Darkness and not light

 

Worthwhile read from Fred Clark on the trace of fear, anger, and hatred that connects the current "conservative" panic that has become the animating force of the GQP with the earlier conspiracy-theory pogroms like the Salem witch trials, the "New York Conspiracy Panic of 1741" and the "satanic panics" of the 1980s and 90's like the McMartin and Kern County hysterias.

"Moral panics are not sparked by sincere, well-meaning convictions of those who wish to see wrongs righted and justice done. They are sparked by the sincere, inescapable conviction that, in the words of the prophet Amos, the day of justice would be, for them, darkness and not light. The recognition that justice would not mean well for us."

The link between the QAnuts, the "conservative" hate for the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer, and the "Stop The Steal" idiocy draws all of this together.

The people inside all of these are, more than anything else, terrified of "The Others" gaining the sort of power and control over them that they have always had over "The Others"; these wretched subhumans (who are, however, secretly powerful and dangerous) are using the Deep State or the Swamp or the black power of Antifa to swarm over the Good People who just want to Make America Great.

It doesn't make any sort of sense, of course. It's like the weird Nazi ideology that simultaneously insisted that the Jews were the worthless, degenerate scum of the cursed Earth while also running the political and financial world.

It's exactly the sort of thinking that turns a small-time New York real estate grifter, con man, frightened little germaphobe into a bare-chested hero of the People.

Here's the problem with all this.

As Clark pointed out in a pair of earlier posts, the people involved in all these "moral panics" included some deeply cynical sonsofbitches that pushed this sort of Pizzagate nonsense for the handle it gave them over their marks and dupes.

Those people are just Nazi-grade evil, Steven-Miller-type "first up against the wall" bastards.

But the rest?

There are certainly a large number of stupid and gullible people in that group. But there just aren't enough stupid, gullible people to make up a large enough group to take over the U.S. government for extended periods of time; government is simply too complex and difficult to do for large numbers of stupid and gullible people to do it.

So among this group there has to be a fairly large percentage of intelligent, competent, critical-thinking people who want to believe these implausible, ridiculous fairy tales.

As Clark points out in the last of the linked posts:

"That requires more self-deception than any of us is capable of on our own. That degree of self-deception requires a group.

This is why the rumor doesn’t really need to be plausible or believable. It isn’t intended to deceive others. It’s intended to invite others to participate with you in deception.

Are you afraid you might be a coward? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend to feel brave. Are you afraid that your life is meaningless? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend your life has purpose. Are you afraid you’re mired in mediocrity? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend to feel exceptional. Are you worried that you won’t be able to forget that you’re just pretending and that all those good feelings will thus seem hollow and empty?

Join us and we will pretend it’s true for you if you will pretend it’s true for us. We need each other."

It's sad to think that someone needs something like that to be able to live with themselves.

But how else can you explain the notion that otherwise-competent people believe that someone like bland corporate hack Joe Biden, the guy who represented MasterCard in Congress, is a communist puppet who wants to outlaw guns and Christianity and make every toddler attend Drag Queen Story Hour?

But...how else do you explain it?

How else do you explain things like the Texas governor's reaction to his state's catastrophic public power disaster, or his ramming his citizen's collective dicks into the COVID meatgrinder?

How else, in a pandemic on a scale unprecedented for a century, do you explain this?

I can't. Other than what Clark is talking about; that a relatively huge minority of my supposed fellow Americans want to believe that me and people like me are evil traitors who want to utterly burn down "America".

On the Left there are people who are not happy with how things are. But as Cohen notes, even these people will compromise and cooperate if that means the public good.

On the Right, there are people - in the case of the "Relief Plan" vote in the tweet above powerful, well-educated people, people who are supposedly familiar with the inner workings of the U.S. government and through it armed with all the sources of potential knowledge and understanding of the Plague Year - who have convinced themselves that their political adversaries are literally so evil and dangerous that the most anodyne of their proposals must be utterly, furiously, and sometimes even violently, fought against.

 They will not compromise or cooperate, for who can "compromise" and "cooperate" with Evil?

And that brings us to the point where we're going to discuss climate change