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The Root of the Madness
It occurred to me yesterday, while mulling over various symptoms of our ongoing national nervous breakdown, that there's a very simple explanation for it all: a very large number of people in our well-to-do classes have accepted the New Age notion that they create their own reality, and taken the next step -- the step that leads to madness -- and convinced themselves that they create everyone else's reality too. Do you remember, dear reader, the aftermath of Trump's election in 2016? A great many of his opponents immediately insisted that those who voted for him could only have been motivated by racism. I originally put that down to Democratic propaganda, but it was more than that. When I pointed out to people who were spouting that particular line that they were wrong, and offered them a good deal of evidence that they were wrong, they didn't argue or challenge the evidence or anything -- they just got a thousand-mile stare in their eyes and insisted again that the people who voted for Trump could only have been motivated by racism. It was eerie.
It took quite a while for me to realize that these people thought that they, not Trump voters, got to decide why Trump voters voted the way they did. The reality that Trump voters are human beings, with their own values, needs, concerns, and motives, simply didn't exist for these people. The bleak economic landscape created by policies that benefit our well-to-do classes didn't exist for them either, and articles that talked about that harsh reality -- here's a recent one, and here's another -- made no impression, because that wasn't the reality they chose to live in.
I had another brush with that during the debate I had here on Dreamwidth with Michael M. Hughes, one of the leading figures in the soi-disant "Magic Resistance." One of the points I tried to make in that discussion was that the magical workings he was teaching people to do were bunny-slope stuff, inadequate for the purpose he had in mind. His response was to insist loudly that no, they were powerful magical rituals. At the time I was baffled, because they weren't; there are plenty of technical details that you put into a magical working to make it powerful, and his had none of those; furthermore, he was limiting himself to techniques that can be used by complete beginners, which again is a pretty fair demonstration that we're talking about the bunny slope. I realize now that he seriously thought that his workings were powerful because he said they were.
Take a look across the battered and smoking wasteland of our national consciousness and you'll see the same thing over and over again: a good many members of the comfortable classes have lost track of the fact that they don't get to decide what the universe will be. Violent rioters and arsonists are peaceful protesters, for example; why? Because we say they are, that's why.
I was about to write the words "that way lies madness," but we're much too far along the curve for that. A significant fraction of the well-to-do in today's America have lost their last fingernail grip on reality and are insisting that the universe is whatever they want it to be. Since reality doesn't know or care in the least what they think about it, this will not end well.
Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-20 09:46 pm (UTC)(link)I just don't know if I should trust that in the least, though. It doesn't feel quite right. On the other hand, I live in a very blue city on the West Coast and my impression is that people hate Trump and have largely gone along with the ever-crazier critical theory/identity politics of the left. I feel somewhat crazy because I've been some version of a liberal basically all my life and I'm wondering how the frack we got to the point where it's the left advocating censorship, humorlessness, incredibly restrictive views on sex (see the Alex Morse dust up of late), and just a general dispirited moroseness and absolutely miserable outlook on life and the world. My god, we used to mock the conservatives for that! Now it's the expectation for the left and its the conservatives, more and more, that have a sense of humor--at least, if you're not so driven by TDS that you can actually see the ways in which Trump is often pretty funny.
But I don't hear this view much. That said, I wouldn't state it myself to most people in my life. I admit it--it feels too risky. (Though I avoid lying about what I think, either--mostly I just try to stay as noncommittal as possible.)
That makes me wonder if the shy Trump voter theory might be real for 2020. I don't know if there's much evidence it was very real in 2016, but perhaps we've gone so far around the bend at this point, it is for 2020. Or perhaps the polls are useless because they have the turnout model all wrong, and there are going to be a lot more Trump voters coming out than they expect. I don't know.
One interesting thing I've noticed, though. Here in this very blue city, I have seen I believe all of two Biden lawn signs. I don't know if that really means much, to be honest; people I know who work in campaigning love to mock lawn signs and the notion that they mean anything. But there are BLM signs everywhere--they probably doubled or tripled nearly overnight during the onset of the George Floyd protests--so it's not that no one puts up signs. Which, on that note, one sign I have seen a little more of lately (granted, still only a handful, but so far more than Biden signs) is "Any Functioning Adult 2020."
It's a little amusing, I admit, but it feels fascinating in one of those Freudian ways. These are newer signs, so far as I can tell, so they were put up after it was clear Biden would be the nominee, not during the heat of the primaries. At that point, they make more sense as a humorous commentary for those who hate Trump and think he's . . . well, a non-functioning adult, and that any of the primary candidates would be a better replacement. After the nominee is decided? Well then, not only can you apparently not bring yourself to put up a Biden sign, but you put up one that . . . uh . . . shall we say, could perhaps also serve as a bit of inadvertent commentary on Biden's clear cognitive decline? I mean, it all seems a little on the nose. Is that really the smartest meme to put out there right now?
It almost feels like a tacit (not that I think it's at all purposeful) admission that there is no functioning adult in the running, at least if you hate Trump and think of him as incompetent.
All in all, my takeaway is that this election on both sides is 100% about Trump, that nearly no one is excited about Biden, that the left has gone off the deep end on critical theory to their detriment, and that I can't see how this could possibly wind up in a Biden election. But who knows? I feel like I've lost all political mooring these days, so perhaps the country will surprise me. It's part of why I'm so interested to see what happens November 3rd. Maybe it'll help clarify what the heck is going on in America.
