The Root of the Madness
Aug. 20th, 2020 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
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.
Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-20 09:55 pm (UTC)Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-20 10:09 pm (UTC)Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-20 10:30 pm (UTC)https://cthulhuforamerica.com/
Joy Marie
Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-20 11:05 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-21 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-21 01:34 am (UTC)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
Date: 2020-08-21 10:35 am (UTC)Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-21 01:03 pm (UTC)Prizm
Re: Any Functioning Adult
Date: 2020-08-21 03:37 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2020-08-25 05:01 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2020-08-27 02:04 am (UTC)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