Michael's Response
Jan. 28th, 2021 05:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
degringolade
Surrealism / Jacek Yerka/ The Angels' Kitchen
REPLYING TO ILARGI
PREFACE
There’s is a brand-new disease.
Trump Appeasement Syndrome – TAS for short.
TAS is diagnosed by reference to Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
Person A is a Trump appeaser who has TAS, if they say that Person B has TDS, because Person B believes that Trump SHOULD be hated by the public, for doing X.
In other words, Person A believes that it is not appropriate for Person B to hate Trump, just because Trump did X; in fact, Person A thinks that Person B’s hate is so inappropriate, that Person B must be diseased (TDS) to think what they do.
Now to define X in a clear manner.
The task is to watch Trump do X, by watching the reruns of his political rallies; thus X is what Trump has said at his rallies. The goal is to omit everything between Trump’s mouth, and a judgement of whether the public should hate Trump, for what he said at his rallies. Simple as that. Ideally, the task is to live through all the rallies, but the task could be pared down if somebody were to produce a compilation that accurately portrays the main messages, while omitting repeats of what was said many times.
Here is my opinion: No American should be blamed or accused of having a disease, if they conclude that the public SHOULD hate Trump, on the sole basis of what he has said at his rallies, period. I have watched. I saw the hate mongering, scapegoating, and blatant lies. It makes me sick to watch, and I dare say that it should make any American sick - even Ilargi.
To clarify, based solely on watching the reruns, Person B believes the public SHOULD hate Trump, for the same reason that the German public should have hated Hitler, in November of 1938. Note that I did not say Trump is our Hitler or anything of the sort; I am referring to Hitler to give an example of why it is sometimes appropriate to hate a leader. The common link is satisfying the criteria I gave for appropriate hatred of a leader. The criteria is: the leader generates hatred for political gain, when the hate is directed at scapegoats and it serves no other purpose.
People like Ilargi might say that Trump does not deserve to be hated due to what he tried to accomplish at his rallies, and I say he does, so we will never see eye to eye, period. What I am looking for from Ilargi, is to explain why what the tapes show, is OK with him. Then we will see more clearly the nature of TDS and TAS, and we will see what Ilargi is working to protect.
REPLYING TO ILARGI
In reference to:
The Mephistopheles Media - The Automatic Earth
In the above article, the author Ilargi combines two different subjects, to achieve his ultimate aim of appeasing the GOP, as I read it. What I am going to assume, is that Ilargi believes this: that excessive media attention directed at Trump, served the purpose of making Trump become a victim of irrational hate. Note that whether Ilargi believes that irrational hate was an intended result or not, makes no difference to what I say below.
To start, who does not, by now, understand the fundamental issues/problems with the MSM business models? Thus, blah, blah, blah, to all his points about the media. How many times do we need to be told the same obvious things about the MSM? At this point, his complaints are whining to me, and employing Faust does not improve the whine.
This is what I want to focus on:
They’ll go after all other Republicans they can as well, and the ones who once supported Trump are easy pickings. They won’t stop until there’s no GOP left.
Ilargi’s presupposition here is that there is something inappropriate about what he predicts will happen - after Trump’s recent endgame fiasco, which many saw coming four years ago. Thus, in this respect, Ilargi’s article begins just like a lousy MSM example. Are we supposed to miss or disregard his prejudice? I guess the reader is expected to pause and imagine how terrible it would be if the GOP were to one day be gone … and then read on from there; never mind the echo of Ilargi’s writing chamber.
How terrible would it be?
How about we back up and drop Ilargi’s prejudiced presuppositions?
*******
Ilargi uses a scapegoat in his effort to appease the GOP; he invents a cause (for existing chaos), that is not the cause at all. Imagine someone examining a molehill and thinking it was the mountain, and then lecturing you about the mountain. What Ilargi says in his piece misses the point completely with regard to hate.
*******
Question: is it ever acceptable to hate a leader? I will assume the answer is yes, as all sorts of examples can be imagined, and the idea extends to people in general. So, what is the criterion?
I will refer to Hitler as an example to set my criterion for appropriate hate of a leader. According to a better-known story than Faust, Jesus said not to hate, but humans sooner or later cannot follow his advice, so criteria for hate are needed.
