It's ironic that this post is "uncategorized" because I wonder if the spectrum itself is a construct of the human predilection for categorizing rather than a discovered phenomenon.
For example, let's suppose that we had a high need for athletic skills in order to be even moderately successful in life. Let's suppose that those without the high level skills were viewed as outliers. Would we have categories of lower skilled people? Would they be considered handicapped? Once labeled, would they become a focus and/or target (beyond the usual targeting that people get for being outliers of any kind)? Would we fail to notice anything special about people on the functional end of the autism spectrum but be highly concerned about the clumsy guy who can't dance well or the one who hits his thumb rather than a nail? What about people with poorly developed sense of spatial relationships?
Humans exist on multiple spectrums and human development from fertilized egg to viable baby is extraordinarily complex. People come out all kinds of ways.
I understand that there are conditions of life that mean an individual truly cannot survive, let alone thrive, without extensive support; however, I also wonder sometimes if we categorize too much and think that maybe if we as a culture put more emphasis on being accepting of variations the categories wouldn't be necessary.
I also think we should consider the possibility that some of our categories aren't grounded in anything that actually matters, the equivalent of saying that birds with red breasts should be a category, not birds that perch.
I used to make pilgrimages to Glacier National Park but no more: climate change and crowds. I used to go to Yukon Territory but no more: climate change. I got married in front of the Tree of Life on the coast out at Kalaloch and my husband and I have gone there annually for over 20 years. This winter will be our last trip. The Tree of Life has fallen over--victim of climate change. Most of the bluff cabins have been torn down because of bluff failure, also climate change. I am planning a pilgrimage to Escalante in Utah. I've been going there for the hiking since the 1970s but this will be my last trip. Too crowded. Zion and Bryce get over a million visitors each summer and the spill over is reaching the Boulder area. When I first went there, the trails were barely developed, the roads were gravel and there was barely anything in the way of tourism. Now the area is being promoted by the state and the wonder and adventure is gone.
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
I don't think that the MAGA movement has an ideology or philosophy. I think they are they kind of people who are susceptible to manipulation by leaders who present as strong defenders and appeal to their need to invest faith in a savior. It doesn't matter that the savior is saving them from an imaginary threat. in this case fear that nonwhite people might participate in American life on the same basis as the MAGAs.
That's certainly what the Republicans are doing: deifying Charlie because that's how they legitimize themselves and delegitimize everyone else.
I've been thinking about Ezra Klein and his horrible fascist-enabling article about Kirk "doing politics the right way." Apparently, Ezra thinks that having public discussions where a hater gets to air the hateful crap is doing politics the right way.
I'm more in agreement with this guy who says in the article that he doesn't debate fascists. Why not? Because they are wrong, so there's nothing to discuss.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-problem-with-debating-fascists-from-a-guy-who-s-debated-just-about-everyone/ar-AA1MOhSE?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=68cc404ce9b94b64b1660870857945a1&ei=21
Medhi Hasan engages in lots of debates, not to change the mind of the person he's talking to, but to reach the people who are watching and listening.
We need to move the Overton Window so that discourse that promotes stochastic violence is not debated or discussed as if there was legitimacy to it. Just called out for what it is and rejected.
To remarkable degree, Republican messaging uses the precepts set out by Goebbels. One is to give people the thrill of fear, basically something to be outraged about that isn't real. Kind of like the fun of being scared at a horror movie. For literally decades, Republican messaging has consisted of telling people to be afraid of not-real while also telling them that the real is fake. So "They are going to take your guns!!!!" and "There is no climate change." War on Christmas, trans kids, white people are going to be a minority!!!! ect. From the safety of their armchairs, life becomes an exciting experience of being scared/outraged over imaginary threats, which is a reinforcing experience. It's fun. Allows the participant to feel virtuous and vicariously heroic by voting for the party that will smite the evil enemy without ever being in any real danger. Meanwhile, I'm sure that those people worry about real problems, but election after election they vote to fight the imaginary ones.
I think leading Dems are sort of hoping that the economy will be the real problem that breaks through this bullshit and gets enough voters to vote D to give the Dems some power in Congress and at the state level. Hence "kitchen table issues" versus R culture war bullshit. It worked in Sioux City at a special election.
