning Russian children into vicious monsters -- once again, witness the power of dark free speech)

Enthusiastic little Russian patriots training

to genocide (the verb) the Ukrainians to death

The Independent: Trump claims audience ‘went crazy’ for him at his debate with Harris – but there was no audience -- Donald Trump appeared on Fox News show Gutfeld! to talk about his September 10 debate with Kamala Harris -- Trump referred to the nonexistent audience. “And the audience was absolutely– they went crazy,” he said.
 (good 'ole Faux News, always a reliable source of bullshit, lies, slanders, crackpottery and more lies and slanders, just like DJT is a good source for the same)

Salon: Georgia's abortion ban killed a young mother. The Christian right now blames the victim -- Anti-choice activists argue that if Amber Nicole Thurman had submitted to forced childbirth, she'd still be alive -- Republicans and Christian right activists don't want to take responsibility for the loss of this healthy young mother of a 6-year-old boy. Instead, they're casting blame on everyone else: the doctors in the Georgia hospital, abortion providers in North Carolina, and, though they will deny doing so, they're blaming Thurman herself. Thurman chose abortion. They're blaming her choice for her death. (I bet that forced birth supporters knew this day was coming and had their response to blame the dead woman planned in advance -- they knew the day would come when they would need to try to get ahead of criticism of their brutal forced birth laws -- good  'ole Christian nationalism, its as cruel and brutal as it is kleptocratic)

LGBQT Nation writes about the authoritarian MAGA wealth and power movement going from He did not say what he said, to Us MAGA politicians did not do what we just did: GOP senator rages at CNN host because she correctly said his party blocked the IVF protection bill -- He claimed that the IVF bill would give fertility treatments to trans women in his bizarre and angry rant x (Good grief! Treating trans women? The horror, the horror . . . . .)

Memory lane: Those were simpler,

happier times

Happy days: A supreme court 

nominee hearing in the US senate

BOMBSHELL REPORT!!

 

Judy Byington: Now Is The Time. Trust The Plan. Pray. “The Enormity Of What Is Coming Will Shock The World” President Donald Trump! Restored Republic via a GCR: Update as of Tues. 17 Sept. 2024

https://amg-news.com/bombshell-report-judy-byington-now-is-the-time-trust-the-plan-pray-the-enormity-of-what-is-coming-will-shock-the-world-president-donald-trump-restored-republic-via-a-gcr-updat/

Not sure who Judy is, but damn, she has figured it all out - as per the following:

WARNING!!!

At This Very Moment in New York UN Global Elites Were Positioning Themselves To Completely Control People of the World via Passage of the Global Digital Compact, or the Illuminati’s Great Reset

Meanwhile…

On Monday Trump Announced the Launch of World Liberty Financial Crypto Exchange, the Apparent Precursor to 130 Sovereign Countries’ Gold/Asset-Backed Global Currency Reset Which Ensured The People Would Have Complete Control Over Their Own Monies & Provided Freedom From Debt For All

Checkmate!!!

Judy Note: Right now the 79th U.N. General Assembly was meeting in New York to consider putting their stamp of approval on a document called the Global Digital Compact. If passed, the Compact would give the U.N. Secretary-General totalitarian control over all people across the Globe, overriding governments and trampling individual freedoms.

I’m only an outside observer, but with Trump head of the Global Military Alliance which was arresting thousands of corrupt Deep State Globalists, it’s pretty obvious to me that the two recent Trump Assassination Attempts were Homeland Security- FBI-Biden Administration Inside Jobs.

  On 29 Sept. 2019, Barack Obama was executed by firing squad at GITMO. Donald Trump just leaked undeniable evidence exposing Obama practicing Satanic Sacrificing Rituals alongside other powerful figures—GAY men and PEDOPHILES like Oprah, Clinton, and more! Tucker Carlson had released multiple videos that showed the Satanic blood rituals, child sacrifices and much more Devil oriented things which took place under the White House. Recorded in 2008, videos expose Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, Prince Andres, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and many more engaging in Demonic activity and Child Sacrifice.

For more insight, click on the above link. And enjoy! 

Thinking in sadness and fear about what is being forced on us

I have a long list of posts I want to do. But this is stuck in my head, so I'll write about it. This is my personal take on the terrifying mess we are in. 

Given the vast stretches of wasteland and mindless to insulting garbage that dominates American cable TV, various drama series from Europe have a lot of appeal. They are usually very well produced, written, cast and acted. Most of the series about life and events from ~1900 to the end of WW2, have central themes of (i) war, (ii) various forms of bigotry, (iii) the corruption, brutality and evil that humans do, and (iv) the endless fight against all the myriad forms of human badness and evil. The Europeans seem to have been and probably still are significantly preoccupied with such matters. 

One can see why. That's where two huge, bloody wars were fought.

Although these series are all fiction, it is obvious that the badness portrayed is inherent in the human condition. In my opinion, these series are fiction but they portray quite plausible human reality. There aren't excursions into the supernatural. Just events that one can easily envision as coming from a core of truth.