The criterion is this: a leader should be hated by the public, if the leader generates and uses hate for political gain when the hate serves no other purpose. An example is the creation of a scapegoat that becomes hated for causing chaos, which the scapegoat in fact did not cause. This is the function of a scapegoat - a scapegoat is always an innocent entity.
Someone might reply that all leaders use hate to some degree, but they usually do so in a clever/subtle manner. This reply misses the point; if such is the case, then we can agree that the leader deserves to be hated for doing it. Why not? All hate generated for personal political gain, remains with the nation after the leader is gone.
Why rule out the possibility that previous leaders should have been hated more than they were – including Trump? Did Hitler deserve to be hated by the German public more than he was in 1938? I suggest so, which brings up the point that it might be foolish to think that this nation will be better of if everybody stops hating Trump. My hypothesis is that this is a naive and dumb idea.
Ilargi’s presupposition (prejudice) seems to be that Trump has been inappropriately hated. In fact, this inappropriateness has been given a name - Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The name is significant because it draws together all the people who have a disease, and the people who have the disease, are Ilargi’s scapegoat.
Thus, a plague of lies and hate – as well as a proliferation of poor journalism, is the fault of the people among us, who have TDS. Look everybody where Ilargi is pointing – there is the culprit, the people with TDS!
*******
Ilargi’s position must be this: Trump was not hated because of what he did; rather, he was hated regardless of what he did. Right?
This position can fortunately be converted into a challenge. The challenge is to describe what Trump has done, to warrant being hated – hated appropriately. This is how we can determine how someone like me – Ilargi’s scapegoat – got TDS.
Of course, exactly how I got TDS is too complicated to figure out, so to approximate, I will shortly describe one way that a person (like me) could get TDS from exposure to just Trump himself – with no press involved. Note that I do not care to predict whether Ilargi would get TDS from exposing himself to something that gives me TDS - by satisfying my criterion for appropriate hatred - because I have no reason to care whether Ilargi gets TDS or not.
Ilargi’s storyline also involves another, more subtle, presupposition, which is that hatred of Trump equates to hatred of his supporters. Question: why suppose that somebody hates Trump’s supporters because they hate Trump? This is a groundless presupposition. The problem with presuppositions like Ilargi’s, is they go unnoticed. I say that Ilargi has it exactly backwards; Trump is a conman. It seems that Ilargi wants to help the conned, by appeasing the conman. I will not use the term conman, without explaining.
Allow me to defend perhaps the two most persecuted voter blocks; racists and QAnon believers. I will not even suggest that the nation would be better off with less of each; I will defend them.
To have empathy for a racist person, is to understand that they have their views for reasons that might make anybody racist. I defend the racists by saying that they were conned by the president into thinking that the best way forward for them in this country, is to keep the racist views they have.
It would be inappropriate of me to hate Trump for being racist himself because he would deserve empathy just like any racist. However, it is not inappropriate to hate Trump for effectively promoting racism and inflicting it on the country, for his own political gain.
I will lump QAnon in with racism due to similarity of the political opportunism. In this case, Trump saw the political advantage in not denouncing QAnon, and in labeling the followers patriots. Given that he held the office of President, this is all Trump needed to do to establish a cult-like devotion, and feed the story to the end, for his political gain, and to the detriment of literally everybody else.
An ingenious element of the Q plot was the bet that Trump would never move to stop a storyline that made him a god-like figure, no matter the consequences. Trump got lucky that the number grew into millions of voters, while the country got, not unlucky, but simply punished and degraded because the president never moved to set the record straight.
Ilargi is concerned about the degradation of a MSM that on average produces less biased articles than his, but he seems ready to disregard anything to appease Trump and Trump’s GOP appeasers; for example, disregard how Trump lied over 30,000 times (not counting duplicates) and how he used racists and QAnon believers to the detriment of both, not to mention to the detriment of the nation.
*******
Here is the example I will put forth to show how Trump satisfies my criterion for appropriate hatred of a leader (him): Simply rerun the tapes of his political rallies.
If one watches reruns of Trump’s political rallies, from the early rallies to the endgame rallies, one will see a man that deserves to be hated for generating hatred of people, both inside and outside the country, for his own personal political gain, not to mention financial gain. Here one sees and hears Trump himself – no press, just him. This is a straightforward test – rerun the tapes and decide whether Trump deserves to be hated. My judgement is yes, without question.