On the other hand, Missouri, which is a hell hole of bad government, just keeps electing Republicans over and over.
I keep thinking of the Depression, when enough voters were suffering enough to give a reform politicians real power. Once the suffering receded to being mostly minorities, that desire for reform and improvement, that desire for government as a service for the common good, started losing elections to "I got mine, screw you, and besides you are just a (fill in the hater crap du jour)."
It is a privilege to be outraged all the time about imaginary shit.
I think my difficulty is... MAGA is a fascist movement--literally. People who like Prager U, Kirk, or other haters are the moral equivalent of good Germans. And most of the good Germans were, mostly, nice people.
As noted above, they only learn from being hurt themselves and even then the commitment to their groupthink often remains. The core of that groupthink is disrespect for the rest of us.
Actually disrespect isn't a strong enough word. That friend I had who claimed that Dems supported infanticide, for example. How the hell could he justify believing something that awful about other people? The Republican party message is a fairy tale about how the good Republican party will save the good people from the existential threat presented by the rest of us. How are we an existential threat? Because we (fill in the blank with current hater memes). What unites the MAGAs isn't a set of shared values or support for certain policies; it's hate for the rest of us.
Just as racists make exceptions for someone they know, MAGAs make exceptions for someone they know. But that nice person who is a good neighbor, a long time friend, goes home and chooses to indulge in hate messaging that makes the rest of us potential targets of violence because of the false claim that we are an existential threat to real true good American values.
Would my neighbor Anne object if I got shot at a protest rally? Probably. Would she object if someone else did? Not if Ingraham or Watters or someone told her that the protester had it coming.
It's weird to chat and be friendly with someone who would has no trouble seeing people get hauled off to prison in El Salvador or FL, can rationalize women dying of miscarriages, supports voter suppression and gerrymandering, voted for the guy who instigated a violent attack on Congress and who is in fact an existential threat to representative government and fundamental human rights.
I guess I have to remember the line about "Forgive them, they know not what they do." But I sure as hell am not forgiving to the ones who get elected or get on Faux.
Thank you for your thoughtful in depth response. I think my neighbor was really shocked by an attack on a Christian church--that definitely rattled her world view. I don't know if there's any change in her attitude toward Kirk because she has gone silent.
I have another rightwing friend that I met through the community of dog rescuers. Her instinct is to be a racist. She calls herself a conservative and is very responsive to Republican messages that trigger her tendency to "Other" everyone else. The one exception is that she dislikes intensely religious conservatives. She is a racist, not of the N-word type, but of the type that very readily believes any negative generality applied to all immigrants who aren't white.
The Republican party has built a community around "othering". My theory is that they are appealing to an instinctive behavior hardwired into humans from clear back in caveman days when "our" little band of cave people were in competition for territory and resources with "yours", a competition that could be put aside sometimes for interbreeding or cooperation on a hunt, but still an embedded sense that people like me are a group and people unlike me are inherently scary.
I've talked my dog rescue friend down from anti-immigrant hysteria several times but it takes very little for her to revert. She consumes Republican hate propaganda all the time.
I hope they scrap the plant. I wonder what the local people in the area think about this. It doesn't seem like there is any limit to how many convoluted thought pretzels Trump supporters can conjure up to rationalize their continued support, but maybe being screwed out of 8000 good paying jobs in a depressed area will mean something to them? How do the voters feel about the R pol responsible for this?
I am sure about him. He was a professional hate propagandist who organized campaigns of intimidation against individuals and groups. I posted about his attack on my sister's church below, but my comment is in moderation.
Charlie Kirk organized a hate campaign against my sister's Christian church for the "crime" of being woke. They were subjected to weeks of death threats and had to hold their events and services at a different church for a couple of months.
That was maybe five years ago? Charlie's role in American politics is to popularize fascism by sticking a smiley face on it. He was an overt hater when younger, but more recently promoted a persona of the nice reasonable guy who talks about traditional values, patriotism, the importance of family blah blah to suck people in and then dishes up the openly racist stuff once they are inside a ways. He is heavily recruiting within the evangelical movement.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Un morceau de blog”
It's ironic that this post is "uncategorized" because I wonder if the spectrum itself is a construct of the human predilection for categorizing rather than a discovered phenomenon.
