Post

It feels like a continuation of Covid times where it was revealed that some of the people truly had the empathy and compassion they represented and some (much more than I had expected) were just cosplaying as part of decent society.

It has been decreed

Church of Mammon:)

i realize a lot of people have issues with this writer (i personally think she has her insights and that her parents' actions are not her responsibility but anyway) but i thought this was a good take The Last Time

Exactly. myferretsatepepethefrog.blogspot.com/2025/02/magi...

My sibling, really appreciate your perspective on this.

Followed! Exactly true.

radiant beings, full of all the very best qualities Mother Nature has given us, like acceptance, kindness, trusting, and none of the worse ones like hate, judgementalism, religion, ideology etc. We either rise together or fall apart.

Evil people doing Evil. Capital E Evil

Yeah

lol yes I am

Will Stancil, has some Controversial Takes, especially on The Economy

I’ve continuously said that Trump was the Christian temptation on the mountain that they failed

I read the thread. IMHO American fascism differs from other forms in that people have to signal American individualism to such an extreme because they think common courtesy makes you a communist. Which manifests as sociopathy at a societal level.

Well said.

Pretty obvious. Doesn’t take much imagination to understand how good folks that don’t idolize the orange turd feel about all that is happening to democracy. We did see the fascists coming.

mammon and amalek rolled into one

I would trace a jagged but clear line from the moment when Kelly Anne Conway declared the existence of "alternative truth". From there we can quickly recognize "alternate honor", "alternate virtue", and "alternate laws".

I should attribute this to @jaminatl.bsky.social my homie

It might all collapse in on itself like the Khmer Rouge.

more of a diogenes vibe but i'll allow it

I think we saw who Trump is with his losers comment about the military. You’re right about the people he is surrounding himself with this time around. But, there are also people in Trumps orbit who would completely humiliate themselves in order to gain favor. They could walk away but don’t.

imagine getting a lecture on virtue signaling from someone wearing a diamond cross pendant

Beautifully said

“Virtue signaling” is just a way for people who don’t believe in virtue to attack people who do.

What is boils down to is Silicon Valley arrogance and ‘move fast, break things’ concept applied to a government. The reason you can do that in a start-up is that 90% of them fail, the last 10% just make enough money that it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t work in this case.

“He” meaning Vance, of course.

Augustine said of ordo amoris that it must culminate in love of God, and if it doesn't, it's a sin. Love of self and family is just the first baby step on the road to love of God, and Vantz et al. stop there, well short of love of God. So, sinners.

Traditionally yes. But he comes close in the Zack Snyder movies. Even the old-school vigilantes are getting more ruthless.

And then the cause is replaced by the fetishization of the cheating, stealing and worship of power itself.

Putting a lot of confidence in that when it could be lower, in fact!

Incredibly sad statement, but no falsity detected. What #fElonMusk and #traitortrump have in common is sociopathy, avarice, fascist tendencies, and an utter lack of empathy, caring, or humanity. Peas in a very damaged pod.

That’s a very long article to get through with “this guy doesn’t understand cost of living differs in different countries” bouncing around in my head. Ok, US workers earn more than those in Europe if you only look at euro:USD exchange.

Behind the Bastards has an episode about how "Nice, normal people" enabled Nazi Germany. The supporters of Hitler were folks who owned small businesses, who didn't want to become poor, yet had enough affluence to have some comfort, while still being hungry for the wealth of their neighbors.

I'm pretty sure that the working class in the late 60s/early 70s was doing a *lot* better than now (measured by wages as a share of GDP).

"People like having social inferiors". Yep! Threads in ALL the bleak "-isms" I see daily as a blue dot in my red surroundings.

I’ve been at an outdoor mall today in an SF Bay Area suburb and it’s so clear how it filters down to the working class,who don’t necessarily mind the existence of unhoused/marginal people *as long as they don’t have to see them* Same with immigrants. Know your place, pick the food, don’t bother me

I did a lot of doorknocking for Harris in a purple PA suburb. The fancy big house neighborhoods were all MAGA. The modest house neighborhoods were all Harris.

historian patrick wyman has described them as the american gentry patrickwyman.substack.com/p/american-g...

I keep insisting that he won in 2016 by giving GOP voters permission to forget they elected G Dub and this idea dovetails pretty nicely into mine imo

Provided we win a civil war, it would be a good chance to remove terrible people from positions of power. Be it the middle management that steals your wages or Elon himself, we can make our society far more egalitarian than ever before. ...So long as we don't stop Reconstruction v2.0.