My point here, is that if Ilargi tells me I am wrong to hate Trump for what I see and hear right from Trump himself on the tapes, I am forced to tell Ilargi that I do not care what disease he says I have. This result would reveal a disconnect between our views, but at least the reason for the disconnect and the nature of Ilargi’s scapegoat will be understood.
Since I do not expect anyone to suffer through reruns of Trump’s political rallies, I will reference two examples to make my point: 1) any rally from the very beginning, and 2) any rally from the very end. These two cases are enough to give me TDS; but I realize that I am a snowflake and more susceptible to TDS than a GOP appeaser like Ilargi.
In the beginning: a main topic of the rallies was the refugees at the southern border. It would be inappropriate to hate Trump for turning away refugees, because it was his clear political position to do so, which is not necessarily an irrational or immoral position.
However, it is appropriate to hate Trump for lying and generating unnecessary fear and hate of the refugees for personal political purposes. If somebody wants to argue that Trump did not promote hatred of desperate migrants for political gain, then what can I say? All I can say, is yes he obviously did, and the proof is on tape.
Without (unchristian) hate for the refugees, why would a Christian nation accept the method of permanently separating refugee children from their parents, as a means to any end whatsoever, much less as means to an end that needs to be propped-up by lies and a scapegoat created by Trump for his personal political gain?
We have all been degraded by GOP appeasement of a president - of the wealthiest nation on earth - who would implement such a policy, and if this particular example of unforced degradation and hate from a leader and party does not warrant the hate of the public, what might?
In the end: at his rallies Trump lies blatantly and he tells his supporters that there is sure evidence that shows the election was stolen, and then for a month he drops everything and works around the clock to overturn election results in several states by simply throwing out millions of votes with no evidence to support any claim he made.
From inside his echo chamber, perhaps Ilargi was not suspicious of the stolen election claim - even though there was zero evidence, and the zero evidence was preceded by over 30,000 documented lies from the man that had no evidence. But individuals like me with TDS – we could not help but be suspicious.
When I watch the tapes of Trump speaking at the purely political rallies he held regularly throughout his presidency, I see a man creating scapegoats and working hard to generate hate and division inside his own country. I see a man displaying what must be either ignorance, or the talents of a conman; but mostly I see a man generating hate to serve his own personal political ends, and next, the ends of the GOP.
And now we have a theory going around that says individuals like me (people with TDS) will experience behavioral problems after Trump is gone, because we will miss so badly what we hated. Let me just say that this theory is of course idiotic.
Only somebody who wants to hate Ilargi’s scapegoat, would come up with such a prediction. I, and I suppose many others, are past tired of hearing people like Ilargi whine about how put upon they feel, while they pump out written drivel like this article, to get back complements from their chosen echo chamber.
PS:
The Dems, while clamoring for diversity, intend to leave only those people standing who agree with their ideas, so in reality that diversity only refers to skin color, gender, sexual orientation. Not to what you think.
Right.
Here we have the appeaser of Trump and the GOP, complaining that the Dems intend to leave only those people standing who agree with their ideas. How could it get any richer than this?
And here again we are treated to a prejudiced Ilargi prediction of what people will intend to do in the future - plus we get the bonus of his imaginary version of a reality where he will be disadvantaged for some reason he thinks. His fear must be that people will prefer to read material about color, gender, and sexual orientation, instead of what he writes, and we are supposed to think that that would be bad. Maybe not.
Y’all have to think what they do, or else.
Listen everybody to the Trump appeaser, speaking from within his echo chamber. Rich.
There will be a ton of lawsuits as well, Trump will be dragged from courtroom to courtroom. They all smell blood in the water. They want him humiliated, they want him bankrupt.
Let us analyze these two sentences from Ilargi’s article, keeping in mind that bias in reporting the facts, is the subject of his article.
Ilargi’s overarching concern seems to be that his valuable writing might be censored in the future, because he is the type that reports the facts; while the MSM certainly does not – which is something so well known, that no examples are needed to illustrate the problem. According to Ilargi, there was just too much reporting about Trump; even though that fact alone is meaningless if the nature of the reporting is disregarded.