For example, let's suppose that we had a high need for athletic skills in order to be even moderately successful in life. Let's suppose that those without the high level skills were viewed as outliers. Would we have categories of lower skilled people? Would they be considered handicapped? Once labeled, would they become a focus and/or target (beyond the usual targeting that people get for being outliers of any kind)? Would we fail to notice anything special about people on the functional end of the autism spectrum but be highly concerned about the clumsy guy who can't dance well or the one who hits his thumb rather than a nail? What about people with poorly developed sense of spatial relationships?
Humans exist on multiple spectrums and human development from fertilized egg to viable baby is extraordinarily complex. People come out all kinds of ways.
I understand that there are conditions of life that mean an individual truly cannot survive, let alone thrive, without extensive support; however, I also wonder sometimes if we categorize too much and think that maybe if we as a culture put more emphasis on being accepting of variations the categories wouldn't be necessary.
I also think we should consider the possibility that some of our categories aren't grounded in anything that actually matters, the equivalent of saying that birds with red breasts should be a category, not birds that perch.
On “Rule Six, there is NO … Rule Six!…”
I used to make pilgrimages to Glacier National Park but no more: climate change and crowds. I used to go to Yukon Territory but no more: climate change. I got married in front of the Tree of Life on the coast out at Kalaloch and my husband and I have gone there annually for over 20 years. This winter will be our last trip. The Tree of Life has fallen over--victim of climate change. Most of the bluff cabins have been torn down because of bluff failure, also climate change. I am planning a pilgrimage to Escalante in Utah. I've been going there for the hiking since the 1970s but this will be my last trip. Too crowded. Zion and Bryce get over a million visitors each summer and the spill over is reaching the Boulder area. When I first went there, the trails were barely developed, the roads were gravel and there was barely anything in the way of tourism. Now the area is being promoted by the state and the wonder and adventure is gone.
"I ain't got no home in this world anymore."
On “Don’t know much about [ObWi] history…”
Thank you for doing all this work
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
Sorry about the apostrophe.
"
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
On “Precursors”
I don't think that the MAGA movement has an ideology or philosophy. I think they are they kind of people who are susceptible to manipulation by leaders who present as strong defenders and appeal to their need to invest faith in a savior. It doesn't matter that the savior is saving them from an imaginary threat. in this case fear that nonwhite people might participate in American life on the same basis as the MAGAs.
"
That's certainly what the Republicans are doing: deifying Charlie because that's how they legitimize themselves and delegitimize everyone else.
I've been thinking about Ezra Klein and his horrible fascist-enabling article about Kirk "doing politics the right way." Apparently, Ezra thinks that having public discussions where a hater gets to air the hateful crap is doing politics the right way.
I'm more in agreement with this guy who says in the article that he doesn't debate fascists. Why not? Because they are wrong, so there's nothing to discuss.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-problem-with-debating-fascists-from-a-guy-who-s-debated-just-about-everyone/ar-AA1MOhSE?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=68cc404ce9b94b64b1660870857945a1&ei=21
Medhi Hasan engages in lots of debates, not to change the mind of the person he's talking to, but to reach the people who are watching and listening.
We need to move the Overton Window so that discourse that promotes stochastic violence is not debated or discussed as if there was legitimacy to it. Just called out for what it is and rejected.
On “Guestpost from Wonkie”
To remarkable degree, Republican messaging uses the precepts set out by Goebbels. One is to give people the thrill of fear, basically something to be outraged about that isn't real. Kind of like the fun of being scared at a horror movie. For literally decades, Republican messaging has consisted of telling people to be afraid of not-real while also telling them that the real is fake. So "They are going to take your guns!!!!" and "There is no climate change." War on Christmas, trans kids, white people are going to be a minority!!!! ect. From the safety of their armchairs, life becomes an exciting experience of being scared/outraged over imaginary threats, which is a reinforcing experience. It's fun. Allows the participant to feel virtuous and vicariously heroic by voting for the party that will smite the evil enemy without ever being in any real danger. Meanwhile, I'm sure that those people worry about real problems, but election after election they vote to fight the imaginary ones.
I think leading Dems are sort of hoping that the economy will be the real problem that breaks through this bullshit and gets enough voters to vote D to give the Dems some power in Congress and at the state level. Hence "kitchen table issues" versus R culture war bullshit. It worked in Sioux City at a special election.