Inconceivable!

💜👏

Grand Nagus Zek is wise

I really need to know how many "a lot" actually is. The numbers on this matter quite a bit. "A lot" isn't going to cut it. And I refuse to go for a binary interpretation where *every* Trump voter is "no longer pretending" yada yada. (obviously it is true of *some*. But i don't believe "all".)

The GOP needed to rebrand post-Watergate, and so they came up with the Moral Majority. The Moral Majority begat The Contract With America, which begat The Tea Party, which begat MAGA. None of these had anything to do with Christ; they were all just conservative rebrands of White nationalism.

It turns out it was only worth pretending if there were whole classes of people they could condescend to.

Yes! That is the line that sums it up the best. I quote it all the time. (and then explain that Wallace Shawn is more than the guy from The Princess Bride).

Remember the song from Camelot when everyone was sick of being good? "Fi on goodness!" We are there.

📌

so much of it is just vice signaling to out-sociopath their buddies as their latest masculinity test they’ve traded “no homo” for “no heart, tho”

The national religion if Capitalism.

Well, Elon Musk did wear a Satan suit for Halloween He and Trump are a basket of vice, not virtue, and the deadly sins

It’s very much a breakdown in basic morality

The U.S. equates wealth with virtue. Hoarding wealth (ie, billionaires) and resources is immoral and leads to the abject corruption we are now seeing. Law enforcement is being punished. Soft diplomacy is being wiped out. The nation's coffers--which belong to WTP--are being threatened. #ForkElonMusk

When they call EMPATHY, which is preached by every major religion, a sin, you KNOW there's something very wrong happening and no one really cares about the Bible.

Yes This is what makes them to me so disgusting at additional levels They are a true abomination

The scifi/fantasy/religion part of my brain wonders if this is all some sort of test that a lot of people are failing.

No shit. The love of money is the route of all evil. And Christians are worshiping billionaires.

I don’t know exactly how to say this clearly right now, but I hate how they, due to their nominal authority and stridency/brutal gestures and doublespeak, cause people to doubt or question or hesitate regarding their own felt sense of right and wrong. There’s something evil about that in itself.

Musk, Trump and American "Christians" have decided the Good Samaritan was a sucker, and Matthew 25 is for losers. "Oh, you hypocrites!"

This is true…. But when the leaders of the Church say he was sent from God, Himself, they believe them.

Remember "compassionate conservatism"?

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is good on how evangelicals have encouraged a version of masculinity that is completely antithetical to Christian virtues. What's ironic is how cowardly these "manly men" are when it comes to standing up to Trump.

I’m not going to let this 💩 change me.

Dubya put Character Counts in schools!!! This shit is over the top insanity

Notably both Trump and Musk come from businesses that are zero-sum by nature. If government is zero-sum, there is a serious problem.

I had the thought earlier this week that I'm relieved Fred Rogers isn't here to see what's happening.

Dubya even acted on it when he rolled out public service loan forgiveness!

Not really related, but this crew makes me think of this Kula Shaker jam, "Whatever It Is (I'm Against It)." youtu.be/iFt9Xgrnmk4

It feels very accelerationist.

I was going to infiltrate "Cowboy Church" (real name) on Sunday to see how they were reacting to all this. With Trump announcing he would get further involved in Gaza, sins being promoted as virtues, etc., all those Southern Baptist Revelatory sermons of my youth are coming back to me.

The kids who got a time every day because they couldn't get along in the sandbox are cack

Such a great framing. It’s annoying when people try to parse what is or isn’t “Christian.” This takes it out of that language altogether

I mean I'm just convinced he is the anti-christ.

Trump is a Rand villain. Rand heroes were too interested in actually getting things accomplished to hurt people for the sake of their pain. Unfortunately, Trump and his ilk think that hurting people for the sake of their pain *is* an accomplishment.

“Empathy is a sin” discourse comes to mind!!

it probably happened before, i'm just not sure the written word existed to record it any previous time. feels like a descent into base caveman "hit you with big rock" instincts more than anything

I would again look to China and the Clique era (20s and early 30s)

For me there are two defining traits of fascism/nazism. 1. is its revolutionary nature; fascists (unlike eg. Franco or Salazar) don't want to go back to better times or preserve the existing social structures; they want to create a new world 2. is its defiance of christianism - I'm not using the

Um ... Nazism?