Let me do what Ilargi does throughout his article, but I will use him in place of the subjects he makes predictions about - like “the Democrats” - who will certainly, he says, do this or that in the future.
Let me guess: Ilargi is a law-and-order Republican (man); thus, he would be outraged if somebody stole the radio out of his car, and the police decided not to prosecute the person who he thinks might have done it. Ilargi would write letters to the local newspaper criticizing the police department, and he would go on and on about the degradation of a society that does not punish people like the one who possibly stole who his radio. Probably, it would take a year before Ilargi would be able to remain calm while thinking about his stolen radio, and even then, his blood pressure will rise if he thinks about the person, who might have stolen his radio. At the end of the day, Ilargi would just be surer than before, that our society is degrading, precisely because criminals like the one who might have stolen his radio, are not punished.
If I wanted to be a fact-based writer like Ilargi, I would say the above without noting that I made it all up, out of thin air.
Getting back to the above excerpt …
a ton of lawsuits
Ilargi does not say how many lawsuits there are there in a ton. More than 65? More than 65 frivolous/rejected lawsuits aimed at reversing an election result by throwing out millions of valid votes from poor counties - with zero evidence to support far-fetched claims that have already been addressed with the previous frivolous lawsuits?
What is Ilargi’s presupposition here? It must be that any lawsuit brought against Trump will be a baseless one – of course. Really? Everybody knows about Trump’s renown honesty and integrity, but still there are laws and processes that even honest rich people are expected to follow; so, unfortunately Honest Don will have to be inconvenienced to some degree just to play along. Of course, none of this would happen if people did not have TDS.
It just so happens, that lawsuits are used to address white collar and corporate crimes. For example, if Trump owes the US 50 million dollars due to fraudulent tax returns, Ilargi says, no big deal. If I think it is a big deal, I have TDS. Ilargi is mad as hell about the criminal who stole is radio, but he has no interest at all in a billionaire who owes the people of the US 50 million dollars due to tax fraud. I guess to satisfy Ilargi, no entity should file a lawsuit against Trump, because any lawsuit filed against Trump, could not possibly be valid.
They all smell blood in the water. They want him humiliated, they want him bankrupt.
Right Ilargi.
Note: We could never find informative, fact-based reporting like this in the MSM.
They want him humiliated, they want him bankrupt.
How about this instead: if Trump stole X million dollars, and he has Y million dollars, and X is larger than Y, then Trump will be bankrupt. What is reasonable to expect, is that Trump should not be allowed to steal X million dollars - just like a thief with no money, should not steal Ilargi’s car radio. If I point this out to Ilargi, I must have TDS.
Conclusion: The reason why I am not able to understand - before the fact like Ilargi does - that any lawsuit brought against Trump will certainly be a baseless one, is that I have TDS.
If I expect Trump to be made to pay the taxes he really owes, like I must, and poor people must, it is because I have TDS.
If I complain about 65 (possibly more than a ton) frivolous lawsuits filed by Trump in an attempt to baselessly throw out millions of legal votes from poor people - to overturn an election he lost, I complain only because I have TDS.
So, what does Ilargi not care about? He does not care whether Trump watched on tv, the Capital riot where people were looking to kill his vice president and members of congress, while he sat having no intention to do anything, other than to keep watching the riot he incited with lies, for his own personal gain, on tv. Did Trump do this? Ilargi does not care whether Trump did or not; anybody that would care about what Trump did on that day, must have TDS.
Ilargi should direct a little empathy at the hapless Trump sycophant Pence. The reason why Pence had a contract on his head, and had a noose waiting, is that Trump blatantly lied to a mob he organized, about the powers Pence had to save the day and complete their Save-the-Steal mission, which was itself an imaginary mission that Trump created for his own personal gain, by telling blatant lies.
Consider a lynching. What is the difference between a white girl lying about a black guy trying to rape her, and Trump telling his MAGA crowd that Pence destroyed their mission? Ilargi tells us that the white girl has already been punished enough as a result of her lies being discovered. The reason why I do not agree with him on this, is that I have TDS.
New Disease: Trump Appeasement Disorder (TAD). Diagnosis: see Ilargi.