La Otra Mirada (A Different View) was made in Spain in Spanish with English subtitles. It is a series about a girl's school in 1920s Spain in Seville. It brilliantly portrays the struggle of women to slowly, painfully break free from all the heavy constraints on their freedoms and power to control themselves and live as they wish. The brutality and intolerance of men, and some sympathetic, complicit women, in opposing that slow progress is made crystal clear. The series is heartbreaking in how it shows the wreckage and vast waste of a society dominated by men and by religious (arrogant, heavy-handed Catholicism), political ideology (insane, arrogant fascism), and deeply ingrained misogynistic social norms, all of which oppressed and denigrated women and their role in society. 

The British series Foyle's War dives into the social and political chaos that started with WW2 in Britain. All the badness that humans, mostly men, can inflict on others is laid out in great detail. Sometimes the attackers force the attacked to into untenable situations that force a sacrifice core moral principles of the defenders of what is good and decent. They are dragged down to the level of behavior of the attacking human monsters. Only good and moral intentions differentiate the defenders from the monsters. Although Foyle and and the other characters fictional, Anthony Horowitz the show's creator, said that many of the storylines are grounded in real life.

Hotel Portofino is a British series about a fictional British family who run a hotel on the Italian Riviera during the 1920s after WW1. Poison and badness of the bigotry and misogyny and the arrogant political extremism, i.e. fascist Blackshirt thugs, are clear. Some regular people are swept up in Facsist horrors as aggressors, while others are victims. Some willingly participate or are silently complicit aggressors. Many innocent oppose as best they can. As is routine in these series, some of the rich (elite) men are scoundrels who cheat on their wives and/or are thieving moral scumbags. Wealthy businessmen are commonly portrayed as cruel, greedy pigs, often thieves, and usually misogynists too. Those thugs could not care less about politics, other than trying to avoid it entirely, unless it can make them more wealthy and powerful. Not surprisingly, the fascist ideologues cannot be reasoned with. They mindlessly ruin lives and murder with no moral qualms. They see as their behaviors as a sacred, infallible service to a cause far higher than mere individual well-being. 

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What is the point of that? 

This is the point: In drama series like those three, all the poison, lies, brutality, bigotry, misogyny, hate, greed and mindless cruelty come across loud and clear. Political and religious extremism are common carriers, i.e., moral justifiers, of what an old roommate of mine liked to call awfility (awfulness). Those series show things like criminals stealing food from hungry civilians, murders, corrupt military leaders and businessmen, and ghastly betrayals of innocent wives, other people and nations, often with lethal results for some of the innocents. Heck there is even desecration of corpses and water torture scenes. What is morally and practically good or defensible is simply not a concern to the bad people. They are at war, either their own personal war (criminals and the insanely greedy) or war "for the greater good" (fascists and Nazis). Weakness in the rule of law for elites, including judges and powerful business people, but not average people, also comes across loud and clear.

A sane person just can't miss all that stuff. Just can't.

So, what is on my mind is probably obvious to readers who have made it this far. 

When I look at the traits and behaviors that arrogant, aggressive ideologues, extremists, liars and grifters, especially the elites in those series, I get a feeling of empathy for what the fictional victims experienced and lost. More to the point, I also feel sadness and fear about what most Americans will experience and lose if the American 2024 elections come out the wrong way. Those series convey the same kinds of emotional poisons and bad behaviors that America's radical right authoritarian MAGA movement and its morally rotted leader DJT now attack us innocents with. Just like in the fictional series, (1) American elites know exactly what they are doing and why, (2) there is confusion and splits in rank and file society, much of which is deceived and betrayed by the knowing elites. 

Recent polling indicates that DJT has a slightly better than even chance of winning the electoral college -- he is +2% as of July 19.

A modern American version of what those fiction drama series show can happen here. We can lose our freedoms to some form of bigoted, kleptocratic authoritarian government with a brutal, wealthy White male Christian Taliban to enforce God's infallible moral requirements on us (but not themselves of course -- morality is purely optional and pick and choose for the elites). Maybe MAGA thugs won't march in the streets and seek out opponents to murder or beat senseless, but there will be brutality and corruption on a vast scale, dwarfing the shocking level of corruption that plagues our society, government and commerce today.

That we are being attacked like this and on the verge of losing our country to unspeakable, corrupt radical right authoritarian darkness makes me sad and fearful. I very much hope that my sadness and fear are misplaced. With some luck, they are.

Blog note: Links to comments broken

Yesterday Disqus comments to posts here, all of which automatically go to my gmail, got messed up somehow. When I click on the View Reply button in my Disqus emails I get this error message from clicktrackingurl.

My ability to find and respond to comments is crappy compared to normal. I may not respond to some comments I would normally respond to. Sorry. I posted my bug report to Disqus this morning. Kieran responded saying they are experiencing apparently the same issue. 

Grumble, grumble . . . . . . 

Happening today - Patriotic Fashion Show Tuesday, September 17th

https://theamericafirstwarehouse.ticketspice.com/america-first-fashion-show

https://www.theamericafirstwarehouse.com/