Reindeer Games
Jan. 29th, 2021 06:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
degringolade
Northern Renaissance / Pieter Bruegel the Elder/ Children's Games
Who knows. I started out this morning just feeling plumb bilious. Started to pour it out onto the screen and stopped myself. Saw that it was going nowhere worth going.
I think that things are beginning to shake a little bit. Don’t know why I say this, just a feeling. It ain’t the apocalypse, but it is a decrease in stability.
All the problems are still there. None of them are going away.
Tick, Tick, Tick
squeezing zits and other metaphors
Date: 2021-01-29 02:58 pm (UTC)QUESTION
Date: 2021-01-29 04:14 pm (UTC)Criterion: A leader should be hated for generating hate for political gain, when the hate generated for political gain, serves no other purpose.
Question: why do so many MAGA people hate AOC? Why do they want to kill her?
I never said anybody should kill Trump, I said he deserves to be hated and if he is, he and people like him will not be elected. Meanwhile, MAGA people hate AOC and they support the idea of killing her. Why?
FOR WHAT?
Date: 2021-01-29 04:22 pm (UTC)Correct.
MAGA people hate AOC and then expect not to be hated for hating AOC.
Maybe the MAGA people have a point; but I do not know the reason why MAGA people want to kill AOC. For what?
ESCALATION – RECIPROCAL STYLE
Date: 2021-01-29 08:44 pm (UTC)Somebody might respond to my rationale for hating Trump, by building a list of what they think are examples of Democrats creating hatred of Trump for political gain.
Note that per my position, if this person’s perception of the Democrat’s intention is accurate, then we agree.
Somebody who makes a case against Democrats using my criteria is not my enemy; the situation is the opposite - we agree completely.
But unfortunately, there are complications.
This idea of appropriate hate seems harsh and uncivilized, but keep in mind the principle is: there must be a public attack against hate itself used as a political tool; thus, the hate that I am calling appropriate is purely defensive – a defense of the nation, if you will – what a patriot would hate without regard to political views.
The complication is this: if the candidate who deserves to be hated wins, all bets are off.
This outcome highlights the fundamental problem with hate, which I tried to address by referring to Jesus. Unfortunately, politicians will always have the option of generating hate for personal gain, and there is no easier or quicker way of generating political power.
Criterion: A leader should be hated for generating hate for political gain, when the hate generated for political gain, serves no other purpose.
The last part of the criterion allows for events like a war; for example, a US president might work to get the public to hate Hitler during WWII, and they might do so in that case by telling the truth. This would be an example of generating hatred of a proven enemy – possibly to motivate a war effort; thus, there could be both a political gain for the president, but also other gains for the nation, and the criterion would therefore not be satisfied. But the criterion also applies internally; for example, the German public per the criterion had reason to hate and not elect Hitler.
So, what about the case where Hitler points back at those who hate him and claims they deserve to be hated for generating hate against him? Look how much hate there must have been for a group of opposing politicians to try to kill Hitler with a suitcase bomb!
Now we get into a process of reciprocal hate, and Rene Girard explains very well the inevitable escalation that occurs from there. It is possible that the only solution will be a scapegoat, or possibly a real cause, that is powerful enough to give both factions in this country something to hate, other than each other. That’s what wars are for, someone might point out.
Before the 2016 election, I watched Trump rallies. The scapegoats Trump created were not rational entities that the nation might agree about; they were created solely for his political gain. For example, there was no benefit to hate of migrants with regard to implementing any of the immigration policies Trump wanted to implement, or even harsher and less humane ones. Using his presidential powers and the support of his party, he could implement all the immigration policies he did. My point is that Trump would not have been elected in the first place, if people did not believe that liberals who refused to hate the migrants, were unpatriotic and did not care if the migrants raped and killed MAGA people. You cannot blame them for believing such a thing, because they were told to believe it by a presidential candidate who was telling them lies.
Also, Trump told the crowds that his proposed wall was for keeping out terrorists, and he told them that 4,000 terrorists were caught illegally crossing the border the previous year. The truth is that there were 4 suspects. Look how unpatriotic it is for liberals to oppose a wall. Trump got elected because of the lies he told and the hate he generated of migrants and liberals. That is my position - if Trump had not generated the hate he did, he would not have been the GOP candidate, or even close.