Re: Any Functioning Adult
Re: Any Functioning Adult
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(Anonymous) 2020-08-20 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)https://cthulhuforamerica.com/
Joy Marie
Re: Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-20 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)Walking through an urban Black middle-class neighborhood the other day that has a BLM sign painted on the street at its edge I saw a black bust with a MAGA hat on it in the window. I didn't think this represented a trend. I did think that at least one middle-class black person has had it up to here.
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(Anonymous) 2020-08-21 01:34 am (UTC)(link)I attribute a lot of the behavior I've heard about to simple narcissism. But whether it's the narcissism of the individual or the culture they're embedded in is anyone's guess.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20366662
Magenta Nocturnal Filbert/JLfromNH
Re: Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-21 10:35 am (UTC)(link)Re: Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-21 01:03 pm (UTC)(link)Prizm
Re: Any Functioning Adult
The day before the US election in 2016, some wag in the office asked for predictions on a whiteboard. Several dozen yellow post-it notes for HC made the two orange (natch) Trump predictions stand out. There were over a thousand people in that open plan space and usually the first thing in the morning is a buzz of voices. On the following morning it was silence. The only other occasion I’ve encountered something similar was the day after the Brexit vote - on that morning you could have heard a pin drop.
The Betfair price for Trump to win this time round is down from the late July long odds, but Biden is still very much the favourite. I believe I shall have a flutter myself. Just for fun.
Andy
Re: Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-25 05:01 pm (UTC)(link)I live in PORTLAND and I haven't seen ANY Biden yard signs. I saw one in Beaverton (next door to PDX). I have seen Trump flags on houses in Portland! Once you get outside of Portland, Oregon is quite red. Houses and cars there have a lot of American flags, and a few Trump stickers on bumpers. There is a lot of simmering resentment in red Oregon about the crazies in Portland, rioters and government officials alike. But not much display, except flags which seem to be a restrained way to indicate Trump support. (Portland rioters regularly burn flags.) Meanwhile the sales in guns and ammo surge to unbelievable levels. I am undecided whether it is safer to go somewhere else the first week of Nov, or stay here to safeguard my home.
Re: Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-27 02:04 am (UTC)(link)If simply hanging a flag could turn my townhouse into a target for arsons, I can only imagine what putting up a Trump sign would do! They might take out the whole neighborhood with tactical nukes to contain the dreaded pathogen. Somehow, I think that pathogen escaped a long time ago and spread throughout the rural regions. When it at last becomes apparent that it also ripped its way through their safe-space cities, might they finally be willing to lay down their Covid paranoia and admit to the populist contamination they have actually been afraid of the whole time? People can act so stupid when they don't understand the symbols and metaphors they are trying so unsuccessfully to wield.
Covid also made for a really unsatisfying stand-in, as far as I'm concerned. Posters proclaiming "We're all in this together!" with images of scary, scary populists creeping up from below would have been much more entertaining. Instead of trying to glamorize mandatory vaccination by shrieking "A vaccine for everyone!", they could have promised "a Biden in every pot"; your very own personal Biden to hear your prayers; Saint Biden, the dragon slayer, felling badly coiffed, orange dragons everywhere!
They could have had so much more fun than praying to their futile lockdown to save them from the consequences of their choices. At least they finally got to don the ritual regalia of the great priests of their dying religion — that's a little bit of fun at least. "Look, Ma, Susie and me are real doctors; we got mask and gloves on!" Still looks to me like a pretty watered down role play if they won't let you near the scalpels or dispensary. Some folks are just willing to settle for dull.
— Christophe
Re: Any Functioning Adult
Humorlessness and judgmental attitudes towards how other people dress, their amusements, and so forth have always been evident in a certain segment of the Left. It prompted Emma Goldman, the anarchist, to make the famous remark (more or less), "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution.")
There is no clear boundary between the desire to reform, to make improvements to society, and the desire to control other people's behavior. This comes up on the Left and on the Right, among the religious and among militant atheists. Beyond that, people who feel threatened want to gain control over the source of the threat, and if you desire more power, the ability to punish behavior is a positive feedback loop. The more rules, the more violations, the more punishment, the more power accrues to the enforcers of rules. Lust and passion don't want to follow rules; that's why there is a Women's Anti-Sex League in 1984.
I got an insight into another side of this dynamic during the 1990s, when I revisited a scene that I had been involved with about a decade earlier but had mostly left. On this side, the judgmentalism and the resulting humorlessness were self-protective. I don't want to go into detail because I don't want to stereotype a group of people who have a lot to contend with and made the best choices that seemed to be open to them at that time.
They were trying to get some control over their own lives after having been stepped on a lot, and were protecting themselves by limiting their social circle to people who had made similar life choices and who dressed and acted very much like themselves. They were very wary of trying out or being around any idea, action, personal presentation that was outside the boundaries of what they themselves did, because they were deeply angry. Under the anger was fear, because they felt victimized, and they felt powerless. They were Puritanical because they viewed the entire world as a threat. Being in that state of mind, and spending all their time with other people who reinforced that point of view, closed off a lot of possibilities for regaining any sense of personal power.
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(Anonymous) 2020-08-21 04:49 am (UTC)(link)Re: Any Functioning Adult
(Anonymous) 2020-08-21 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)