On the other hand, Missouri, which is a hell hole of bad government, just keeps electing Republicans over and over.
I keep thinking of the Depression, when enough voters were suffering enough to give a reform politicians real power. Once the suffering receded to being mostly minorities, that desire for reform and improvement, that desire for government as a service for the common good, started losing elections to "I got mine, screw you, and besides you are just a (fill in the hater crap du jour)."
It is a privilege to be outraged all the time about imaginary shit.
"
I think my difficulty is... MAGA is a fascist movement--literally. People who like Prager U, Kirk, or other haters are the moral equivalent of good Germans. And most of the good Germans were, mostly, nice people.
As noted above, they only learn from being hurt themselves and even then the commitment to their groupthink often remains. The core of that groupthink is disrespect for the rest of us.
Actually disrespect isn't a strong enough word. That friend I had who claimed that Dems supported infanticide, for example. How the hell could he justify believing something that awful about other people? The Republican party message is a fairy tale about how the good Republican party will save the good people from the existential threat presented by the rest of us. How are we an existential threat? Because we (fill in the blank with current hater memes). What unites the MAGAs isn't a set of shared values or support for certain policies; it's hate for the rest of us.
Just as racists make exceptions for someone they know, MAGAs make exceptions for someone they know. But that nice person who is a good neighbor, a long time friend, goes home and chooses to indulge in hate messaging that makes the rest of us potential targets of violence because of the false claim that we are an existential threat to real true good American values.
Would my neighbor Anne object if I got shot at a protest rally? Probably. Would she object if someone else did? Not if Ingraham or Watters or someone told her that the protester had it coming.
It's weird to chat and be friendly with someone who would has no trouble seeing people get hauled off to prison in El Salvador or FL, can rationalize women dying of miscarriages, supports voter suppression and gerrymandering, voted for the guy who instigated a violent attack on Congress and who is in fact an existential threat to representative government and fundamental human rights.
I guess I have to remember the line about "Forgive them, they know not what they do." But I sure as hell am not forgiving to the ones who get elected or get on Faux.
"
Thank you for your thoughtful in depth response. I think my neighbor was really shocked by an attack on a Christian church--that definitely rattled her world view. I don't know if there's any change in her attitude toward Kirk because she has gone silent.
I have another rightwing friend that I met through the community of dog rescuers. Her instinct is to be a racist. She calls herself a conservative and is very responsive to Republican messages that trigger her tendency to "Other" everyone else. The one exception is that she dislikes intensely religious conservatives. She is a racist, not of the N-word type, but of the type that very readily believes any negative generality applied to all immigrants who aren't white.
The Republican party has built a community around "othering". My theory is that they are appealing to an instinctive behavior hardwired into humans from clear back in caveman days when "our" little band of cave people were in competition for territory and resources with "yours", a competition that could be put aside sometimes for interbreeding or cooperation on a hunt, but still an embedded sense that people like me are a group and people unlike me are inherently scary.
I've talked my dog rescue friend down from anti-immigrant hysteria several times but it takes very little for her to revert. She consumes Republican hate propaganda all the time.
On “Hyudai, meet ICE”
I hope they scrap the plant. I wonder what the local people in the area think about this. It doesn't seem like there is any limit to how many convoluted thought pretzels Trump supporters can conjure up to rationalize their continued support, but maybe being screwed out of 8000 good paying jobs in a depressed area will mean something to them? How do the voters feel about the R pol responsible for this?
On “Kuzushi and Charlie Kirk”
I am sure about him. He was a professional hate propagandist who organized campaigns of intimidation against individuals and groups. I posted about his attack on my sister's church below, but my comment is in moderation.
"
Charlie Kirk organized a hate campaign against my sister's Christian church for the "crime" of being woke. They were subjected to weeks of death threats and had to hold their events and services at a different church for a couple of months.
That was maybe five years ago? Charlie's role in American politics is to popularize fascism by sticking a smiley face on it. He was an overt hater when younger, but more recently promoted a persona of the nice reasonable guy who talks about traditional values, patriotism, the importance of family blah blah to suck people in and then dishes up the openly racist stuff once they are inside a ways. He is heavily recruiting within the evangelical movement.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.