To the claim, “we are better than this”, I say this: if everybody had watched Trump’s rallies before the election, Trump would not have won the election. What happened instead, is everybody said Trump was just an entertainer who conducted crazy rallies intended for “his Base”, and with such a crazy base, there was no way Trump might win – so go-ahead GOP, run Donald Trump, and see what happens.
This cocky position was so obvious, that the opposition put up a woman who had an unfavourability rating just slightly better than Trump’s record high number. The problem was that Trump’s crazy base was energized by the most potent fuel of all - hate, and they were enough in number and effort to allow Trump to defeat 16? weak competitors to win the GOP nomination.
Again, if the greed voter block is added to the racist voter block, you win - even with a repulsive character at the top of the ticket. Just add the hyper-Christian Mike Pence and you win. The level of surprise at the Trump win, really points to the repulsiveness of Trump, which obviously even Republicans were surprised was not enough to tank the Trump/Pence ticket. Play the tapes of what Cruz and Graham, etc. said about Trump before the election. They were not lying; but now they are.
So, at this point in the sorry saga …. lists can be made of examples where politicians generate hatred of Trump for their own political gain …. and what a mess as far as determining what to do.
I have no argument against the validity of such arguments because we are now into the reciprocal hate cycle stage of what happens after a candidate wins by generating hate. Everybody sucks. But who wants to bring back Trump? A lot of people.
Getting back to Ilargi’s article which is what got me going initially: my problem is not with the idea that the nation will be better off without the Democratic Party; my problem is with the idea that the nation is better off with the GOP; which Ilargi seems to assume is a fact we should all accept automatically. I call Ilargi a douchebag because he makes me a scapegoat – he says I have a disease (TDS); thus, he dismisses the possibility that I have a rational justification for what I think about Trump.
Beyond that, Ilargi expects me to accept that the GOP is good on the basis of his insight, rather than relying on my own insight that makes the GOP an immoral and repulsive entity.
But … I do not hate Ilargi - the douchebag category is in a different dimension than hate; the category is a special one. There is no cause to hate a douchebag because they, by definition, cannot help themselves. Why not? Because they are a douchebag.
Why do MAGA people hate AOC? Does Ilargi hate AOC?
AOC Hate
Date: 2021-01-29 09:15 pm (UTC)Question: is this defense not saying that the most devoted MAGA people are all very stupid?
A Texas man, arrested for his part in the rioting at the U.S. Capitol, says that he is willing to testify in Congress and apologized for a death threat made against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). At one point during Capitol rioting on Jan. 6, Miller allegedly tweeted “Assassinate AOC” to the congresswoman.
“I was in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, because I believed I was following the instructions of former President Trump and he was my president and the commander-in-chief. His statements also had me believing the election was stolen from him,” Miller said in the statement.
He also apologized to AOC and the Capitol Police but said that the tweets were not meant as a threat.
“While I never intended to harm Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez nor harm any members of the Capitol Police force, I recognize that my social media posts were completely inappropriate. They were made at a time when Donald Trump had me believing that an American election was stolen,” Miller continued.
“I want to publicly apologize to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and the Capitol Police officers. I have always supported law enforcement and I am ashamed by my comments,” he added.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-29 10:28 pm (UTC)The fact is, the man from Texas could have had good intentions, and the reason for such a crazy state of affairs is a simple one - politicians lied to the man from Texas. To be more specific, Senator Ted Cruz lied to the man, to appease Donald Trump, who also lied to the man.
Why should anybody hate the man from Texas? But, I am willing to bet, that many people will assume that I hate the man from Texas, because I hate Trump. This is one link that needs to be broken in people's minds.
The man from Texas says “I want to publicly apologize to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez", and he also said, "I am ashamed by my comments”.
What does Senator Ted Cruz say? Ted says that the man from Texas is going to jail due to Ted's courageous efforts to protect the Constitution. Anybody waiting for Ted to apologize or be ashamed of himself, thinks we are better than we really are.
Ted Cruz is a Senator. If I ever feel this idea "we are better than this" start to creep into my mind, all I need to do, to snap back to reality, is recall that Ted Cruz is a US senator.
F"d-Up
Date: 2021-01-30 01:35 am (UTC)Answer: I do not know, but here is an indication of how f’d-up things are: If Trump did so, within one day, the true meaning of his de-coded message would be spreading near and wide.