Trump will be dragged from courtroom to courtroom.
Dragged - why will Trump be dragged? Of course, because Ilari knows ahead of time that Trump is innocent. Allow me to propose that Ilargi is more than a mystic; he is a douchebag, whining mystic, who is full of himself, and shit.
“Dragged” is the perfect word for Ilargi’s echo chamber.
It sure would be a shame if fact-based quality articles like Ilargi’s were to be no longer available.
Ilargi is an example of a man who has sold his soul to hate, Trump, and even worse, to the GOP – and he has the audacity to refer to Faust with his criticisms. Rich.
rampant asshole syndrome
Date: 2021-01-28 03:56 pm (UTC)Don't know your correspondents, and wow, they generate a lot of words. TL;DR honestly -- but I have developed a 21st-century attention span.
I am holding out for Whole Fucking World Derangement Syndrome.
ABOUT OURSELVES
Date: 2021-01-28 07:30 pm (UTC)I will comment on what you said yesterday (above).
Not to rule out other possibilities, but I think the Trump era, for the most part, shows us what we already knew.
Sidebar: Consider Assange. Even with an unveiling as expansive as his, I venture to say that nothing out of the entire library of information was surprising - because people already either knew, or certainly suspected, everything that was revealed. I ask: what piece of evidence was surprising? What we got, was evidence of what was already suspected – where suspected translates to expected to exist within an unveiling. If not 100%, probably 98%. So, the interesting part is the 2%; but viewed honestly, the main impact of the unveiling is a big shock followed by a: “duh”.
My point here is that we already know there is some significant degree of racism that has been forced underground by expectations of etiquette - which includes the entire realm of the demon named Political Correctness – the demon that haunts and terrorizes the mind of a man like Alargi around the clock. This demon may have its faults, but it does remove plenty of douchebags along with any innocent victims; thus, Ilargi is not wrong to worry.
Question: who in modern times, functions as our societies’ Miss Manners? The answer is corporations. If you work for a corporation, try saying the n-word and see what happens. Or try: “looks like Mary put on a few pounds over the winter”. On the other hand, if you work at Bud’s Appliances, then you and Bud will agree and get in a good laugh.
Note: Not to be politically incorrect and suggest that nobody named Bud works in the upper levels of a corporation. See … how difficult was that for me to do - to be politically correct? Maybe when I stop and think … I will end up figuring out the reason why that smart guy I met named Bud, treats me like he thinks I am jerk.
Anyway …I say that racists are perhaps the most persecuted voter block, because once corporate jobs are eliminated, along with jobs at small businesses that have the same etiquette rules as corporations, there are not many job opportunities remaining for a person who might slip say either of the things above.
This is part of the Great Political Correctness menace that writers like Ilargi object to. But the fact is, the etiquette is good business; in other words, for various reasons, if the corporate etiquette rules were loosened, profits would go down. I could list many reasons why, but the explanations are boring and pretty obvious.
So, Ilargi essentially wants to control what corporations do, while saying out of the other side of his mouth, that nobody should tell people how to run their business. The main project for writers working inside Ilargi’s echo chamber, or any right-wing echo chamber, is to rationalize their positions which are inherently irrational. Sorry to keep returning to this particular douchebag Ilargi, but he is the perfect example to illustrate my points. I explained why I call him a douchebag in a previous message, so I am not being flippant.
The crime for a politician, is not that they themselves are racist, because most at the national level left behind any racist roots/environments, and they went to law school and worked for corporations, etc.; thus, if they are racist at all, they are nowhere near as racist as the voters they appease to get elected. The political crime is telling people that their racist views are acceptable, for the purpose of getting elected. This is the lowest hanging political fruit because the racist voter block is the most persecuted. All a politician has to do, is not persecute the racist. Trump showed how it is done (with typical racism and also QAnon).
The question is: how does this politician help a racist person today? The answer is the politician does not help them at all; the politician uses them, and he helps them get fired and become unemployable in the future.
Getting to my main point: we know there is racism, and we know there is greed, and we have reached an era where the easiest route to winning an election to congress or the presidency, is to flaunt the acceptability of both racism and greed, together as a political package. This is the GOP that Ilargi appeases. Note that nothing I have said leaves out the possibility that the other party is not good either.