It feels like instead of a Fascist regime supported by Capitalism, it’s a Capitalist regime supported by Fascism… With greed BECOMING a show of patriotism 🤔

probably my little leftoid brain working on overdrive, but it seems an inevitable consequence of hyper-capitalism. Virtue has been replaced by the Profit Motive for people like musk and Thiel. It isn't just their goal to make all the money its their divine fucking right, as far as they see it

Not only a supposed democracy, but supposedly the best democracy in the world. It's almost like they are trying to fail? bsky.app/profile/wiki...

I often try to find parallels to ancient Egypt (it was my field of study). Biden is Pepy II: aged, incompetent, uninterested, caused a terrible famine. Trump is Akhenaten: narcissistic, incompetent, angry, forces everyone to listen to his rambling, collapsed the empire. But Musk? I have nothing.

It’s Hypercapitalist. Greed over all. Money for the self, over all. This was always gonna end up at some juncture, sooner or later

Oh, I found a fictional example: King Piccolo from Dragonball. When he took over the planet he announced that he had only one law- be cruel to each other. If anyone showed even a crumb of common courtesy, he'd destroy their entire city.

All I can think of is the reign of Caligula. His entire reign was based on "Fuck you, I do what I want and there's nothing you can do about it!" and he would make insane decisions that made no sense whatsoever. The King in Orange is one step sway from nominating a horse for the Senate.

He's a solipsyst. Bad attention is still attention. He LOVES hearing about himself out of other people's mouths. This is all of us essentially stroking his ego day after day. He craves that spotlight, which is why he never should have been allowed to run at all. He got rich backing, though.

I think it feels unique because of the proximity. But that's just another product of the wiring you are posting about.

Some weird combination of american calvinism and divine right of kings imo. They're allowed to do this because of who they are, and if you're not allowed to do it because of who you are that is somehow a failing in your existence. "Je suis le etat" etc...

It’s like the Khmer Rouge if it was led by a bunch of soft-handed sociopath venture capitalists who faint when they get a bloody nose. Govenment not just by sociopaths, but uniquely spoiled sociopaths who are actively angering a lot of the actually hard people in government.

I wonder about the influence from frequent use of pot? Israeli research suggests it hampers the part of the brain involved in empathy while it numbs pain. Used in Africa as war drug using youngsters for horrible massacres and by Indian sect of Hassasins. Some people are psychopaths like rapists.

"Empathy is destroying civilization," broke my brain. It takes this bizarre "up is down," strategy to a another level of nuts. They've really moved from practicing Ayn's Objectivism to actually preaching it. We literally use caring for others as a sign of sapience. 🤦🏻 I just can't.

A big part of this is that Trump seems different from most of the other big names in that not only is he a narcissistic sociopath, he just does not care about even feeling like he’s the hero. Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini, even Pinochet, all those guys *saw* themselves as the hero in their own ways

The Nazi world-view completely rejected conventional morality and was a sort of anti-morality. These excerpts are from the introduction to Timothy Snyder's "Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning" (2015).

It's uniquely American Built on good ol' fashioned salesmanship (i.e. making people buy something by lying to their faces) by school bullies. That's who these people are; they haven't matured and there is no greater pleasure for them than shitting on others

Before the election I was reading a lot about the tyranny of the late Henry XIII. He was narcissistic and “always right” — besides the physical there were a lot of similarities. I’m just a retired librarian but seems not a bad comparison.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Soi.... Even Ali Soilih and his gangs of teenage Moissy had ideals and values about equality and self-sufficiency, even if stoned out of their minds re-enacting Bela Kun's Lenin Boys. Then again, giving fourteen-year-olds the vote might be warily hilarious.

bsky.app/profile/mike...

"militant nihilism" was a term I saw the other day to describe people being radicalized to violence online, but I can't find the source.

Remember that anything “collective” is Communist. There is no national interest save making it easier for the worst people in the world to hoard money and laugh hard at well-meaning folks while all but directly torturing them. The new national motto might as well be “fuck you, go get your own.”

Caligula.

This is “anarcho capitalism”, and it’s exactly what is rewarded internally at many of the tech companies I’ve experienced.

📌

Yes, this. And calling it “Christian,” to boot. I feel like I’m living in an alternate reality.

It is greed, but it goes deeper than that. It's misogyny. They associate all virtues -- kindness, sacrifice, even basic courtesy -- with women, whom they hate, and gays, whom they fear. They fear the feminine in themselves, and everyone else must comply with their efforts to kill it.