So, the question is: did we suspect that this era had arrived – this era of open racism and greed – up to the level of the presidency?
If not, the reason must be that we thought we were, as a whole, too decent a people to allow such a degradation to be the winning ticket; in other words, we thought, “we are better than that”. How many times? I lost tract over the four years.
The big disappointment over how good we are, exists because we had a chance to hate and reject politicians who blatantly promoted racism, ignorance and division - for their own personal political gain, and we not only failed to hate the repulsive characters, we elected them.
Question: what is surprising about the results from the Trump era? Just about nothing I say. Maybe there is something more hidden, but what is not hidden, is enough to explain everything, it seems to me.
*******
Criterion: The criterion that makes hatred of a politician appropriate, is the generation and use of hate for political gain, when the hate generated for political gain, serves no other purpose.
Note 1: Hate generated for political gain remains with the nation as an unnecessary additional problem long after the leader is gone. What reason do we the people have to not hate a politician, who would advance themselves by creating such a hate problem for us? If you see that a politician is advancing themselves by generating hatred of an innocent scapegoat they create, then as a human being, you have more than a political issue on your hands.
Note 2: How many Americans believe that racism will make a comeback, and it will help make the nation greater in the future? I suppose a large majority do not think so; thus, it is not in the best interest of the nation for a presidential candidate to encourage racist views to win votes. Why? Because the candidate will win if he can also satisfy the greed of the GOP after he wins.
TED CRUZ TELLS THE TRUTH
Date: 2021-01-28 08:34 pm (UTC)Step 2 (today): “We’ve seen in the last two months unprecedented allegations of voter fraud,” Cruz said in an early January interview on Fox News. “And that’s produced a deep, deep distrust of our democratic process across the country. I think we in Congress have an obligation to do something about that.”
Some people say there are "allegations".
Rich.
And do not forget - roll the old tapes - that Ted Cruz was among the first to get the disease Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Ted told the nation then to hate Trump - due to Trump himself, nothing to do with the MSM. Now look where Ted's courage has brought him and us. How grateful should we be, that we have a man like Ted Cruz, looking out for this nation.
Ted Cruz is one of the Republics that Ilargi says the Democrats will go after - and the crowd inside Ilargi's echo chamber claps at the idea that such a result would be terrible.
OUR HERO TED CRUZ: And the Courageous Efforts of Ilargi
Date: 2021-01-28 11:40 pm (UTC)How might Ted Cruz stop a scheduled flight of a 737MAX from departing?
He could walk up to the airline personal at the departure gate right before boarding … and knowing the planes reputation, he could demand in a loud voice that the plane not be allowed to depart, due to the possibility of a serious problem in one of the airplane’s complicated electronic systems. Of course, people take notice of Ted’s warning, and Ted takes notice of people noticing him.
So, the airline sends maintenance engineers from the hanger to talk to Ted, and it turns out that Ted is not sure what system has the problem, but there are many possibilities. Now the flight is long cancelled.
Then, over the course of a month and a half, and over 60 cycles of Ted thinking up new possibilities, every time Ted’s concern is addressed, he thinks of a new possibility; but after 64 rounds, Ted’s theories have gotten to involving vast and illogical conspiracies, so finally, after 65 rounds, Ted announces to the public: “I am pleased with my efforts to keep you safe from potential problems”. This is what Ted says to the public; but to himself, he says that he hopes the powerful Mr. Trump noticed what he did.
Back in reality, Ted claims that he is protecting the Constitution – and he has never stopped telling the public that there was a terrible problem with the election, even though he has no idea what the problem is. At this point, Ted is what you might call “invested", in his own bullshit.
Ted says he is protecting the Constitution … but the official rules that Ted agreed to follow, no matter what, say that he is lying about protecting the Constitution. The same goes for that fine young Christian fellow Hawley. The official rules tell Ted he can alarm the public with claims about the election up to a certain date, and then he has to stop if the evidence he has at that point is the evidence that Ted has, which is none.
So, in fact, Ted should be expelled from the Senate for violating the Constitution and forming a lynch mob of racists and QAnon believers that could have killed a beautiful liberal goddess named AOC, not to mention a funny old guy wearing a mask and brown mittens.